ROME — Three days after the Vatican said Pope Leo has lung cancer, he telephoned Vladimir Putin from his hospital room at Gemelli to plead for the civilians of Oleshky, a Dnipro river town under Russian control.
Moscow and the Holy See each published an account of Friday’s call, and the two do not quite match. The Holy See Press Office said the pope voiced “deep concern about the grave humanitarian situation” in the town and “called for a ceasefire to allow the delivery of food and medical assistance,” along with the voluntary and safe evacuation of civilians. The Kremlin’s readout, posted at 18:35 Moscow time, never uses the word ceasefire.
What the readout does say is that Putin thanked the pope for “his willingness to contribute to resolving the conflict,” and that the pontiff received “a comprehensive explanation as to the Kiev regime’s responsibility” for conditions in what the Kremlin calls the Russian town of Aleshki. Moscow also backed the Vatican’s intention to help bring safety and “vital supplies” to residents, and “the two sides agreed to cooperate in this regard.” Both sides, it added, stressed an interest in dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Catholic churches.
The gap between the two texts is the story. A working channel between Moscow and the Holy See is open, and neither side has said what it will carry. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said the pope himself “took the initiative” and hoped Putin “will agree to do what the Pope has asked,” Vatican News reported.
The Secretariat of State of the Holy See confirmed the call on X minutes before the Kremlin posted its readout.
Nobody agrees on how many people are left. Parolin spoke of some 2,000 civilians who need routes out. Anadolu Agency, citing officials, put the figure near 1,700, against a pre-war population of 24,000. The Kyiv Independent repeated 2,000 without saying who counted. Ukraine’s ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said Kyiv had prepared an evacuation mission, that the International Committee of the Red Cross was ready to take part and that Ukrainian forces were ready to observe a ceasefire, but that Russia had not confirmed it would proceed, the Kyiv Independent reported.
The call extends a longer line of Vatican diplomacy toward Moscow. When Archbishop Paul Gallagher met Sergey Lavrov there on August 25, Vatican News reported no specific agreements, and the Kremlin’s readout of Friday’s call offers no date, route or escort for any supply run.
Whether the cooperation Moscow says was agreed means a convoy, a pause in the shooting or only a channel is what neither text says.
