BURSTPope Leo XIV, the first American-born pontiff, will offer to host leaders from Russia and Ukraine at the Vatican to broker a peace deal in their ongoing war, a top Catholic official said Friday after Russian President Vladimir Putin dodged discussions in Turkey earlier this week.
The new pope would "if necessary, make the Vatican, the Holy See, available for a direct meeting between the two parties," Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See's secretary of state, told reporters in Rome. "It is an availability of place."
Leo, known as Cardinal Robert Prevost before he was elected to succeed the late Pope Francis as head of the Catholic Church last week, urged peace in Ukraine during his first Sunday blessing over the weekend, directing part of his message to world leaders and stressing that he was "repeating the ever-present call 'never again war.'" He also spoke to President Volodymyr Zelensky by phone Sunday.
Parolin called the failure of the two sides to reach a truce Thursday in Istanbul "tragic."
"We hoped that a slow but positive process towards a peaceful solution to the conflict could start," he said. "We are back at the beginning; now we will see what to do, but it is a very difficult situation."
President Trump told reporters in Qatar this week he wasn't surprised Putin didn't show up for what was to be direct negotiations between the two countries' leaders.
"I actually said, 'Why would he go if I’m not going?'" Trump said during a stop on his diplomatic trip to the Middle East. "I would go, but I wasn’t planning to go, and I said, 'I don’t think he’s going to go if I don’t go.'"