A pope does not ask the powerful of this world for a personal meeting.

It is the heads of state who ask that the Pope grant them a private audience.

Presidents, whether from the United States or Costa Rica, must make a pilgrimage to the Vatican and submit to their host's protocol at the Apostolic Palace.

Until 2016, for example, this stipulated that wives who had already been divorced were only greeted separately by the pope after the audience.

Thomas Jansen

Editor in Politics.

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Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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With Vladimir Putin, the Vatican clocks apparently work differently.

He has been to the Pope in the Vatican three times so far.

But this time Francis is keen to meet the Russian President to speak to him personally to end the war in Ukraine.

To do this, he is even willing to throw all Vatican customs overboard and do the previously unthinkable: travel to Moscow.

But he has been waiting in vain for weeks for an invitation to the Kremlin, as he reported in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera published on Tuesday.

His Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, had already made an offer to Moscow in mid-March for a meeting between the Pope and Putin.

So far, however, Moscow has not yet opened a time window for such a meeting, said the Pope.

Birthday greetings from Putin

It would be the first time ever that a pope has traveled to Moscow.

Francis is already the first pope to visit the Russian embassy to the Holy See in Rome.

That was shortly after the invasion of Ukraine.

He has repeatedly expressed his willingness to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said he would appreciate such a commitment from the Pope.

According to his own statements, Francis has had no personal contact with Putin since the beginning of the war.

Most recently, the head of the Kremlin congratulated the 85-year-old head of the Catholic Church on his birthday over the phone in December.

Francis, on the other hand, had contact with Selenskyj after the Russian attack.

The Pope has not received an invitation for Moscow, but there are three for Kyiv: President Selenskyj, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitali Klitschko, and the Catholic Church in Ukraine have issued them - but Francis does not want to visit Kyiv for the time being.

"I'm not going to Kyiv for the time being.

First I have to go to Moscow, first I have to meet Putin," he said.

Francis had already canceled a trip to Ukraine two weeks ago.

Such a visit would "endanger the higher goals, namely an end to the war, a ceasefire or at least a humanitarian corridor," he said in an interview with the Argentine daily "La Nación" at the time.

"What's the point of the Pope going to Kyiv and the war continuing the next day?"

Curia Cardinal Michael Czerny, who was sent to Ukraine by the Pope, said that for such a visit, the conditions for peace would not only have to be created at the military and political level.

This also applies to ecumenism.

Francis, who recently described his relationship with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Cyril I as "very good", admitted in the interview on Tuesday for the first time that talks with the Russian Orthodox Church are currently almost hopeless.

In any case, his description of the video connection with the patriarch on March 16 hardly allows any other conclusion: Cyril first read him the reason for the Russian invasion from a prepared paper for twenty minutes, the pope reported.