{"id":109735,"date":"2025-05-17T19:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T19:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/109735\/"},"modified":"2025-05-17T19:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T19:01:10","slug":"vatican-could-be-a-venue-for-russia-ukraine-talks-rubio-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/109735\/","title":{"rendered":"Vatican could be a venue for Russia-Ukraine talks, Rubio says"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROME (AP) \u2014 U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that the Vatican could be a venue for Russia-Ukraine<\/a> peace talks, taking up the Holy See\u2019s longstanding offer after Pope Leo XIV vowed to personally make \u201cevery effort\u201d<\/a> to help end the war.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in Rome before meeting with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi<\/a>, the Vatican point man on Ukraine, Rubio said that he would be discussing potential ways the Vatican could help, \u201cthe status of the talks, the updates after yesterday (Friday) and the path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if the Vatican could be a peace broker, Rubio replied: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call it broker, but it\u2019s certainly \u2014 I think it\u2019s a place that both sides would be comfortable going.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019ll talk about all of that and obviously always grateful to the Vatican for their willingness to play this constructive and positive role,\u201d said Rubio, who also met Saturday with the Vatican secretary of state and foreign minister.<\/p>\n

The Vatican has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality and had long offered its services, and venues, to try to help facilitate talks, but found itself sidelined during the all-out war, which began on Feb. 24, 2022.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis, who occasionally angered both Kyiv and Moscow with his off-the-cuff comments<\/a>, had entrusted Zuppi with a mandate to try to find paths of peace. But the mandate seemed to narrow to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken by Russia, and the Holy See also was able to mediate some prisoner exchanges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During their meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Rubio thanked Zuppi for the Vatican\u2019s humanitarian role, citing in particular prisoner swaps and the return of Ukrainian children. Rubio \u201cemphasized the importance of continued collaboration under the new leadership of Pope Leo XIV,\u201d U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.<\/p>\n

Leo, who was elected history\u2019s first American pope on May 8, took up Francis\u2019 call for peace in Ukraine in his first Sunday noon blessing<\/a> as pope. He appealed for all sides to do whatever possible to reach \u201can authentic, just and lasting peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leo, who as a bishop in Peru had called Russia\u2019s war an \u201cimperialist invasion,\u201d vowed this week personally to \u201cmake every effort<\/a> so that this peace may prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a speech to eastern rite Catholics, including the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine, Leo begged warring sides to meet and negotiate. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, repeated the Vatican\u2019s offer to serve as a venue for direct talks, saying the failure of negotiations in Istanbul<\/a> to reach a ceasefire this week was \u201ctragic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had hoped it could start a process, slow but positive, toward a peaceful solution to the conflict,\u201d Parolin said on the sidelines of a conference. \u201cBut instead we\u2019re back to the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked concretely what such an offer would entail, Parolin said that the Vatican could serve as a venue for a direct meeting between the two sides.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne would aim to arrive at this, that at least they talk. We\u2019ll see what happens. It\u2019s an offer of a place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have always said, repeated to the two sides that we are available to you, with all the discretion needed,\u201d Parolin said.<\/p>\n

The Vatican scored what was perhaps its greatest diplomatic achievement<\/a> of the Francis pontificate when it facilitated the talks between the United States and Cuba in 2014 that resulted in the resumption of diplomatic relations. <\/p>\n

The Holy See has also often hosted far less secret diplomatic initiatives, such as when it brought together the rival leaders of South Sudan in 2019. The encounter was made famous by the image of Francis bending down to kiss their feet<\/a> to beg them to make peace. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the Holy See\u2019s most critical diplomatic initiative<\/a> came during the peak of the Cuban missile crisis when, in the fall of 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered a secret deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba that were soon detected by U.S. spy planes.<\/p>\n

As the Kennedy administration considered its response, with the threat of nuclear war looming, Pope John XXIII pleaded for peace in a public radio address, in a speech to Vatican ambassadors and also wrote privately to Kennedy and Khruschev, appealing to their love of their people to stand down.<\/p>\n

Many historians have credited John XXIII\u2019s appeals with helping both sides step back from the brink of nuclear war.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP\u2019s collaboration<\/a> with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME (AP) \u2014 U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that the Vatican could be a venue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[49905,5293,4179,10680,8614,2820,49904,49906,28970,285,21946,41442,19746,8547,7748,332,7661,7663,657,5213,44449,7660,10673,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-109735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-cuba-government","9":"tag-diplomacy","10":"tag-general-news","11":"tag-government-and-politics","12":"tag-international-agreements","13":"tag-marco-rubio","14":"tag-matteo-zuppi","15":"tag-nikita-khrushchev","16":"tag-pietro-parolin","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-pope-francis","19":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","20":"tag-prisoner-exchange","21":"tag-religion","22":"tag-rome","23":"tag-russia","24":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","25":"tag-tammy-bruce","26":"tag-ukraine","27":"tag-united-states-government","28":"tag-vatican-city","29":"tag-war-and-unrest","30":"tag-washington-news","31":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114524722525805504","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}