Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Pope Francis' special envoy for the war in Ukraine, will hold talks in Kyiv this Monday and Tuesday. According to the Holy See press office on Monday morning, the main goal of Zuppi's two-day trip is "to listen carefully to the Ukrainian leadership about the possibilities of achieving a just peace."

The Vatican also wants to support "gestures of humanity" that could help reduce tensions. On the return flight from his visit to Hungary on April 30, Pope Francis told journalists traveling with him that the Vatican was preparing a "still secret peacekeeping mission" for Ukraine.

Two weeks later, Francis appointed the Archbishop of Bologna, Zuppi, who has been president of the Italian Bishops' Conference since May 2022, as mediator for the war in Ukraine. According to the Vatican, Zuppi is said to be the only interlocutor for the leadership of Ukraine and Russia for the time being. The cardinal is therefore likely to travel to Kiev alone or with a very small delegation.

Details of the course of the visit and Zuppi's interlocutors in Kiev were not disclosed for security reasons. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected a mediation role by the Vatican during his visit to the Vatican on May 13, but expressed openness to efforts by the Holy See in the exchange of prisoners and the repatriation of Ukrainian children abducted to Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently signaled approval of Zuppi's mission and assured that President Vladimir Putin would receive the Pope's envoy in the Kremlin. It is not yet known whether Zuppi plans to travel to Moscow immediately after his visit to Kiev.

In 1968, Zuppi was one of the founding members of the progressive Catholic lay community of Sant'Egidio, with which he is still closely associated today. Together with Andrea Riccardi, the founding chairman of the community, Zuppi acted as a mediator in international conflicts on several occasions. In October 1992, after more than two years of negotiations, Zuppi and Riccardi reached the peace agreement for Mozambique, which brought an end to the civil war in the Southeast African country.

As a possible mediator between Kiev and Moscow, Zuppi brings political weight and a lot of experience in negotiations with conflicting parties. At the same time, the attitude of his client in the Vatican is a heavy burden: Although Francis has repeatedly expressed his solidarity with the "Ukrainian martyr people", he still shies away from condemning Putin as the aggressor. Francis rejects the invitations of the Ukrainian leadership as well as the Catholic and Orthodox Christians to visit, because he only wants to travel to Kiev if he is subsequently received in Moscow.