Joe Biden’s recent meeting with Pope Francis’s special envoy suggests that, 17 months into the war, the President recognizes the prospect of peace negotiations, with Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., other nations, and the Vatican all taking part.
four months later. Now, seventeen months into the war, the meeting with Zuppi suggests that, even as Biden the Commander-in-Chief stresses that themilitary alliance will stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” Biden the statesman recognizes the prospect of peace negotiations, with Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., other nations, and the Vatican all taking part.
The Pope, too, is trying to balance leadership and statecraft, and Zuppi’s mission represents a new phase in his response to the war. In the weeks after the invasion, Francisas the aggressor. Commentators said that he was acting in deference to papal precedent going back to the Second World War—when Pius XII did not name Germany as the aggressor —and in order to preserve an eventual role for the Vatican as something like a neutral mediator.
Since then, Francis has become increasingly forthright. Last May, expounding on wars taking place in various nations, he noted that the war in Ukraine has drawn more attention than others because it is “closer to us,” and he added, “A few years ago it occurred to me to say that we are living the Third World War piece by piece. For me, today, World War III has been declared. This is something that should give us pause for thought.
The Cardinal has a deep affinity with the Pope’s approach. A Roman, born in 1955, as a young man Zuppi took part in the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Rome-based Catholic N.G.O. founded in 1968 that now has a presence in seventy countries.
He had a key role in Sant’Egidio’s conflict-mediation efforts, which were long and complex. A 1992 accord for Mozambique was developed across eleven meetings, over twenty-seven months, involving the government, the resistance group, the governments of neighboring Zimbabwe and South Africa, and the United Nations.
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