Cardinal Matteo Zuppi returned to Moscow Monday, 15 months after his first visit to Russia as the Vatican’s peace envoy.
What is the Italian cardinal doing back in Russia? How is this trip different from his last, in June 2023?
And will Zuppi also head to Kyiv, Washington, and Beijing, as he did last year?
The Pillar takes a look.
Why is Zuppi in Moscow?
The Holy See press office issued a brief statement Oct. 14 confirming that Zuppi had arrived in Moscow.
It explained the trip was taking place “in the framework of the mission entrusted to [Zuppi] by Pope Francis last year, to meet with the authorities and assess further efforts to facilitate the family reunification of Ukrainian children and the exchange of prisoners, with a view to achieving the much hoped-for peace.”
The statement contained three important points:
1) The Italian bishops’ conference president, who is close to the Community of Sant’Egidio, is visiting Moscow in his capacity as Vatican peace envoy, a role he has played since May 2023.
2) The mission has two prongs. The first is helping the almost 20,000 Ukrainian children forcibly relocated to Russia to return to their families. The second is promoting exchanges of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war. The “Zuppi mission” has had some success on both fronts, though it’s difficult to quantify given the fog of war.
3) The Holy See hopes that humanitarian agreements will be a prelude to peace talks.
Zuppi’s trip follows a flurry of significant events involving the Vatican, Ukraine, and Russia:
June 15-16: The Holy See attended the high-level summit on peace for Ukraine in Switzerland.
June 28: The Redemptorist priests Fr. Ivan Levytsky and Fr. Bohdan Geleta, arrested in Russian-occupied Ukraine in November 2022, were released with the Vatican’s help.
July 11: Olena Kondratiuk, the vice-president of the Ukrainian parliament, announced she had met with Cardinal Zuppi, thanking him for his “great efforts” concerning “the exchange of prisoners of war and the return of deported Ukrainian children.”
July 19-24: The Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin visited Ukraine, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Aug. 14: Cardinal Zuppi had a “cordial” phone conversation with Li Hui, China’s Special Representative on Eurasian Affairs.
Sept. 16: Cardinal Parolin spoke via video call with Russia’s human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova, discussing “assistance for Ukrainian soldiers held prisoner in the Russian Federation, and the reciprocal exchange of soldiers detained in Russia and Ukraine.”
Oct. 11: President Zelenskyy visited Pope Francis at the Vatican. According to his office, “he asked the pontiff to assist in the return of Ukrainian journalists, public figures, community leaders from occupied territories, and all others held captive.” It was agreed that Ukraine would provide a list of imprisoned journalists.
This timeline, which only includes publicly known events, suggests the Holy See has been working relentlessly in recent months to advance its two-pronged mission.
Zuppi’s return to Russia implies that discussions on POWs and deported children have advanced to the point where face-to-face talks are necessary to achieve further progress.
But that is simply a deduction: The Vatican has only spoken about the trip’s purpose in generalities.
What’s different this time?
Zuppi’s trip began with an Oct. 14 meeting with Russia’s long-serving foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
That, in itself, marked a notable difference from the Archbishop of Bologna’s first visit. When Zuppi visited Moscow in June 2023, the most senior foreign affairs official he met was Yuri Ushakov, Aide to the President of Russia for Foreign Policy.
The Vatican will likely be pleased that Zuppi secured an immediate meeting with Lavrov, arguably the most recognizable Kremlin figure after President Vladimir Putin. It suggests the Holy See’s humanitarian efforts are being taken seriously by the Russian government.
Yet the Holy See may be disappointed that, unlike in June 2023, Zuppi could not meet with Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill this time. A senior priest told the Russian state news agency TASS that “Patriarch Kirill’s busy work schedule does not include a new meeting with Cardinal Zuppi.”
The cardinal met instead with Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations.
Yet Metropolitan Anthony, who succeeded Metropolitan Hilarion in the post in 2022, is still influential as he’s the Russian Orthodox Church’s equivalent of a foreign minister. A Moscow Patriarchate press release underlined that Metropolitan Anthony welcomed Zuppi on behalf of Patriarch Kirill during the Oct. 15 meeting.
Also on Oct. 15, Zuppi spoke with Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, as he did during his 2023 visit.
Their first meeting was deeply controversial in Ukraine, because the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova in March 2023, holding her “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Yet the 2023 meeting with Lvova-Belova is said to have helped the Vatican to establish a mechanism for the returning children to Ukraine.
According to Avvenire, Zuppi’s outreach led to an “online” summit between Lvova-Belova and her Ukrainian counterpart, which the Italian bishops’ newspaper described as “one of the very rare cases of direct contact between the parties.”
But details of the summit are murky. Although Lvova-Belova said in April that “for the first time in a face-to-face format, we held talks with the Ukrainian side,” Ukraine’s ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets appeared to cast doubt on the claim.
Zuppi’s second meeting with Lvova-Belova was likely aimed at consolidating the mechanism for returning child deportees.
After the meeting, Lvova-Belova — whose husband is a Russian Orthodox priest — said: “We agreed to continue cooperation in the interests of families and children.”
While the statement didn’t reveal much, it suggests the meeting went reasonably well.
What’s next?
Zuppi’s 2023 visit to Moscow was just one stop on a worldwide peace tour. The cardinal’s globetrotting began in Kyiv, followed by Moscow, Washington, and Beijing.
That Zuppi traveled first to Moscow this time suggests he’s not simply retracing his steps and the Vatican sees Russia as the right place to focus its diplomatic efforts at this point.
But this is uncertain as the Vatican shares very little advance information about its peace envoy’s travel schedule. It tends to make announcements only after Zuppi has arrived in a foreign capital. So even if the cardinal is heading to Ukraine next, we probably won’t hear about it until he’s tucking into a plate of varenyky in a Kyiv cafe.
In any case, a second trip to Washington might be difficult before the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election. The Vatican would likely prefer to wait to see who emerges as the victor and what that portends for the Ukraine war.
The Vatican might also not regard another trip to China as a priority given Zuppi’s August phone call with the country’s Special Representative on Eurasian Affairs. But again, we don’t know.
What is certain is that Ukraine hopes the Vatican will attend an Oct. 30-31 ministerial conference in Canada on the return of Ukrainian POWs, and deported civilians and children.
We know this because Zelenskyy’s office said the Ukrainian president had invited Pope Francis to send a representative to the event. The Vatican doesn’t appear to have responded publicly to the invitation so far.
Meanwhile, the possibility of a papal visit to Kyiv and Moscow hovers in the background. Whenever Pope Francis has spoken of such a trip, he has stressed it’s conditional on him visiting both capitals and making a tangible contribution to peace. We don’t seem to have reached that stage yet.
But in the coming months, we should look out for further exchanges of POWs and deportees. Although the Vatican’s role in such events is seldom highlighted, the Holy See shows no sign of slackening in its efforts to achieve an elusive humanitarian breakthrough.
