What awaits Archbishop Gallagher in Russia?

The Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States is expected to embark next week on a highly sensitive foreign trip.

Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, often described as the Vatican’s “foreign minister,” is scheduled to travel to Russia Aug. 24-28, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

The planned trip is the English archbishop’s first to Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He is likely to find a country much changed since his last visit in November 2021.

Russia today is reeling from long-range Ukrainian drone strikes on its military infrastructure, energy facilities, and logistics hubs. The nation has suffered an estimated 1.4 million military casualties in Ukraine, an unprecedented array of sanctions, gas shortages, surging food costs, and a dramatic deterioration of commercial and diplomatic ties with much of the Western world.

The Trump administration’s initiatives to end the war continue, but there is no end in sight to the death and destruction. Many observers fear that Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War could rage for years to come.

The war, which pits two