Has Trump hardened Francis’ line on Ukraine?

The pope's rhetoric on the war in Ukraine has sharpened as the new president has made his own controversial push for peace

Even as he continues his prolonged stay in hospital in Rome, Pope Francis remains seemingly at work when it comes to global affairs.

Pope Francis meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Vatican City in 2023. Image via Vatican media.

His Sunday Angelus message thanked people praying for his health and recovery, before getting on to the business of world peace — with Francis offering a surprisingly sharp tone on Ukraine.

“Tomorrow marks the third anniversary of the full-scale war against Ukraine: a painful and shameful occasion for all of humanity!” said the pope.

“As I renew my solidarity with the martyred Ukrainian people," the pope said, “I invite you to remember the victims of all armed conflicts and to pray for the gift of peace.”

While Sunday was not the first time Francis has referred to the “martyrdom” of Ukraine, his words were an uncharacteristically blunt assessment of the conflict ahead of the third anniversary of the Russian invasion.

From a pope known to have advocated peace above all in the conflict — often at the cost of criticism for appearing too studied in his pronouncements — Francis’ Angelus message will strike some observers as an obvious — albeit thinly veiled — reaction to the ongoing effort by the White House to force terms on Moscow and Kyiv.

And, with private peace initiatives still under way, Francis’ stark characterization of the “shameful” situation in Ukraine may point to long-standing Vatican priorities for the conflict’s resolution going unheeded by Washington, and to papal impatience with the new U.S. administration.

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President Donald Trump has incurred in recent days international condemnation over comments widely seen as pandering to Vladimir Putin — calling the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and castigating him, not only for failing to end the war against his country, but even for “starting it” in the first place.

Defenders of Trump’s inflammatory tone and factual inaccuracies have sought to couch the president’s rhetoric as an ugly kind of diplomatic realpolitik — that publicly running down the Ukrainian leadership is the best way to tempt Moscow to the negotiating table and clearing setting up Zelenskyy to offer up real concessions, both to Ukraine’s the invaders and erstwhile allies in the United States.

Distasteful as it may be, so their theory goes, peace at any price is an ugly business.

In the context of a fast-moving diplomatic process, it would be understandable if Pope Francis wanted to stake a moral claim on the side of Ukraine, perhaps especially in contrast to a White House he has already criticized directly on other issues.

But those who have followed the pope’s statement on the war in Ukraine over the last three years would likely also note that, prior to recent developments, it was actually Francis’ Vatican which was often seen as being too loose or accommodating to Russia in its rhetoric.

Clashes of personality to one side, while Francis’ calls for peace have often come in for similar criticism to Trump’s recent remarks, the pope has actually staked out a very different set of priorities for ending the war, and that as much anything else may be the reason for Sunday’s statement.

While Pope Francis and his Vatican have never gone so far as branding Zelenskyy a dictator or blaming Ukraine for starting the war, it is true to say they have previously been outliers among Western diplomatic powers, and themselves been the subject of some of the same criticism now leveled Washington’s way.

In the early days of the war, the Vatican was heavily criticized by Ukrainians — including Catholics — for practicing a “strange kind of ecumenism” when Russian and Ukrainian women living in Italy were invited to participate in the Good Friday Way of the Cross celebrated by Pope Francis — with both women holding aloft the cross at the 13th Station of the Cross.

Also in 2022, Francis also came under fire for allegedly repeating Russian talking points when he appeared to suggest that NATO expansion was a real, if not necessarily legitimate, cause for the Russian invasion.

After those comments, Francis appeared to steer a kind of rhetorical course correction, often invoking the image of “martyred Ukraine” while continuing to call for peace — including in controversial terms.

As recently as last year, Francis caused a minor storm by calling for the Ukrainian leaders to embrace “the courage of the white flag, to negotiate,” and “not be ashamed to negotiate before things get worse.”

Behind the public statements, though, Francis has remained eager that his Vatican play an active role in the mechanics of peace, not just calling for it. In 2023 the pope proclaimed himself “available to do anything” to advance the cause of peace.

“There’s a mission that’s not public that’s underway; when it’s public I’ll talk about it,” he said at the time.

While both Ukraine and Russia were quick to deny knowledge of any such private papal initiative, Francis subsequently announced Cardinal Matteo Zuppi as his personal peace envoy, with the Italian prelate making trips to Washington and Beijing in between his visits to Moscow and Kyiv in a bid to broker some kind of peaceful progress.

While that mission has at times appeared to stall, Zuppi’s efforts can be said to have yielded at least some results — some of them significant.

Arguably, the most important facet of Zuppi’s peace mission has been to continually highlight the issue of the almost 20,000 Ukrainian children forcibly relocated to Russia by invading forces and campaign for their return to their families.

Though small groups of Ukrainian children have been reunited with their families in recent months, there does not appear to have been any major breakthrough on this issue.

During a visit to Russia last year, the cardinal met for a second time with Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova on the subject of the abducted children. Their first meeting was deeply controversial in Ukraine, because the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova in March 2023, holding her “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Yet the 2023 meeting with Lvova-Belova is said to have helped the Vatican to establish a mechanism for the returning children to Ukraine.

That outreach led to an “online” summit between Lvova-Belova and her Ukrainian counterpart, which the Italian bishops’ newspaper described as “one of the very rare cases of direct contact between the parties.”

Whether further measurable progress can be achieved on a wider scale remains to be seen — though it is worth noting that the issue of the tens of thousands of missing children has not appeared in many — if any — official talking points coming out of Washington around Trump’s peace plan agenda, which has focused more on Ukrainian territorial and mineral concessions.

Prior to his hospitalization, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis intended to visit Ukraine this year, though no firm plans were yet in place.

While the Ukrainians have been asking the pope to come to Kyiv since before the Russian invasion even began, the pope had previously declined, with the received wisdom around Rome suggesting he was waiting to be able to coordinate a trip to Moscow as well.

Last year, though, the Vatican had to pour cold water on the suggestion by the Russian ambassador that Francis had accepted an invitation to visit Putin.

The announcement of tentative plans to go to Ukraine appeared to many to signal Francis was ready to move, perhaps leveraging a trip to the invaded country to win progress further from Moscow for Zuppi’s mission.

If that was the plan, Francis’ long hospitalization may have added a new sense of urgency to the pope’s public stance — as formulated in Sunday’s Angelus address — and left Francis worried he is missing his window to influence the peace process.