Patrick Hudson
25 November 2025, The Tablet
President Zelenskyy made the request in a letter ahead of Pope Leo’s audience with a group of women and children returned from Russian captivity.
President of Ukraine
Cardinal Pietro Parolin said ‘the path to negotiation will be an uphill battle’ and urged that ‘Europe should participate and make its voice heard’ in discussions of the US peace plan.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked the Pope to formalise the Vatican’s role in negotiations for the return of children and civilians detained by Russia since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Zelenskyy made the request in a letter ahead of Pope Leo’s audience on 21 November with a group of women and children returned from Russian captivity. Iryna Vereshchuk, the deputy head of the president’s office who led the group, said they thanked the Pope “for understanding the depth of our wounds and hearing our pleas for help, as well as for his daily humanitarian efforts that enable Ukrainian families to reunite”.
During the visit, Vereshchuk presented the Ukrainian Order of Merit Second Class to the Archbishop of Bologna Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who has led the Vatican’s humanitarian mediation since Pope Francis appointed him as his peace envoy in May 2023. However, Vereshchuk said the Vatican needed to formalise this work “to achieve more”.
“Once the process is formalised we can have proper communications with the Russians, and when we submit a letter through the [Vatican] platform they will have to respond,” she said.
The group also attended a Mass said by the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, organised by the Ukrainian Embassy to the Holy See to commemorate the victims of the Holodomor famine of 1932-33. The cardinal condemned “attacks on electrical infrastructure” which are “forcing thousands of people to live in darkness and cold”.
“Every action that deprives the civilian population of the possibility of living in dignity is an offence against humanity and an outrage against God, who is light, life, and mercy,” he said. “We cannot remain indifferent to those who suffer from hunger, uncertainty, war, winter cold, imprisonment, and exile.”
Speaking after the Mass on the peace plan proposed by the US President Donald Trump last week, Parolin said “the path to negotiation will be an uphill battle” and urged that “Europe should participate and make its voice heard” in discussions.
He said it was “premature” to discuss territorial concessions which will be subject to negotiation, but “in the end a compromise will have to be made”. The Holy See will continue to contribute towards the exchange of prisoners and the return of children.
“We continue to work in this area, and it seems to me that the mechanism regarding the children has now been renewed,” Parolin said. “We are available to help in this area because we believe that, beyond caring for those who are suffering, it also creates conditions that will lead to peace.”
On Sunday, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Major Sviatoslav Shevchuk condemned a Russian strike on the western city of Ternopil which killed more than 20 civilians, including at least three children.
“This is no longer a war, no longer a confrontation between the military forces of two countries – this is deliberate mass murder of civilians,” he said. “Those three children whom the Russians killed in Ternopil, remind us of the 668 Ukrainian children who have died in the four years of this war.”
Ukrainian Catholic youth groups from the Archeparchy of Ternopil-Zboriv held prayer vigils at the sites of the strikes last week.
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