Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, CEI), once again urged to discuss the search for peaceful solutions in Ukraine.
Zuppi, Pope Francis’s special envoy for peaceful solutions, in recent weeks has first visited Ukraine, then Russia, and finally the USA. The next trip of the Special Envoy of the Holy See will be to China, where Zuppi will seek additional support to resolve the conflict and to elaborate on what is currently only hope.
The European Union is “doing too little, it should be doing much more. The EU should strive in every way to help peace initiatives, following the call of Pope Francis to look for a creative approach to a peaceful settlement,” Zuppi stressed in an interview published today on the website Ilsussidiario.net.
“Everyone wants peace because war is terrible,” the archbishop of Bologna declared again. “Unfortunately, the arguments of both sides reflect completely opposite views. These differences should not make us lose a clear understanding of the responsibility borne by the attacker and the one who is attacked. We must believe that there is a way to achieve a just and secure world not through weapons but through dialogue. This will never be a defeat for one of the parties, but it will require guarantees and responsibility from all.”
Today Zuppi will celebrate a mass at the opening of the 44th “Meeting of Friendship between Peoples,” and in the afternoon he will return to discussing the topic of peace in Ukraine during a round table titled “We are all brothers. Testimony of friendship following the footsteps of Pope Francis.”