VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Marking 1,000 days since the start of the bloody war in Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians dead and millions displaced, the Vatican on Wednesday (Nov. 20) welcomed Olena Zelenska, wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and renewed earlier appeals for peace.
In a half-hour private audience, Zelenska and the pope addressed the humanitarian aid offered by the Holy See to help reunite families that have been separated in the fighting and to promote a just mediation of the conflict.
“Every day and every night sirens and explosions echo in my country, Russia kills peaceful Ukrainians, our children,” Zelenska wrote in a post on X after the meeting.
Calling Francis’ role as a spiritual leader “extremely important,” she added, “I am grateful to His Holiness for his prayers for peace in Ukraine. I hope that the authority of the Holy See will help save more innocent victims who have the right to be secure in their homeland.”
The Ukrainian ambassador to the Holy See, Andrii Yurash, who attended the meeting, told journalists that it had been “very positive” and said that relations between the Vatican and Ukraine have never been stronger.
After the meeting, Francis, in his weekly general audience, reiterated the need for international cooperation to put an end to the war, which he described as “a shameful scourge for all of humanity” that faces the risk of escalation.
The pope also read a letter he had received from a Ukrainian university student commenting on the unfortunate anniversary of the war. “Father, if pain makes you suffer, it means that you love,” the letter read. “And so, when you speak of our pain, when you remember our thousand days of suffering, speak of our thousand days of love, too, because only love, faith, and hope give a real meaning to our wounds.”
Pope Francis greets the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Nov.20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Zelenska went from her meeting with the pope to the Vatican’s pediatric hospital in Rome, Bambino Gesù, which has welcomed more than 2,500 young victims of the Ukrainian war. Accompanied by the first ladies of Lithuania, Serbia and Armenia, Zelenska sat with 11 children from eight Ukrainian families and listened to their stories.
During her visit, the hospital announced plans to collaborate with hospitals in Ukrainian cities to train doctors on rehabilitation and care for young victims of war. “We won’t abandon them, because when there is suffering, where there is sickness — as the pope says — it’s inhuman to abandon the other,” said a spokesperson for the hospital.
Since Russian forces entered Ukraine in February 2022, Francis has made attempts to mediate the conflict, appointing Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian bishops’ conference, as a peace envoy in June 2023. The cardinal visited Moscow in October to promote the exchange of prisoners of war and discuss humanitarian aid.
Zuppi has experience in conflict resolution, having played a key role in the reconciliation process in Mozambique in the early 1990s, and is a close collaborator of the Catholic lay movement of St. Egidio, which has decades-long experience in peacemaking and assistance to refugees.
A special Mass at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, dedicated to the 1000th day of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian full-scale invasion. I am grateful to Matteo Zuppi, Pope Francis’ Special Representative for the Return of Children and Prisoners of War, for… pic.twitter.com/xCDreSpxXr
— Olena Zelenska / Олена Зеленська (@ZelenskaUA) November 20, 2024
After her hospital visit, Zelenska attended a Mass celebrated by Zuppi at the Church of St. Mary in Trastevere, a parish closely associated with St. Egidio. In his homily, the cardinal criticized the international community for failing to promote just and feasible solutions to the conflict and urged leaders to “do more and with more courage.”
“Remember, Europe was born to imagine peace, which was unthinkable among people who had fought for centuries,” Zuppi said. He asked how much longer the world will have to wait for the time of peace and underlined the pope’s commitment to engage on a path of dialogue, which he said is not synonymous with surrender.
Zuppi called for an end of hostilities, “not to lose, but to win through negotiation.” Speaking to reporters on the margins of the evening Mass, the cardinal said that “Pope Francis can offer a beautiful example of never surrendering to war and to do anything to achieve what can help and lead to peace.”