One cannot mediate a “dispute” over one of the parties’ very existence.
The online news service Aleteia (28 July 2025) reports that on Saturday 26 July, Pope Leo XIV met with Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of External Church Relations. It was the newly (8 May 2025) elected pope’s first official meeting with a representative of the ROC-MP.
No details of the meeting have been released. Aleteia speculates, however, that the pope may have mentioned his willingness to host Russian-Ukrainian negotiations at the Vatican. He had reportedly made such an offer during his 9 July meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Castel Gandolfo. Russian foreign minister Lavrov, however, dismissed such a possibility as “unrealistic.”
There have been several meetings between representatives of the ROC-MP and the Holy See in recent years. Most notably, on 12 February 2016, Pope Francis met in Havana with Patriarch Kirill. A second meeting, which was to take place in Jerusalem, was cancelled in the wake of the intensification of Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2022.
Metropolitan Anthony (Sevryuk), born in 1984, is familiar with Western Europe, having served as a monastic priest in Rome in 2011, as bishop in Vienna in 2017-2019, and as Patriarchal Exarch in Western Europe in 2019-2022. His experience living in a Catholic milieu, and his doctoral dissertation on world religions, testify to the breadth of his interests. These would seem to have qualified him for his position as successor to Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) at the head of the ROC-MP Department of External Church Relations from June 2022. He met with the late Pope Francis, and visited the Vatican several times.
Nevertheless, the Metropolitan does not seem enthusiastic about a Vatican role as Russian-Ukrainian mediator. Aleteiaquotes an interview with La Repubblica published on 24 July — just two days before his meeting with Pope Leo — in which Metropolitan Anthony mentioned that he wished to discuss Russian Orthodox relations with the Roman Catholic Church, and Christian cooperation “in a rapidly secularizing world.” As for a meeting between Pope and Patriarch – like the one that the Holy See cancelled in 2022 because of Russia’s intensified war against Ukraine – he stated that “we remain available to examine any new proposal on its part.” A mediator, he cautioned, should be neutral, in order to maintain a balanced dialogue. He expressed uncertainty as to whether the Holy See could qualify.
Metropolitan Anthony’s skepticism as to the prospects of Vatican mediation in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is justified, though not for the reasons he provides. Mediation, after all, is a process in which the mediator consults separately and repeatedly with each side, trying to bring their positions closer until an agreement is reached. Among the prerequisites for a successful mediation are both parties’ (1) recognition of each other as legitimate entities, and (2) negotiation in good faith, as well as (3) the existence of a clearly defined dispute. In this case, Russia has made it clear that it does not recognize the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state, its government, or even its people. It does not negotiate in good faith, as its stated goal is not a peace agreement with Ukraine but its destruction. And finally, there is not in fact any coherent dispute, for issues of borders and alliances are subordinate to the question of whether Ukraine should even exist. One cannot mediate a “dispute” over one of the parties’ very existence.
Thus, Metropolitan Anthony would have been right to limit his discussions with the pope to general ecumenical relations, and to cooperation in the struggle against secularization. In fact, for the ROC-MP that struggle would best begin at home. For one of the surest signs of secularization is the conversion of a Church into a political arm of the state.