Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian Catholic Bishops Conference and the Vatican envoy on the Ukrainian crisis, was in Moscow Oct. 15. Zuppi’s first meeting in Moscow was with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Russian Foreign Ministry noted that the two discussed “cooperation in the humanitarian sphere in the context of the conflict in Ukraine” and other issues on the international scene. They also noted “the constructive development of dialogue between Russia and the Vatican.”
This, Zuppi’s second mission to Moscow, occurred only four days after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the Vatican, where he had a 35-minute-long talk with the Pope.
On the second day of his mission to Russia, Zuppi met again with Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian presidency’s commissioner for children’s rights (the two had already seen each other in the June 2023 mission) to “facilitate the family reunification of Ukrainian children and the exchange of prisoners, with a view to achieving the much hoped-for peace.” He also met with Metropolitan Antonij of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Department for External Ecclesiastical Relations (Decr) of the Moscow Patriarchate, Osservatore Romano reported.
