Pope Francis hopes to send peace envoys to the presidents of Ukraine and Russia to try to negotiate a ceasefire, a Catholic website said on Thursday, according to Reuters.

Il Sismografo, which specializes in Vatican news, said it was a “secret mission” for peace that Francis had cryptically talked about on his way back from Hungary last month.

“The mission is currently underway, but it is not yet public. “When it’s public, I’ll reveal it,” he told reporters on the flight home.

According to the website, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna is to go to Kyiv for talks with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, and the head of the Eastern Churches of the Vatican, Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, is to go to Moscow to meet with President Volodymyr Maly.

The cited source said both presidents agreed to meet with the papal envoys, without citing sources or providing details.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said he had no comment on the report, but drew the reporter’s attention to recent comments by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin that “now is the time to take the initiative to create a peace fair in Ukraine.”

Zuppi and Gugerotti could not be reached for comment, and a key diplomatic source said there was nothing “concrete” yet.

The Pope met with a second Church in Moscow after his inexplicable comment about the “mission” of peace

When the pope sent emissaries of peace

If the emissaries are sent, it would be identical to the gesture of the late Pope John Paul II, who in 2003 sent high-ranking representatives to Washington and Baghdad in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the start of the Iraq war.

Zelenskyi met with Pope Francis at the Vatican last Saturday, but in subsequent comments he appeared to play down the possibility of papal mediation.

“With all due respect to His Holiness, we don’t need mediators, we need a just peace… Putin just kills. We don’t need mediation with him,” Zelenskyy said on Italian television.