ROME, May 3. /TASS/. The Italian government does not have any specific information on the Vatican’s "peace mission" mentioned earlier by Pope Francis, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Wednesday.
"The ‘peace mission’ was announced by Pope Francis, they should announce what they are doing on their own," he told the Rai 3 TV channel. "It is still not clear what kind of interaction there is between the Vatican’s diplomacy and Russian and Ukrainian diplomacy. We, as the Italian government, do not have concrete information but it was known that the Vatican was also working on this aspect (a peace settlement in Ukraine - TASS), the top Italian diplomat explained adding that he considered "any initiative for the sake of peace as positive."
On April 30, talking to journalists onboard a plane returning to Rome from Budapest, the pontiff said that the Vatican was part of a "peace mission" to end the war in Ukraine. According to him, this mission "is not yet public" and more will be revealed about it later. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow was unaware of the operations of the Vatican’s "peace mission" on settling the situation in Ukraine.
CNN, citing a source close to the Ukrainian president’s office, reported on Monday that Kiev was also unaware of the Vatican’s "peace mission."