A few days after Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s appointment as head of a Vatican “peace mission” to “help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine” (as
Vatican News
put it), a startling picture appeared on p. A1 of the
Washington Post
. That graphic image illustrated just how daunting a task Cardinal Zuppi and the Vatican Secretariat of State face. For it was a satellite photo of Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine under relentless Russian assault for months, and it depicted urban devastation comparable to that of Berlin in April 1945.
POPE FRANCIS TO CONFER NEW LAY MINISTRIES FOR FIRST TIME IN ST. PETER’S BASILICA
The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will confer the ministries of catechist, lector, and acolyte upon lay men and
