Pope Francis arrives for his play wide assemblage successful the Paul VI hall, astatine the Vatican, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis arrives for his play wide assemblage successful the Paul VI hall, astatine the Vatican, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

MADRID – Pope Francis has criticized the West's caller engagement successful Afghanistan arsenic an outsider's effort to enforce ideology — though helium did it by citing Russia's Vladimir Putin portion reasoning helium was quoting Germany's Angela Merkel.

Asked during a vigor interrogation aired Wednesday astir the caller governmental representation taking signifier successful Afghanistan aft the United States and its allies withdrew from the Taliban-controlled state aft 20 years of war, the pope said helium would reply with a punctuation that helium attributed to the German chancellor, whom helium described arsenic “one of the world's top governmental figures.”

“It’s indispensable to halt the irresponsible argumentation of enforcing its ain values connected others and attempts to physique ideology successful different countries based connected extracurricular models without taking into relationship historic, taste and spiritual issues and afloat ignoring different people’s traditions,” the pope said, utilizing his ain translation into Spanish.

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But the words were spoken past month by the Russian president successful the beingness of Merkel, during her sojourn to Moscow.

During the gathering connected Aug. 20, Putin scathingly criticized the West implicit Afghanistan, saying that the Taliban’s accelerated expanse implicit the state has shown the futility of Western attempts to enforce its ain imaginativeness of democracy. Merkel, meanwhile, urged Russia to usage its contacts with the Taliban to property for Afghan citizens who helped Germany to beryllium allowed to permission Afghanistan.

The pope's interrogation with Spain's Cadena COPE took spot astatine the Vatican precocious past week. The vigor presumption owned by Spain's Catholic bishops' league aired the speech connected Wednesday and said that its contented had been vetted by the pope himself.

Francis besides said that “all eventualities were not taken into account” successful the departure of Western allies from Afghanistan.

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"I don't cognize if determination volition beryllium immoderate revision (of what happened during the withdrawal), but determination was overmuch deceiving from the caller authorities (of Afghanistan),” said the pope. “Either that oregon conscionable excessively overmuch ingenuity. Otherwise, I don’t understand.”

Francis called for Christians crossed the satellite to prosecute successful “prayer, penance and fasting” successful the look of events successful Afghanistan.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.