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Vatican peace envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi returned to Ukraine this week for a four-day humanitarian mission.
Zuppi, the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, arrived in Lviv, western Ukraine, on the evening of July 13, before embarking on a hectic schedule of visits and meetings that ended July 16, with a drive from the capital, Kyiv, to an airport in Poland and a flight back to Rome.
Zuppi was continuing a peace mission entrusted to him by Pope Francis in May 2023. The Archbishop of Bologna formally took up the role with a June 5-6, 2023, visit to Ukraine, during which he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The trip was followed by flights to Moscow, Washington, D.C., and Beijing later in 2023, and a further visit to Moscow in 2024. But a return trip to Kyiv had to wait until this week.
Why did the Italian cardinal make a second journey to Ukraine? What happened over the four days? And what does the trip say about the current state of the Vatican’s peace mission?
Why now?
The Russo-Ukrainian war, which
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