NYT<\/a>.<\/p>\nA secret mission revealed days ago by Pope Francis to bring peace between Russia and Ukraine is so secret that Russia and Ukraine claim to know nothing about it.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it had no idea what the pope was talking about. \u201cUkraine doesn\u2019t know about it,\u201d Ukraine\u2019s ambassador to the Holy See, Andrii Yurash, said in an interview Wednesday, adding that he had scheduled a meeting for Thursday with the pope\u2019s foreign minister. \u201cI will for sure ask him what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later Wednesday evening, the pope\u2019s second-in-command and chief diplomat, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told reporters, \u201cto my knowledge, they were and are aware\u201d of the peace plan, saying that the denial by the governments \u201csurprises me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The apparent bewilderment of the war\u2019s parties, and confusion around the existence of a plan contributed to the sense that the pope\u2019s influence as a geopolitical player and peacemaker \u2014 already chastened in countries like Cuba, South Sudan and Myanmar \u2014 did not extend to Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Some supporters of Ukraine worry that in his eagerness to play a constructive role, Francis may be reducing himself to a pawn for the likes of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or the Russian Orthodox Church, which has sought to give religious legitimacy to the invasion.<\/p>\n
During a visit to Budapest last weekend, Francis met privately with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has been a frequent defender of Russia, and a top Russian Orthodox Church prelate in Hungary, Metropolitan Hilarion. On the plane home, Francis was asked by journalists whether he thought the two men could accelerate the peace process or facilitate a meeting between Francis and Mr. Putin.<\/p>\n
Francis answered with a cryptic reference to \u201ca mission going on now, but it is not public yet\u201d to bring peace, adding \u201cwhen it is public I will talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the comments, the office of Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the foreign minister, responded that since the \u201cmatter is under consideration,\u201d it could not provide information for now, \u201cbut will do so in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what little is actually known about that effort has drawn either denial (the metropolitan on Wednesday said he had no conversation about a peace plan with Francis), bafflement or deep skepticism from informed observers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pope is out of the picture,\u201d said Lucio Carraciolo, the editor of the leading Italian foreign affairs journal Limes. In December, he organized an event at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See featuring Cardinal Parolin, who called for a \u201cEuropean peace conference\u201d to help end the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can a Catholic pope be a mediator in an Orthodox environment?\u201d Mr. Carraciolo said, adding that with Francis, the church \u201chas no relevance in this kind of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the Vatican has actively tried to engage with both sides, working on prisoner releases and promising the Ukrainians that it would do what it could to help return children taken by Russia. One former Vatican official on Wednesday told the Italian press about a seven-point plan for a peace process that included getting major stakeholders around a table mediated by the Vatican.<\/p>\n
Mr. Yurash, the Ukrainian ambassador, said the Vatican has consistently expressed a desire to be involved in an eventual peace negotiation, and that to do that, its officials told him, it had to keep open \u201cbridges\u201d and \u201clines\u201d to Russia.<\/p>\n
But he noted that the Kremlin had repeatedly stymied Vatican overtures for a papal meeting with Mr. Putin, which Francis has repeatedly said would be a prerequisite for a meeting with Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n
Mr. Yurash argued the Russian Orthodox Church was trying to gain \u201clegitimacy\u201d through its relationship with the Vatican for \u201cobvious aims of Russian propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not absolutely clear for my side why the Holy See is always trying to still continue this very special relation with the Russian church and the Russian state,\u201d he said, adding that the Ukrainian people, already suffering under an invasion, \u201ccannot understand\u201d the pope\u2019s positioning.<\/p>\n
Francis has repeatedly recalled that on the first day of the war he called Mr. Zelensky, and then, to make what he has called a \u201cclear gesture\u201d of his openness to talk, visited Aleksandr Avdeyev, the Russian ambassador to the Holy See.<\/p>\n
On the flight back from Budapest he called Mr. Avdeyev \u201ca great man, a man comme il faut, a serious, cultured and balanced person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Avdeyev did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Francis\u2019 openness to dialogue has also, especially in the beginning of the war, drawn criticism for assuming a neutrality that critics considered morally questionable in the face of clear Russian aggression.<\/p>\n
The pope\u2019s early reluctance to name Russia as the aggressor eventually led to criticism from Ukraine and warnings that he was in danger of ending up on the wrong side of history, with historians invoking Pius XII, who stayed essentially silent about Hitler\u2019s Holocaust.<\/p>\n
In May 2022, Francis wondered in an interview with the Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper, whether \u201cNATO barking at Russia\u2019s doors\u201d may have \u201cfacilitated\u201d anger from the Kremlin that led to the invasion.<\/p>\n
But in the same interview, he seemed to damage his status as an honest broker when he said he had pointed out to Patriarch Kirill I, the leader of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church, who he spent years courting to mend a split between the Western and Eastern churches going back to 1054, \u201cthe patriarch cannot be transformed into Putin\u2019s altar boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
After eventually condemning Russia as the aggressor, Francis has since compared Russia\u2019s behavior to massacres under Stalin and has consistently supported Ukrainians and called attention to their plight.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Carraciolo said, the pope\u2019s differing views could charitably be characterized as a \u201cpuzzle\u201d that generated confusion and effectively disqualified the pontiff as a potential interlocutor.<\/p>\n
Revealing an effort after meeting with players closer to the Russian side in Budapest was \u201cnot smart,\u201d he said, also adding, \u201cif it\u2019s secret, you have to keep it secret.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the beginning of his pontificate, Francis has thrown himself into real conflicts in the hopes of having a real, and not just moral, impact on the world stage. But after early success in playing a role in a historic diplomatic breakthrough between Cuba and the United States in 2015, his efforts have rarely borne fruit.<\/p>\n
Cuba, where he has sent an envoy to secure the release of political prisoners, has not freed them. In 2019, he knelt in the Vatican and kissed the feet of the warring leaders of South Sudan, imploring them to stop a yearslong civil war. But in February, he upbraided the leaders in the country\u2019s capital, Juba, for slipping back into violence.<\/p>\n
Flavio Lotti, who organizes a yearly peace march from Perugia to Assisi, said that the pope\u2019s strong voice on issues of peace, disarmament and support for migrants, \u201cmakes Francis unique, but doesn\u2019t make him stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Mr. Lotti said Francis served as an important \u201clighthouse\u201d for everyone who seeks to put \u201cthe conditions of real people also at the heart of geopolitical problems. It\u2019s in the trying.\u201d<\/p>\n
While even some supporters of Francis worry he risks coming off as geopolitically impotent if no plan materializes or gets traction, it is clear for now that the pope had again become a center of attention. Mr. Yurash said he had received a barrage of calls from fellow ambassadors to the Vatican, including from the United States, asking what he knew.<\/p>\n
As the ambassador showed pictures in his office of himself with Francis and Cardinal Parolin and pointed out a stuffed animal, shredded in a Russian attack, that he hoped to give to the pope as a reminder of the suffering of the country\u2019s children, his phone rang.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Polish ambassador,\u201d he said, excusing himself. \u201cEverybody is calling me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since Francis made a cryptic reference to a Vatican peace effort, the suggestion has elicited denial or bewilderment by the war\u2019s protagonists. That\u2019s according to NYT. A secret mission revealed days ago by Pope Francis to bring peace between Russia and Ukraine is so secret that Russia and Ukraine claim to know nothing about it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":159607,"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":[5142,5153,5144],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-160100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-top-en","9":"category-war-en"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/df.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cq5dam.thumbnail.cropped.750.422-4.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\/160100","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\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160101,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160100\/revisions\/160101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}