Pope Francis is sending personal envoys to Moscow and Kyiv, in a bid to arrange a truce between the warring countries, according to a Roman report.
Il Sismografo, an influential blog that covers Vatican affairs, reports that both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have agreed to meet with the papal representatives.
Vatican officials have not commented on the report. But Pope Francis had said, in an in-flight conversation with reporters on April 30 as he returned from a visit to Hungary, that there was a “mission underway” to secure a peace agreement.
According to Il Sismografo, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna would be the papal representative to visit Kyiv, while Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, the prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, would travel to Moscow. Archbishop Gugerotti, who speaks Russian, has in the past served as papal nuncio to Ukraine and to Belarus.
