Pope Francis Wants To Meet Russian President Vladimir Putin In Moscow Over Ukraine War

The pope has repeatedly called for peace in Ukraine and condemned a "cruel and senseless war" without naming Putin or Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Pope Francis (Source: File photo/AFP)

New Delhi: Pope Francis said in an interview published on Tuesday that he requested a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the ongoing situation in Ukraine in Moscow. 

The 85-year-old told Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that he had sent a message to Putin around 20 days into the conflict saying "that I was willing to go to Moscow".

"We have not yet received a response and we are still insisting, though I fear that Putin cannot, and does not, want to have this meeting at this time," he said as quoted by the news agency AFP.

The pope has repeatedly called for peace in Ukraine and condemned a "cruel and senseless war" without naming Putin or Moscow.

"I'm not going to Kyiv for now. I feel I shouldn't go. I have to go to Moscow first, I have to meet Putin first," he said.

Francis also said that Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a close aide of Putin, "cannot become Putin's altar boy". 

Dialogue with the Orthodox Church, which split from the Catholic Church in 1054, is the priority of the Pontifical of Francis.

But since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the pope's call for peace has contrasted with Kirill's defense of Putin's fight against Russia's "external and internal enemies".

Pope also compared the scale of the bloodshed in Ukraine to Rwanda's genocide.

Around 800,000 people were killed between April and July 1994 as the extremist Hutu regime tried to wipe out Rwanda's Tutsi minority in one of the largest genocide of the 20th century.

"But how is it possible to not stop such brutality? Twenty-five years ago, we lived through the same thing with Rwanda," he said.