Pope Francis has appointed a cardinal to lead a peace mission to stop the war in Ukraine

Pope francesco commissioned by the Italian cardinal Matteo Zuppi carry out a peace mission that “helps to reduce tensions in the conflict in Ukraine”, as confirmed this Saturday by the Holy See in a statement.

“The terms of this mission and its modalities are currently being studied”, explained Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni.

The cardinal, archbishop of Bologna (north) and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, was commissioned by the pontiff to “lead a mission, according to the Secretary of State, to help reduce tensions in the conflict in Ukraine”.

“In the hope, never abandoned by the Holy Father, that he can initiate peace processes”, concludes the statement.

This would be the secret mission to which Pope Francis referred on his return from his trip to Hungary and on which the Vatican kept the utmost silence until Saturday afternoon.

In recent days some media had announced it Francis intended to send emissaries to Kiev and to Moscow in an attempt to mediate to stop the war in Ukraine, even if this “double” strategy was not confirmed and only Zuppi was nominated.

The media had indicated Zuppi as the emissary addressed to Kyiv and Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, a great connoisseur of these two countries and prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, as the interlocutor with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, Gugerotti denied this information a few days ago.

Zuppi mediated in 1990 with the Community of Sant’Egidio in the civil war in Mozambique and was also in 2017 during the delivery of the weapons of the Basque terrorist group ETA in the French town of Bayonne (south).

Pope Francis has called on numerous occasions for dialogue to end the war in Ukraine, caused by Russia’s invasion in February 2020.

Indeed, on May 13, he openly acknowledged that the Holy See’s neutrality allows him to “better contribute to the resolution of the conflict” in an audience with the new diplomats at the Vatican.

That same day, he received the President of Ukraine, Volodomir Zelensky, at the Vatican.

In the meeting, which lasted 40 minutes, both agreed on the “need to continue humanitarian efforts in support of the population”, according to the summary information provided by the Holy See.

In this sense, the pontiff underlined “the urgency of gestures of humanity towards the most fragile people, innocent victims of the conflict”.

Shortly thereafter, Zelensky posted a much harsher message on his Twitter in which, after thanking the pope for his attention to the “tragedy of millions of Ukrainians”, he asked him to “condemn Russian crimes in Ukraine”.

“Because,” he said, “there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor,” the Ukrainian president scolded.

And he rejected any other peace plan other than that of his country: “I also spoke of our Peace Formula as the only effective algorithm for achieving a just peace. I proposed to join its implementation,” he wrote.