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"A merciful heart can share its bread with the hungry and welcome refugees and migrants" Pope Francis [89]
I am not a fan of religion, as some might know here. So it's not a little bit strange, for me to defend Pope Francis. But I want to try anyway:
Catherine the Great, who was not even Russian (born Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg), is almost universally regarded as one of the most important figures of the 18th century. She brought the Enlightenment to Russia, and created the conditions which started a huge wave of European immigration into the country. She also founded such cities as Nikolayev, Kherson, Sevastopol and Dnipropetrovsk (which Ukrainians are now claiming as "historic" Ukrainian cities).
Her treatment of Poland, while perhaps unjust from the point of view of Poles, was totally normal policy for a statesman of her time. Had it not been done by her, it would have been done to a further extant than actually occurred - by the Prussians and Austrians.
Now as to the Russian Orthodox Church:
It is bewildering to me, how so many soldiers were made saints by the early church. One of those things which I find very confusing. However, you must admit that the ROC is definitely not unique in turning killers into saints.
Suvorov has a reputation of a martyr in the Russian historical tradition. He brought Russia some of its greatest victories (while sleeping and eating with the soldiers as an equal), only to be discarded by Catherine's son like a piece of trash. He is known to have been extremely pious, and kind (again, look to the way he treated his men). Applying modern Polish grievances to him, is as ahistorical an approach as blaming Catherine for following thorough on the partitions.
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That's all, for my apologetics. As I've said - it's strange to me to make saints of soldiers.
