Pope Francis was criticized on Monday for telling young Russians to remember that they are the heirs of tsars like Peter the Great, whom President Vladimir Putin held up as an example to justify the invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Pope Francis announced this last Friday in a video message to young Catholics gathered in St. Petersburg.

He read his prepared speech in Spanish, but at the end improvised in Italian and said:

• “Don’t forget (your) heritage. You are the heirs of the great Russia: the great Russia of saints, tsars, the great Russia of Peter the Great, Catherine II, the great Russian empire, cult, so much culture, so much humanity. You are the heirs of the great mother Russia. Go straight.”

The Vatican released the text of the speech on Saturday, but did not include the impromptu final paragraph.

The video of the Pope making such comments was published by religious sites.

“Hearing the Pope praising Catherine II at this delicate moment in history… seems quite strange to many Catholics,” said an editorial on Il Sismografo, an Italian website specializing in Catholic affairs.

The editorial noted that Catherine, popularly known as Catherine the Great and who ruled from 1729 to 1796, annexed Crimea in 1783. It was also noted that Catherine protected the Jesuits in Russian-controlled lands after Pope Clement XIV suppressed the order worldwide in 1773. Pope Francis is a Jesuit.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin compared his policies to those of Tsar Peter the Great when he fought against Sweden (in the Great Northern War), invading part of that country as well as Finland, as well as parts of Estonia and Latvia.

Putin has repeatedly tried to justify Russia’s actions in Ukraine, where its troops have devastated cities, killed thousands of people and displaced several million others, by offering a view of history that says Ukraine has no real national identity or state tradition.

“It’s really outrageous,” former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said on X, formerly known as Twitter, of the Pope’s remarks.

Nexta, a website that talks about Belarus in Poland, said on X: “By the way, Catholics in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus rebelled against this ‘enlightened empire’ three times.

There are no comments from the government in Kyiv.

Francis called Russia’s actions in Ukraine brutal, cruel and ferocious and said the invasion violated the country’s right to self-determination. He spoke about “Martyr Ukraine” at almost every public appearance after the February 2022 invasion.