The “exploratory dialogue” between the Cardinal Zuppi envoy of Pope Francis and Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev a “positive meeting” was defined by both sides and, quite significantly, “the Ukrainian peace formula and the achievement of just peace they were at the center of communication”, according to what was reported by the Ukrainian ambassador to the Holy See Andrii Yurash.
Naturally, the Pope’s appointee will report only to the Pontiff and for now, the Vatican specified, it would be an initiative that “has the main purpose of listening in depth to the Ukrainian authorities about the possible ways to reach a just peace and support gestures of humanity that help ease tensions. First of all the return home of the children deported in Russia to be Russified, 16,226 according to Kiev, and of civilian prisoners forcibly taken from the occupied territories, plus the exchange of prisoners.
Before reaching Kiev, Cardinal Zuppi wanted to visit and pay homage to the victims of loofaha symbolic place of horror, massacres, torture, media manipulation and the negationist claim implemented by the Putinian regime, unfortunately amplified by too many local pseudo-pacifists, from whom apologies are still awaited in vain.
A signal that would seem to go in the direction of full recognition for Ukraine as a state assaulted and for its inhabitants, among whom there are at least 8,983 civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion, according to UN data, of “battered people”, according to the definition that has become habitual of Pope Francis. With the not irrelevant footnote that “if there is a martyred people” there is someone who martyrs them.
At the moment, the possibility that the Pope’s emissary will soon see President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has been denial by Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov as “unscheduled”. And if the Vatican secretary of state Pietro Parolin had declared in recent days that he would begin with the approach to the two capitals, Kiev and Moscow, Vatican sources reveal that even if a trip to Mosca would be “in preparation” the timing in this regard remains “unpredictable”.
In less diplomatic words and bearing in mind the previous torpedoing by Moscow of the Vatican peace initiatives, as soon as Francis compared the “equiproximity to the pain of Ukrainian and Russian mothers” with the inexorable denunciation for the horrors of Bucha, it can be seen for now that Putin’s availability is conceivable only for a “peace” that ratifies his aggression and guarantees himimpunity for every crime.
Only a few days ago on May 13 Zelensky’s clear and clear words had aroused reactions bordering on indignation on the part of the colorful pacifist galaxy, when after the audience with Francis he said: “The ceasefire and the freezing of the conflict will not lead to peace”. There was a cry of scandalalmost as if it were a crime of “injured Holiness” not by the church and the Catholic world, and the arrogance and arrogance of the belligerent stroller who has become a star pampered by the “war greats” has been denounced .
In addition to the strategic considerations regarding a temporary ceasefire, which without at least a partial withdrawal of the occupying forces would only mean an opportunity for the invaders to reorganize and strengthen in a moment of particular difficulty, we should ask ourselves what kind of peace we are talking about.
He has dwelt more than once on the inseparability of the relationship between peace and justice Vito Mancusoa theologian, who started again from Tacitus and the pax romana of which Putin’s seems like a Tajik caricature: “They steal, they massacre, they rob and, with a false name they call him empire, and where they make the desert, they say it is peace”. And the question – having before our eyes the effects of the “scorched earth” from Mariupol to Bakhmut, the annexation with deportations and martial law in the Donbass, the claim to dismember a sovereign state after having failed in its total submission – is if there is the will to create something that could resemble a “true peace”. And peace understood as “appeasement resulting from the imposition of force and crystallization of injustice” cannot be. (Vito Mancuso, The print, 16/1/2023).
While the Pope’s envoy was in conversation with Zelensky to at least try to “create an atmosphere of peace” and there was also talk of the “need to involve as many countries as possible, including the Global South, in the Global Peace Summit,” Putin’s missiles kept raining down on Kiev. And at the same time, people in the Kherson area were fleeing a flood of enormous proportions caused by the explosion inside the hydroelectric plant of Kakhovkacontrolled by Moscow, under the blows of the Russian artillery which did not stop firing. By the way, the Russian authorities who are railing against “the terrorists of Kiev” have filled the dam, one of the largest in Europe, up to its maximum capacity and the environmental damage is expected to be catastrophic.
From the few hours of his intense trip to Ukraine, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi obtained, in order to report them to the Pope, not only the results of the talks but also “direct experience of the atrocious suffering of the Ukrainian people due to the war”; material for sure useful for the steps to be taken “both on a humanitarian level and in the search for paths for a just and lasting peace”.
And it should be noted positively that even if in a diplomatic context, in the context of a mission that is as generous as it is impervious, Francis’ envoy has implicitly passed the Erasmus quote he used last February: “Better an unjust peace than a just war”. Who knows, perhaps even mindful of a concept expressed by the Second Vatican Council: “Peace is not the simple absence of war, nor can it be reduced to simply stabilizing the balance of conflicting forces, nor is it the effect of despotic domination, but is accurately defined as the ‘work of justice’.” (Vito Mancuso, ibidem).