.<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>May 14, 2023<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>ROME \u2013 When Pope Francis<\/strong> was elected in 2013, Italians initially made much of the fact that his father\u2019s family hailed from the northern Italian region of Piedmont. It quickly emerged, however, that on his mother\u2019s side his roots were in the northwestern region of Liguria centered on Genoa, the seaport from which the future pope\u2019s family set sail for Argentina in the early 20th century.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>It\u2019s remotely possible, therefore, that Pope Francis\u2019s maternal ancestors may have known the family of Giacomo della Chiesa<\/strong>, who became Pope Benedict XV<\/strong>, reigned from 1914 to 1922, and whose own roots were in Liguria. At a minimum, they would have been aware that a fellow Ligurian had made good.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>As it turns out, roots aren\u2019t the only thing Popes Benedict XV and Francis have in common.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Benedict XV<\/strong> led the Catholic Church during the First World War, a conflict he did everything in his power to stop. In August 1917 Benedict XV wrote the contending parties to define the war as an\u00a0inutile strage<\/em>, a \u201cuseless slaughter,\u201d and to propose a seven-point peace plan including a \u201csimultaneous and reciprocal reduction in armaments\u201d and a mechanism for \u201cinternational arbitration.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Famously, Benedict\u2019s efforts initially seemed a flop.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Both the United States and Germany rejected his initiative, with each side believing the pope was biased in favor of the other, and the war dragged on for another year and three months before an armistice was signed. So marginal did Benedict\u2019s position seem that after the war, the Vatican was excluded from the Paris Peace Conference.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>In the end, however, some of Benedict\u2019s original ideas were folded into U.S. President Woodrow Wilson<\/strong>\u2019s 14-point peace plan in January 1918. More broadly, the pontiff\u2019s efforts to end the war, as well as his support for greater European and international integration, came to seem prophetic and gradually led to an increase in international respect for the papacy and the Vatican\u2019s diplomatic role in global affairs.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Right now, Pope Francis may be dreaming of a similar sort of historical vindication, since his own peace-making efforts amid another great European conflict, this time in Ukraine, also don\u2019t seem to be going anywhere.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>This image made available by Vatican News shows Pope Francis <\/strong>meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/strong> during a private audience at the Vatican, Saturday, May 13, 2023. Francis recently said that the Vatican has launched a behind-the-scenes initiative to try to end the war launched last year by Russia.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>During a keenly anticipated visit yesterday to Rome that included a 40-minute encounter with Pope Francis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made it crystal clear that whatever secret peace plan the Vatican may be cooking up, he\u2019s not interested.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>In a tweet shortly after the meeting concluded, Zelensky said he\u2019d pressed Francis \u201cto condemn crimes in Ukraine. Because there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Speaking later during a special program on Italian television broadcast from Rome\u2019s famed \u201cAltar of the Fatherland\u201d in the Piazza Venezia, Zelensky flatly ruled out a mediating role for the pontiff or the Vatican.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u201cWith all due respect for His Holiness, we don\u2019t need a mediator between Ukraine and the aggressor that\u2019s seized and occupied our territory,\u201d Zelensky said.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u201cNo one can negotiate with Russia,\u201d Zelensky said. \u201cThere can be\u00a0no\u00a0mediators.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u201cThey took away citizenship from people in the occupied territories,\u201d he said, referring to Russian forces. \u201cThey forced them to go fight on the front. They tossed out all Ukrainian instruction. They prohibited the Ukrainian language. They forbade having a Ukrainian church. They brought abuses and evil.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u201cYou can\u2019t have mediation with Putin,\u201d Zelensky emphasized. \u201cWe know the consequences \u2026 it\u2019s not a question of the Vatican, or America, or Latin America, or China, or any country in the world. Putin only kills, you can\u2019t have a mediation with him.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The Ukrainian leader implied that if the Vatican wants to do something constructive, it should get on board with Ukraine\u2019s own peace plan.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u201cFor me, it was an honor to meet His Holiness,\u201d Zelensky said.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u201cHowever, he knows my position and the position of Ukraine. The war is in Ukraine, and therefore the plan [for peace] has to be Ukrainian. We\u2019ve proposed a plan, and we discussed it today. We\u2019re very interested in involving the Vatican and Italy in our formula for peace, for restoring the peace in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Headlines in the Italian press drew the obvious conclusion: \u201cZelensky rejects the pope\u2019s peace plan,\u201d reported\u00a0Il Giornale<\/em>, while\u00a0Il Fatto Quotidiano<\/em>\u00a0went with, \u201cZelensky freezes out the pope, wants to negotiate on his own\u201d and\u00a0Il Manifesto<\/em>\u00a0had, \u201cThe pope\u2019s plan isn\u2019t needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>To be clear, it\u2019s not as if Russia has gushed with enthusiasm over the idea of Pope Francis and the Vatican as a go-between either. Spokespersons for Putin have restricted themselves to saying they know nothing of any Vatican peace effort, leaving the broader question of whether they\u2019d be open to such an initiative hanging.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>In other words, like Benedict XV\u2019s peace plan in 1917, Francis\u2019s efforts to provide an exit strategy from the war in Ukraine seem dead on arrival.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>(As a footnote, lay Italian economist Stefano Zamagni<\/strong>, former president of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, said earlier this month that last September he drafted a seven-point peace place for Ukraine on behalf of Pope Francis<\/strong>, in what may have been an unconscious homage to Benedict XV<\/strong>\u2019s famous proposal a century earlier. Perhaps the lesson is that if popes want to float peace plans, they should avoid the number seven.)<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>For now, Francis may be compelled to limit his efforts to trying to mitigate the humanitarian consequences of the war. Yesterday, for example, Zelensky invited the pope to assist in efforts to return Ukrainian children who\u2019ve been deported by Russian forces.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>In much the same vein, Benedict XV<\/strong> failed to end the fighting during WWI but was able to blunt some of its excesses, such as ending the deportations of Belgians by German forces. Benedict also launched an office for prisoners in the Vatican which, by war\u2019s end, had processed more than 600,000 pieces of mail, including 170,000 requests for help in locating missing persons and 40,000 appeals for repatriation of prisoners who were sick.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>It remains to be seen whether, in the long run, Francis\u2019s broader efforts to continue his press for peace will play as well in the eyes of history as his predecessor.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Here\u2019s another thing that connects Francis, history\u2019s first pope from the developing world, with his Ligurian forerunner: In 1919 Benedict XV<\/strong>issued the apostolic letter\u00a0Maximum Illud<\/em>, the first missionary document issued personally by a pope, in which he called on Catholicism to look beyond the West, pointing especially to China, just as Francis a century later has promoted closer ties with Beijing as part of a broader global realignment of the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>For right now, Francis can perhaps at least take comfort that he\u2019s hardly the first pope whose efforts to make peace have been rebuffed \u2026 and, almost certainly, he won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>[End, piece by John Allen<\/strong> for Crux<\/em><\/strong><\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/div>