President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky and Pope Francis met this Saturday in the Vatican for about 40 minutes, in an expected meeting that took place after the pontiff revealed that a mission to end the war in Ukraine is underway, the details of which are not yet known.
Zelensky arrived at the Vatican at 4.10pm local time from Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian government, where he met the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloniafter having also been previously received by the Head of State, Sergio Mattarella.
“Thank you for this visit”, said the Pope, greeting the Ukrainian president. “It’s a great honour,” replied Zelensky, dressed in his usual suit of military trousers and a tracksuit with Ukrainian insignia.
In an unusual gesture, Francisco approached the entrance to the Vatican offices to receive Zelenski, when visitors usually wait in his offices.
The Pope gave him a bronze work depicting an olive branch, a symbol of peace, as well as this year’s Message for Peace, the Document on Human Fraternity and the volume “An Encyclical on Peace in Ukraine”.
The Ukrainian president, for his part, gave him a work of art made from a bulletproof vest and a painting entitled “Loss”, about the killing of children during the conflict.
After the protocol exchange of gifts and greetings, both talked for about 40 minutes.
This is the first meeting of the Pope with the Ukrainian president since the beginning of the war, even if both know each other because Francis received Zelenskyj in audience on February 8, 2020, when the “humanitarian situation and the search for peace” were already being discussed in the context of the “conflict that has afflicted Ukraine since 2014”.
The meeting has generated great expectations, as many hope it can be a starting point for promoting complex negotiations, given the equidistant position that Francis has always tried to maintain, even if this attitude has sometimes annoyed the Ukrainians.
The 86-year-old Argentine pope has called on numerous occasions for an end to the war that began in February 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That same Saturday, when he received the ambassadors, he evoked the “unspeakable suffering and deaths” caused by that conflict.
Source: Clarin
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