CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (AP) — Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday and thanked him for the Vatican’s efforts to help return children taken by Russia. Both he and Leo suggested the Vatican could host peace talks to end the war.
Zelenskyy called on Leo at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo, in the Alban hills south of Rome. Zelenskyy is in Rome to attend the fourth Ukraine Recovery Conference, which is taking place Thursday and Friday.
The Vatican said Leo and Zelenskyy discussed the conflict “and the urgent need for a just and lasting peace.”
“The Holy Father expressed his sorrow for the victims and renewed his prayers and closeness to the Ukrainian people, encouraging every effort aimed at the release of prisoners and the search for shared solutions,” a Vatican statement said. “The Holy Father reiterated the willingness to welcome representatives of Russia and Ukraine to the Vatican for negotiations.
The United States had indicated the Vatican could host possible peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, but Moscow hasn’t accepted it.
Speaking to reporters as he left the pope’s villa, Zelenskyy said he thanked the American pope for the Vatican’s efforts to help reunite children taken by Russia after Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
‘Good for the whole town’
Pope Urban VIII built the papal palace in Castel Gandolfo in 1624 to give popes an escape from Rome. It was enlarged over succeeding pontificates to its present size of 55 hectares (136 acres), bigger than Vatican City itself. On the grounds are a working farm, manicured gardens, an observatory run by Jesuit astronomers and, more recently, an environmental educational center inspired by Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si (Praised Be).
Past popes used it regularly in summer, drawing huge crowds of pilgrims who would come on Sundays to hear his noon blessing, which was delivered inside the inner courtyard of the palace. Pope Benedict XVI famously closed out his papacy in the estate on Feb. 28, 2013. But Francis, a homebody who never took a proper vacation during his 12-year pontificate, decided to remain in Rome in summer.
The town suffered an initial economic hit from the decision. But then Francis turned the papal palace and gardens into a year-round museum, open to the public, giving the town a year-round tourist draw that ended up benefiting it even more, shopkeepers say.
“He made access to these structures possible, which no pope ever did in 400 years,” said Simone Mariani, who runs a restaurant in town that benefited from the steady flow of tourists much more than the summer-only Sunday crowds of the past. “He brought tourism that was good for the whole town.”
But that still didn’t make up for the abandonment felt by a town whose rhythms for generations revolved around regular papal visits
Whenever the pope would arrive, the palace doors would open, the Swiss Guards would stand at attention and the town would come to life, said Patrizia Gasperini, whose family runs a souvenir shop on the main piazza a few steps from the palace front door.
“All year, we’d miss the color, the movement, but we knew when summer came he would return,” she said. “So when Pope Francis decided not to come, we were upset on an emotional level, beyond the economic level.”
Draft important church documents
Since the palace has been turned into a museum, Leo will actually be staying in the Villa Barberini, a smaller residence on the estate grounds that used to be where the Vatican secretary of state would stay when the pope was in town.
Mayor Alberto De Angelis said he hopes Leo will decide to use Castel Gandolfo not just for summer breaks, but for periodic vacations during the rest of the year, as St. John Paul II often did.
There is also a tradition of popes using their time at Castel Gandolfo to draft important church documents and encyclicals, and De Angelis said he hopes Leo follows in that tradition
“We hope Pope Leo produces some text, some encyclical here that has a global reach,” he said. “And then he can say that it came from Castel Gandolfo, that he was inspired and produced this text from here for the whole world.”
By Associated Press
