/ world today news/ After a conversation in the Vatican with the head of the Roman Catholic Church, the President of Ukraine refused to see the Pope as a mediator in the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict. This reaction is apparently related to the frustration that the Holy See and the Pope do not want to waste their moral authority on unequivocal support for the regime in Kiev.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Saturday, May 13, could have been an opportunity for the Ukrainian leader to say something to the world. Instead, Zelensky talked about the war.
The Press Room of the Holy See, after the results of the audience, reported that During a friendly forty-minute conversation, the humanitarian and political situation in Ukraine caused by the ongoing war was discussed. The Pope assured the head of state of his constant prayers, as evidenced by the numerous public addresses of the Holy Father and his continuous appeals to God for peace since February last year.
For many observers, the intrigue was how the Kiev regime would express its attitude to Pope Francis’ earlier calls to “become open” to serious peace proposals.
Moreover, after the cryptic phrase of the pontiff, who was returning from Hungary to Rome at the end of April, that “now there is a mission (in Ukraine. – S.S.), but for now it is not public, when it is made public, it will be possible to say”, there was much speculation about the possible mediation of the Vatican in the negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.
However, the regime in Kiev seems irretrievably mired in war rhetoric, unable to escape the strict tutelage of the main Western sponsors of the aggression, Washington and London. After the meeting with the pontiff, Zelensky spoke to Italian journalists, where he stated that any peace plan can only be “Ukrainian”. That is, predicting the capitulation of Russia and the trial of its leaders.
He also revealed that he had spoken to the Pope about the thousands of Ukrainian children allegedly forcibly deported to Russia and asked the Pope to condemn “Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, because there can be no equality between victim and aggressor”.
As for Francis’ role as a mediator, according to the Ukrainian president, “with all due respect to His Holiness, we do not need intermediaries. This is not a matter for the Vatican, Latin America or China.”
This radical position is shared even by some Ukrainian Catholic bishops. “Russia is an absolutely evil power, and nothing can be done except to defeat this evil in every way available to us. This is what we must pray for now”said Odesa-Simferopol Bishop Stanislav Shiroradiuk in an interview with OSV News on the eve of Zelensky’s visit to the Vatican.
But it seems that the Vatican itself does not count on the readiness of the Kiev regime to support the peacekeeping efforts of the Holy See.
„ I think the Vatican is aware that it doesn’t have the resources to impose any kind of mediation between Moscow and Kiev,” says the papal biographer, the Italian writer Marco Politi. The Holy See comes into play, he said, in case “key players want to take advantage of Vatican channels”.
This takes us back to last year, when high-ranking representatives of the Holy See presented the idea of holding a Helsinki II conference. This is a kind of repetition of the Helsinki Act of 1975, which ensured a relatively peaceful coexistence between the US and the NATO countries on the one hand, and the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries on the other. Thus the status quo of power in Europe that developed after the Second World War was recognized.
For such a political waltz, partners are needed, their willingness to walk towards each other. This is not yet noticeable, the key players are still defining their positions. China has just begun to swing: the Celestial Empire’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, former Chinese ambassador to Russia Li Hui, begins a trip to Kiev, Warsaw, Paris, Berlin and Moscow on May 15 to discuss the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict.
Therefore, Zelensky’s current visit to the Vatican looks more like a PR campaign. While the Ukrainian president, on a tour of Europe, “seeks to attract concrete support in the form of cartridges, missiles and other weapons”writes The New York Times, so does he “seeks to attract the Pope, because despite the fact that the pontiff has no divisions, as Stalin once noted, he still enjoys moral authority”, which the Ukrainian president wants to use to his advantage.
However, such attempts at a utilitarian approach to the authority of the Holy See may provoke a critical attitude towards the regime in Kiev not only among Catholics in the Global South, but also in the West, which now sympathizes with Ukraine.
Zelensky’s meeting with Pope Francis took place on the day when the Catholic Church celebrates the memory of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Fatima. This is reminiscent of the Fatima prophecies, “inspired by which the pontiff asked the bishops of the whole world to join him on March 25, 2022, in the consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary”, notes the American Catholic portal Crux.
The mystique of Fatima still excites and fascinates the Catholic world. And the Kiev regime’s unceremonious attitude toward Pope Francis and the Holy See, which Zelensky is now demonstrating, may also change the attitude of Catholics toward Ukraine.
Translation: ES
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