LIVE Al Jazeera See this story on our app VIEW IN APP News|Russia-Ukraine war Pope says Vatican involved in Ukraine, Russia peace mission The pope’s comment comes hours after Moscow said its forces have advanced in the front-line city of Bakhmut. Pope Francis, 86, has said previously that he wants to visit Kyiv but also Moscow on a peace mission [Handout - Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media via Reuters] Published On 30 Apr 202330 Apr 2023 The Vatican is involved in a peace mission to try to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Pope Francis has said, declining to give further details. “I am willing to do everything that has to be done. There is a mission in course now but it is not yet public. When it is public, I will reveal it,” the pope told reporters on Sunday during a flight home after a three-day visit to Hungary. “I think that peace is always made by opening channels. You can never achieve peace through closure … This is not easy.” KEEP READING list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3 As Russia continues shelling, Pope Francis urges peace in Ukraine list 2 of 3 At least 25 killed in Russian air raids on Ukraine cities list 3 of 3 Ukraine has received 98% of promised combat vehicles: NATO chief end of list The pope added that he had spoken about the situation in Ukraine with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and with Metropolitan Hilarion, a bishop representing the Russian Orthodox Church in Budapest. “In these meetings, we did not just talk about Little Red Riding Hood. We spoke of all these things. Everyone is interested in the road to peace,” he said. (Al Jazeera) Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Pope Francis has pleaded for peace practically on a weekly basis, and has repeatedly expressed a wish to act as a broker between Kyiv and Moscow. His offer has so far failed to produce any breakthrough. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal met the pope at the Vatican on Thursday and said he had discussed a “peace formula” put forward by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He said he had also invited the pontiff to visit Kyiv. Pope Francis, 86, has said previously that he wants to visit Kyiv but also Moscow on a peace mission. Four more quarters in Bakhmut The pope’s announcement comes hours after Moscow claimed that its forces took control of four more urban quarters in the front-line Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. The Russian Defence Ministry said units of its Airborne Forces pinned down Ukrainian forces in the northern and southern outskirts of the city. Ukraine did not immediately respond to the claims. Russian forces have been trying for months to capture Bakhmut, a transport and logistics hub in Ukraine’s Donetsk province, which is part of the largely Russian-speaking industrialised Donbas region. Tens of thousands have been killed, millions uprooted and whole cities have been flattened during the war in Ukraine. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al...tican-involve-in-ukraine-russia-peace-mission
I just read that. It was very powerful. And so sad. I can't help thinking of my own father's death in hospital. It was very similar. Tho we didn't know to say so many focused prayers. We did say the rosary, the chaplet and the last rites were done by a priest.. When my father entered hospital covid was at its height. They made all 7 stone of him wait in a crowded A&E. They tested him for covid. He was negative and he waited on a bed to become available in a 'normal' ward. My brother waited with him. A couple of hours later he was again (as he continued to wait, and was very weak from battling cancer for 5 and a half years; a full 5 years after they said he would die, for at diagnosis; they gave him just 6 months to live). Anyways, he was 'negative' again at the second time of testing. At 3am they told my brother to go home. They had a bed for me da. He left. At 3:30am as my brother was driving home he received a phone call from the hospital saying they had undertaken a 3rd covid test - which they hadn't mentioned nor spoke of doing; apparently it had come back positive. And they were admitting him to the covid ward. We were allowed onto the covid ward to stand vigil in the ensuing days, because during a previous "wave" the government had stopped people from seeing their dying parents. And the backlash had been uncomfortable for the government. They told us my father wouldn't last the night a couple of times. They didn't know my da. He fought and fought. My father died over a week after they said he would. I didn't understand it at the time but they starved him to death. He was very likely also dying of thirst. Just as this fellas mother was. I don't know if he died of the jabs - for he took all of them. Or of the care they deliberately 'provided' or of the starvation and thirst they inflicted. All I know is that we were all there. And heaven is (or soon will be after his purgatory) a better place. He and my mum fostered over 60 children. Very, very few were short term. They lived it as a vocation. They took 4 kids on holiday one summer to Spain and they in their 60s at the time. Four! Others they persevered with for years and years. They still have a 20 something year old who lives in our house with me ma. She came there as a baby. She's in her final year of her nursing degree now. Some kids actually physically hit them. Verbally assualted them. And I always complained that they should stop fostering. They never did. My father was like st Joseph. As well as the 20-something year old, my mother, now in her mid-70s, has a pre-teen, fostered. Saint. My parents are living saints. One just lives in Ireland and the other in purgatory /or heaven. The world hates saints. But God loves them.
A lovely thing to write. I know that as Catholics we have a duty to pray for Our Holy Father the Pope, who is our Spiritual Father. I remember him everyday in the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross. But I pray for him, personally, rather than for his intentions. I would feel very,very uneasy praying for his intentions. I love what Mother Teresa said and find it is most especially true for the Holy Father.
I am very moved by this. What courageous charity your parents had. And what a terrible thing to be deprived of food and water. Your da may well have done his purgatory here before God took him.
There have been terrible attacks by the Ukranian army on the Orthodox church in Ukraine that the Vatican and pope have ignored. In the video below, Larry Johnson, an ex-CIA guy, tells Judge Napolitano that the chances there is really peace being negotiated is very low because of this failure to address what he calls 'Satanic' attacks on the Orthodox believers in Ukraine.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Internat...an-orthodox-envoy-amid-peace-mission-99036219 Pope Francis needs our prayers. He is surrounded by sin. Let us surround him by prayer.
Yes, the pope could become a great champion of the Ukranian Orthodox Christians who are being persecuted and ultimately that might help facilitate a reunification of our religions. Wouldn't that be awesome?! I'm just pointing out something that seems to be overlooked, the right to freely worship God without persecution, that must be addressed to achieve true peace. Isn't it best to pray for specific problems especially those which the Catholic Church is in the best moral position to address?
https://twitter.com/EWTNVatican/status/1656694408450916352 Does this clear the way for the canonization of non-Catholic "saints"?
I wonder if it could have been from the Russians. Whatever we may think about Pope Francis I sm sure it was important, he is not a nut job, whatever else the man is. When the Pope heads to Moscow we will kbowvwr are in the Ebd Game. But ZI still think it is nearly two years away yet.
I found it very strange that the call lasted just over a minute; maybe someone is pressuring the pope to fulfill something pre-established in the church in the October synod.
G Goodness knows. I am trying hard to think the best of him. But I have long since discovered that the less I think of him the happier I am .
I thought the Pope’s words in the following article provided a good defence of Humanae Vitae, showing how it protects women’s health and promotes the only sexual relations acceptable to Catholic lives: that which recognizes two genders only, is heterosexual and within marriage. https://catholicherald.co.uk/pope-francis-upholds-catholic-ban-on-contraception/
