Vatican Secretary of State of the Holy See Cardinal Pietro Parolin said on May 10th that Russia and Ukraine have been in contact over the “peace mission” announced earlier this year by Pope Francis,
“I really believe it [the mission—TASS] will move forward,” the ANSA news agency quoted Parolin as saying. According to the cardinal, there are developments, which are “at a confidential level. [Moscow and Kiev] had said they didn’t know anything about it [the mission], but then there were contacts where it was clarified on both sides that there had been a misunderstanding,” the cardinal stated.
This is a reference to statements to the media by Pope Francis after his visit to Hungary on April 29th, to the effect that a “peace mission” was to be carried out to put an end to the Ukraine conflict. According to the Pope, the mission “is not yet public” and the details would be revealed later. On that same visit to Budapest, the Pope met with Russian Archbishop Hilarion, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Budapest. The latter was for thirteen years head of the Department of External Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, and was known informally as Russian Patriarch Kirill’s “foreign minister.” In that capacity Archbishop Hilarion met several times with Pope Francis.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said later that the Kremlin is aware of Pope Francis’s considerations concerning the resolution of the Ukraine crisis, but Moscow knows nothing about any specifics.
