Macron Urges Pope To Get Biden & Putin To Dialogue On Ukraine

French President Emmanuel Macron revealed in an interview with Le Point that he urged Pope Francis in a meeting at the Vatican to attempt to arrange direct dialogue between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in an effort to make peace in Ukraine. 

The interview was published the day after Macron met with the Pope at the Vatican Monday. “I encouraged Pope Francis to call Vladimir Putin and [head of the Russian Orthodox Church] Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, but also Joe Biden,” Macron began.

“We need the United States to sit at the table to promote the peace process in Ukraine,” Macron continued. “Joe Biden has a real relationship of trust with the Pope. The Pope can have an influence on him for American re-engagement in Haiti and Ukraine.” Biden is the second sitting US president in history who is Roman Catholic, with the first being John F. Kennedy.

Oct. 24 meeting, Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty

On Tuesday in addressing a peace conference hosted at the Vatican, Francis compared the current conflict in Ukraine and nuclear-armed super powers lined up on either side of it to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 60 years ago:

In his address to several thousand people, delivered after various religious groups prayed separately, Francis decried today’s “bleak scenario, where, sad to say, the plans of potent world leaders make no allowance for the just aspirations of peoples”.

Referring to the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Francis said: “Today, in fact, something we dreaded and hoped never to hear of again is threatened outright: the use of atomic weapons, which even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki continued wrongly to be produced and tested.”

France’s Macron has remained among the few world leaders to directly engage Putin, having held a series of phone calls with the Russian president throughout the invasion, as part of efforts to find a diplomatic way forward toward ending the war. 

As for Macron’s suggestion to the Pope to get both sides to the table in direct dialogue, the Kremlin responded positively to the possibility, with Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying Macron’s goal appears genuinely “aimed at finding a possible resolution” to the Ukraine crisis, according to state-backed media.

“That said, the remarks said nothing about anyone calling President Zelensky and settling the issue of the legal system, which currently forbids any talks with Russia,” he added. Zelensky previously stated he would not engaged Moscow in ceasefire talks so long as Putin remains president, something he said has been codified into Ukrainian law.