{"id":119753,"date":"2022-07-20T13:45:54","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T10:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/df.news\/?p=119753"},"modified":"2022-07-20T13:46:22","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T10:46:22","slug":"pope-francis-wants-to-and-feels-he-should-go-to-ukraine-archbishop-gallagher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/2022\/07\/20\/pope-francis-wants-to-and-feels-he-should-go-to-ukraine-archbishop-gallagher\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis \u201cwants to and feels he should go to Ukraine\u201d \u2013 Archbishop Gallagher"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A war of attrition” in which ” it is incumbent upon the international community to keep the hope of dialogue, the hope of negotiation alive\u201d: this is how Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, defines the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In an interview with America magazine\u2019s correspondent, Gerard O\u2019Connell, the Vatican prelate recalls his recent visit to Ukraine in May:\u201dWhat I think I learned – said – was the resilience of the people, their determination, their courage. But also I learned about the degree of suffering ” there, highlighted by \u201cthe great loss of life and by the growing concerns that the war will continue, Vatican News<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n

For this reason, Archbishop Gallagher underlines the role of the Holy See in calling for negotiations and for the “restoration of peace” \u201cwithout ignoring the violence and the conflict\u201d. He adds there has been \u201cno explicit invitation\u201d to the Holy See by Russia to mediate, though the two States have maintained contacts \u201dthrough the Apostolic Nuncio in Moscow\u201d. Archbishop Gallagher remarks that the position of the Holy See \u201cis appreciated\u201d by Russia, that, however, hasn’t\u00a0 gone a \u201cstep further\u201d asking for a possible mediation, as there was no explicit invitation for the Pope to go to Moscow.<\/p>\n

Archbishop Gallagher goes on to recall the Holy See\u2019s support to \u201cthe sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine\u201d, reiterating that: \u201cIt\u2019s up to the Ukrainians to negotiate with others, with the Russians, obviously, in particular\u201d. Based on this \u201cprinciple\u201d, he says, the Holy See “would not recognize a unilateral declaration of independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”.<\/p>\n

Regarding hopes for a papal visit to Kyiv in August, Archbishop Gallagher remarks that the Pope \u201chas made great progress in his mobility\u201d which has been hindered by his knee problem, and, therefore, may want to start looking into this matter \u201cseriously\u201d in the next month, after his trip to Canada from\u00a0 24-29 July.<\/p>\n

In any case, he says, Pope Francis \u201cwants to and feels he should go to Ukraine\u201d, despite the lack of an invitation from Moscow. “The two things are not linked\u201d. It might be a good thing if they were linked. But I think the Pope\u2019s main priority at this moment is to make the visit to Ukraine, meet with the Ukrainian authorities, meet with the Ukrainian people and with the Ukrainian Catholic Church”, the Vatican representative concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A war of attrition” in which ” it is incumbent upon the international community to keep the hope of dialogue, the hope of negotiation alive\u201d: this is how Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, defines the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In an interview with America magazine\u2019s correspondent, Gerard O\u2019Connell, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":119731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"telegram_tosend":false,"telegram_tosend_message":"","telegram_tosend_target":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5148,5142],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-119753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-church-en","8":"category-news"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/df.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/cq5dam.thumbnail.cropped.750.422-2-1.jpeg?fit=750%2C422&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}