Pope Francis meets Ukraine’s Zelenskiy at Vatican
By Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Francis met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the Vatican on Friday for their second face-to-face encounter in four months.
The two men, who previously met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven (G7) summit in southern Italy this summer, held private talks for 35 minutes at the Vatican’s apostolic palace.
At the end of the meeting, Francis gifted Zelenskiy a piece of bronze artwork with a flower growing next to a bird, inscribed with the phrase “Peace is a fragile flower”.
The Ukrainian gave the pope an oil painting showing a child amid ruins in the Ukrainian town of Bucha near to Kyiv, which was occupied by Russian forces for 33 days in spring 2022.
Ukraine and the West accuse Russian forces of committing war crimes during their occupation of Bucha, which Moscow denies.
Zelenskiy is travelling across Europe this week to discuss his proposed “victory plan” with the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany, and the head of NATO.
Western officials and Zelenskiy have said the war with Russia is at a critical point and Ukraine is keen for further support to try to change the balance on the battlefield to put itself in a strong position for eventual peace talks.
The pope drew the ire of Ukrainian officials in March when he suggested they should have the courage of the “white flag” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia. At the time, Zelenskiy dismissed the pope’s remarks as “virtual mediation” from a distance.
Francis, 87, has also criticised Ukrainian lawmakers’ plans to ban activities of a Russia-linked branch of the EasternOrthodox Church, which Kyiv accuses of spreading pro-Russian propaganda and of housing spies.
The pope met privately on Thursday with the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. The prelate, who is based in Kyiv, has been in Rome for an ongoing Vatican summit of global bishops.
“I wanted to tell the pope about the disaster of the war and the challenges coming this winter,” Shevchuk told the Vatican’s media outlet.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Crispian Balmer, Timothy Heritage and Gareth Jones)
