Pope Francis has said he is ready to go to Ukraine, which Russia is attacking, but only if he can also go to Moscow, DPA and Agerpres reported.

“I will go to both places or neither,” the head of the Catholic Church said in an interview published in Saturday’s edition of the Argentine newspaper La Nacion.

He also noted that the war in Ukraine can be ended only through dialogue and concrete peace initiatives.

At the age of 86, the Pope was already thinking about a trip to the two countries last summer. And then he said that he would like to visit both Kyiv and Moscow.

The Vatican has long sought to play a mediating role in the conflict. In this context, he spoke to La Nacion about “the desire to serve peace”.

In an interview, Francis told how, the day after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he asked Russian leaders if he could go to Moscow. According to him, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Serhiy Lavrov politely refused.

The sovereign pontiff reiterated his concern about war: “War hurts me, that’s what I want to say. The war hurts me.”

In his public speeches and audiences, he regularly talks about the suffering of Ukrainians. However, for diplomatic reasons, he does not mention Russia.

These days, Pope Francis gave several interviews on the occasion of the end of his ten-year pontificate on March 13.

___

• Follow the latest events of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HotNews.ro

​