Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Rome to meet Pope Francis
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Rome, where he will meet political heads and have an audience with Pope Francis.
“An essential visit for approaching the success of Ukraine!” he wrote as he landed in the Italian city.
He will see Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and President Sergio Mattarella and head for the Vatican later on Saturday. A massive security management has been launched, with over 1,000 cops deployed and a no-fly zone over Rome.
Pope Francis has usually said that the Vatican stands prepared to negotiate the war between Russia and Ukraine. Before this month, he said that the Vatican was working on a peace strategy to stop the war, saying that the mission was “not yet open. When it is public, I will talk about it.”
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But the connection between Ukraine and the Vatican has sometimes been tense.
Last August, Ukraine’s representative to the Vatican took the extraordinary step of criticising the Pope after the pontiff directed Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist figure, who was murdered by a car bomb, as an “innocent” target of war.
Saturday will be President Zelensky and Pope Francis’s first session since Russia attacked Ukraine. The pair did meet in 2020.
The visit arrived after Russia launched a new wave of air attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight.
Source – BBC
