U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday said the Vatican could serve as a venue for Russia-Ukraine peace talks, signaling openness to the Holy See’s long-standing offer after Pope Leo XIV pledged to make “every effort” to help end the war.
Speaking to reporters in Rome ahead of a meeting with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Vatican’s envoy on Ukraine, Rubio said the two would explore “possible ways the Vatican can assist, the current status of the talks, updates from Friday, and the road ahead.”
Asked if the Vatican could act as a peace broker, Rubio responded: “I wouldn’t call it a broker, but I do think it’s a place where both sides could feel comfortable meeting.”
“So we’ll talk about all of that, and obviously, we’re always grateful to the Vatican for its willingness to play this constructive and positive role,” he said at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
The Vatican has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality and had long offered its services to help facilitate talks, but found itself sidelined during the all-out war, which began Feb. 24, 2022.
Pope Francis, who often angered both sides with his comments, had entrusted Zuppi with a mandate to try to find paths to peace. But the mandate appeared to narrow to helping facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken by Russia, and the Holy See also helped mediate some prisoner exchanges.
Leo, who was elected history’s first American pope on May 8, took up Francis’ call for peace in Ukraine in his first Sunday noon blessing as pope. He appealed for all sides to do whatever possible to reach “an authentic, just and lasting peace.”
Leo, who as a bishop in Peru had called Russia’s war an “imperialist invasion,” vowed this week to “make every effort so that this peace may prevail.”
In a speech to Eastern Rite Catholics, including the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine, Leo urged the warring sides to meet and negotiate.
“The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve – the dignity of peace,” he said.
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, repeated the offer to serve as a venue for direct talks, saying the failure of negotiations in Istanbul to reach a cease-fire this week was “tragic.”
“We had hoped it could start a process – slow but positive – toward a peaceful solution to the conflict,” Parolin said on the sidelines of a conference. “But instead we’re back to the beginning.”
Asked what such an offer would entail, Parolin said the Vatican could serve as a venue for a direct meeting between the two sides.
“One would aim to arrive at this – that at least they talk. We’ll see what happens. It’s an offer of a place,” he said.
“We have always said, repeated to the two sides, that we are available to you, with all the discretion needed,” Parolin said.
The Vatican scored perhaps its greatest diplomatic achievement of the Francis pontificate in 2014, when it facilitated talks between the United States and Cuba that led to the resumption of diplomatic relations.
The Holy See has also hosted less secretive diplomatic initiatives, such as a 2019 meeting between rival leaders of South Sudan. That encounter was made famous by the image of Francis bending down to kiss their feet, pleading with them to make peace.
Perhaps the Holy See’s most critical diplomatic initiative came during the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of 1962, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered a secret deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba, later detected by U.S. spy planes.
As the Kennedy administration considered its response, with nuclear war looming, Pope John XXIII publicly pleaded for peace in a radio address and a speech to Vatican ambassadors. He also wrote privately to both President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev, appealing to their love for their people to stand down.
Many historians credit John XXIII’s appeals with helping both sides step back from the brink of nuclear war.
