Pope Leo XIV may be a sports fan, but he doesn’t seem inclined to “spike the football” when it comes to diplomatic accomplishments.
In his Angelus address on Nov. 1, the final day of a humanitarian ceasefire in the Ukrainian city of Oleshky, the pope made no attempt to claim credit for the breakthrough he had called for.
Instead, he appealed for further steps to end a war that has raged since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and launched its war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“I hope that the cooperation between the parties, which made this necessary humanitarian act possible, will strengthen the desire for dialogue and lead to new concrete peace initiatives,” he said.
What’s the background to the Oleshky ceasefire? How did the pope contribute to it? And what does this suggest about the effectiveness of Holy See diplomacy?