Pope Francis has said he is ready to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and try to stop the fighting in Ukraine.
Pope Francis says he is ready to travel to Moscow to see Russian President Vladimir Putin and try to stop the fighting in Ukraine, which he compares to Rwanda in an interview with the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera published on Tuesday.
Referring to the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, Francis claimed to have “called on the phone” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “on the first day of the war”.
“On the other hand, I did not call Putin. I spoke to him in December, for my birthday, but this time no, I did not call,” added the Argentine pope.
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“Subsequently, after 20 days of war, I asked Cardinal (Pietro) Parolin”, number two of the Vatican, “to send Putin the message that I was ready to go to Moscow”, a- he continued.
“We have not yet received a response and we are still insisting, although I am afraid that Putin cannot and does not want to have this meeting now,” added Pope Francis.
“How do we fail to stop all this brutality? We saw the same thing 25 years ago with Rwanda,” he added, referring to the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people, mostly from of the Tutsi minority, were killed, according to the UN.
“I have to meet Putin first”
The sovereign pontiff has also ruled out going to kyiv for the moment, despite invitations from the Ukrainians.
“I’m not going to kyiv at the moment,” he said, recalling having sent two cardinals there. “I feel like I shouldn’t go,” he insisted.
“I have to go to Moscow first, I have to meet Putin first,” assured Pope Francis, who has multiplied calls for an end to the fighting in Ukraine.
He also mentioned an interview by videoconference with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and close ally of Vladimir Putin.
“The first twenty minutes, with a paper in hand, he read me all kinds of justifications for the war. I listened and said to him, ‘I don’t understand any of this. We can’t use the language of politics but that of Jesus'”, Francis said.