On Sunday, following his first Sunday mass as chief of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who marked the event with a present: A picture of the Madonna and baby painted on a wooden panel from an artillery crate used on the frontlines of its warfare in opposition to Russia.
“For a lot of peoples, the picture of a mom with a toddler is a logo of life that have to be protected. As we speak, we offered Pope Leo XIV with a particular icon—The Mom of God with the Toddler, painted on a fraction of a field from heavy artillery weapons,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “It’s about our youngsters. About those that suffered from the warfare, whom Russia intentionally kidnapped and deported, and whom they’re very a lot ready for at dwelling, in Ukraine.”
Three years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 2 nations seem no nearer to a ceasefire. This week, following a telephone name between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladmir Putin, Trump introduced that his administration wouldn’t strain Russia to name a direct finish to the warring, which has, as of March 2025, claimed the lives of at the least 150,000 Ukrainians and roughly 100,000 Russian troopers, in accordance with figures revealed by Kyiv and the United Nations. In accordance with the Washington Post, Trump stated that Zelenskyy and Putin ought to deal with negotiations themselves, in a political rebuke to Ukraine’s allies within the European Union, a few of whom have referred to as on the Trump administration to sanction Russia.
In his first Sunday handle, Pope Leo referred to as for an “genuine, simply and lasting peace” in Ukraine. The Supreme Pontiff has reportedly supplied to host dealer peace talks between Russia and Ukraine on the Vatican. “The Holy See is at all times prepared to assist carry enemies collectively, head to head, to speak to 1 one other,” he stated, as quoted by the New York Times.
Earlier this month, the European Union (EU) issued a brand new spherical of sanctions in opposition to Russia and, in a primary, included on the listing a museum—the Tauric Chersonese State Museum-Protect, on the outskirts of town of Sevastopol in Crimea. Its museum director, Elena Morozova, has additionally been sanctioned.
“Because the annexation of Crimea, the museum has actively undermined Ukrainian cultural heritage by selling pro-Russian narratives concerning the cultural significance of the artifacts and excavation websites it administers,” the EU acknowledged within the sanctions doc. “Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the museum has used its platform to advertise the invasion and the actors perpetrating it, together with organizing deliveries of provides to the frontlines.”
Final yr, Ukrainian cultural officers accused Russia of reworking Tauric Chersonese, an historical metropolis based by Greeks within the fifth century BCE and a UNESCO World Heritage Web site since 2013, right into a “historic and archaeological park.” The positioning features a Russian Orthodox monastery and a number of other establishments, together with a Museum of Christianity and the Museum of Crimea and Novorossiya (the Russian time period for the annexed territories in Crimea).
Ukraine has an overwhelmingly Japanese Orthodox inhabitants, with some 70% figuring out with the Orthodox Christian Church, which is a separate entity from the Catholic Church and isn’t beholden to its management. In 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church break up from the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church, a transfer fueled by millennia-old disagreements over canonical legislation and trendy geopolitical tensions associated to the annexation of Crimea.
In his assertion, Zelenskyy thanked Pope Leo and the Catholic Church “for its willingness to function a platform for direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia,” and shared these hopes “for dialogue in any format that results in actual outcomes.”
