At the conclusion of his weekly audience on September 21, Pope Francis spoke of the “terrible situation” in Ukraine, saying that Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who is visiting the war-torn country, had reported on “the savagery, the monstrosities, the tortured corpses they find.

The Pope told his audience that “some people are thinking of nuclear weapons—that madness.” He was apparently referring to veiled threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine could not be excluded.