On his way back to Rome after a three-day visit to Hungary in late April, Pope Francis revealed that the Vatican was involved in a secret operation to end the war in Ukraine. “There is a mission in course, but it is not yet public,” the Pope told reporters on the plane. Ukraine and Russia claimed they had no knowledge of such an initiative, which led the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to confirm that a plan existed but had yet to be acted upon.   

The messy episode highlighted the Catholic Church’s dwindling influence in the war in Ukraine. Since February 2022, the Vatican has steered clear of condemning Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a stance similar to the positions of Brazil and China. After a meeting with the Pope in May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “any peace proposal must originate from Kyiv, not from the Vatican, China or elsewhere.” 

The Vatican’s limited role as a mediator in the conflict reflects the Pope’s geographical priorities. Pope Francis named 21 new cardinals last week from Argentina, Colombia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Malaysia. The Pope also promoted Monsignor Claudio Gugerotti, who served as a papal ambassador to Ukraine and Belarus, which could be seen as a nod to the challenges of the war. The headline promotions, however, were bishops based in Hong Kong and Israel, where the Catholic community is small.

While previous pontiffs, such as John Paul II, threw their support behind Western powers in times of crisis, John L. Allen Jr., a journalist with the Catholic news website Crux, has written that the changing demographics of the Catholic Church mean that the concerns of Europeans and North Americans are becoming less pressing on the Vatican’s agenda. The majority of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics live in Latin America, with the African continent seeing the biggest increase in Catholic congregations. And the Pope “gives great importance to relations with other continents such as Asia,” said Massimiliano Valente, an associate professor of contemporary history at the European University of Rome.