OSV News –Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych set Ukrainian hopes high for the Jubilee Year by saying that Pope Francis accepted an invitation to visit Ukraine in 2025.
In a Christmas interview for Radio Free Europe, Major Archbishop Shevchuk said that “there is no set time (for the visit) yet, but Pope Francis sometimes likes to make surprises.”
“He may announce his visit literally a month before deciding to go to Ukraine,” added the prelate, who is the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Vatican press office, asked for comment on the possible papal trip to the war-torn country by Catholic News Service Dec. 27, did not respond.
In his “urbi at orbi” message to the city of Rome and the world on Christmas Day, Pope Francis said: “May the sound of arms be silenced in war-torn Ukraine! May there be the boldness needed to open the door to negotiation and to gestures of dialogue and encounter, in order to achieve a just and lasting peace.”
“So, we enter this new year with hope,” Major Archbishop Shevchuk told Radio Free Europe. “With the hope that a just peace will eventually prevail in Ukraine.”
Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, apostolic nuncio to Ukraine, told OSV News in a message on Dec. 27 that “His Beatitude didn’t say that Pope Francis guaranteed that he will come to Ukraine.”
However, he said, “Of course I would be happy if Pope Francis will decide this way. We will see!”
Since the beginning of the full scale Russian invasion on Ukraine, which started Feb. 24, 2022, Pope Francis has prayed for Ukraine regularly and expressed the will to visit the country.
On April 2, 2022, he said he was considering a possible visit to the Ukrainian capital. But in late April 2022, he started talking more negatively about the idea. He told the Argentine newspaper La Nación April 21 that “I cannot do anything that puts higher objectives at risk, which are the end of the war, a truce or, at least, a humanitarian corridor.”
“What good would it do for the Pope to go to Kyiv if the war were to continue the next day?” Pope Francis said.
A year later, on March 11, 2023, the pontiff told La Nacion that he was willing to travel to Ukraine but only on the condition that he can also travel to Moscow. “I will go to both places or to neither,” he said in an interview.
The Pope regularly sends his envoys to Ukraine, but also to Moscow.
The Pope named Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna, Italy, and president of the Italian bishops’ conference, as his special envoy in June 2023.
Cardinal Zuppi began his peace mission with a visit to Ukraine in June 2023, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other high-level officials. A visit to Moscow followed at the end of the same month, with a meeting with Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, as well as government officials. In October, Cardinal Zuppi visited Moscow again.
The prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, spent Christmas in Ukraine, bringing a message of hope and support from Pope Francis. It was his ninth trip to Ukraine and a part of the Vatican’s humanitarian effort to bring supplies and humanitarian aid to the suffering nation.
CNS Rome contributed to this report.
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