On Saturday, the Vatican’s role in global diplomacy was on full display in one of the Catholic Church’s most holy places: St Peter’s Basilica. Source: NCR Online.
US President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for 15 minutes just prior to the funeral of Pope Francis, who spent a lifetime as a cleric working to build bridges.
“Nothing like some tough diplomacy in one of the most beautiful places in the world,” tweeted Mike Waltz, Mr Trump’s national security adviser, on the platform now known as X.
Photos of the encounter went viral. Scant details about the exchange were released. The images show Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy seated in padded chairs near the front doors of the marble-floored nave of the basilica, near the baptistry chapel.
A White House spokesman said the meeting was productive.
Mr Zelenskyy praised the meeting afterward, and Mr Trump seemed to change his tune, blasting a recent Russian aerial assault on Ukraine.
“Good meeting,” Mr Zelynskyy posted on X. “We discussed a lot one on one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire.”
It was the pair’s first face-to-face meeting since a fiery exchange broadcast live from the White House in February.
In recent days, the Trump Administration has been pressuring Mr Zelenskyy to accept the administration’s peace deal terms in the three-year-old Russia-Ukraine war.
Pope Francis, who repeatedly called for a cease fire in Ukraine, could not have planned the basilica exchange better if he had been alive.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian-Australian Cardinal Mykola Bychok on Friday told reporters at a press conference in Rome that he’d personally spoken of the war with the late pontiff and had even asked Francis to pray for the 20,000 Ukrainian children taken by force to Russia since the war began, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
“When I knelt before him, I asked him to help them,” Cardinal Bychok said. “This is the future of our country.”
And while acknowledging criticisms that Francis’s approach to the war lacked political force, Bychok insisted the pope’s strength was pastoral, not geopolitical.
“What he offered was something uniquely Christian – a fatherly concern, and an unceasing call for peace. Not revenge, not desolation, but peace rooted in justice and reconciliation.
“In our darkest hours, he did not forget us. He prayed for peace. He wept with us … He reminded the world not to grow indifferent.”
FULL STORY
‘God’s diplomats’ at work as White House says exchange was ‘productive’ (By James Grimaldi, NCR Online)
Youngest cardinal calls for peace, justice in Ukraine as Church bids farewell to Pope Francis (By Rob Harris, Sydney Morning Herald)
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Gudziak: Pope Francis gave a gift to the world through surprise Trump-Zelenskyy encounter (OSV News)
Trump, Zelenskyy meet face-to-face in St Peter’s Basilica (OSV News)
