La peace mission of the Cardinal Matteo Zuppi arrive in China. After Kiev, Moscow and Washington, the president of the Italian Episcopal Conference and "special envoy" of the Pope is knocking on the doors of Beijing, where he will meet tomorrow, Wednesday 13 September, the highest Chinese institutional leaders, including the prime minister, Li Qiang. The goal of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine is still possible for Cardinal Zuppi, if he aims for a peace "chosen by the Ukrainians, with the guarantees, commitment and effort of everyone. It is never something that can be imposed by someone,” he said from Berlin during the international meeting “The Audacity of Peace” organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio. An effort that includes everyone, including China, considered by the Vatican to be one of the potentially most effective interlocutors for the complicated dialogue between Moscow and Kiev. How ready the Dragon is to play this role remains to be seen.
China's role in the Russia-Ukraine war
For China, the war in Ukraine is both a risk and an opportunity. It is true that the Chinese president Xi Jinping he supports Moscow and does not want his friend Putin to end up defeated, but he also knows that he cannot completely join the Russian camp. He must balance between two positions, and not so much between Russia and Ukraine, but between Moscow and the West, given that the Chinese economy still depends heavily on trade with Europe. All this has pushed Beijing towards "neutrality", despite the Chinese government having embraced the Russian narrative, never using the word war and speaking of NATO's responsibility. “The only viable option is peace talks, to which China wants to continue to contribute,” reads a joint statement after a bilateral conversation between Xi Jinping and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on the sidelines of the Brics summit , the alliance of emerging countries that wants to oppose the G7 powers.
The clash with Kiev
Although Zuppi's mission in China was extremely complex, Zuppi was not discouraged even after it attacks of the Chief Advisor to the President of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podolyak, who had excluded the Vatican's role as mediator after branding Pope Bergoglio as "pro-Russian and not credible" for the Pontiff's speech on Russian history defined as "imperialist". According to Zuppi, Kiev's criticisms do not call into question its peace mission: “I don't think so – he explained – also because no one has ever talked about mediation, it never has been. It has always been a mission, the Pope explained it immediately and told him again what his expectations of this mission are, and that it was not mediation, but helping". On the frost between the Vatican and Kiev, Zuppi is confident. The Ukrainian attacks “are understandable in such strong tension – he added -. I believe that the government and the Ukrainian people know the support that the Church and Pope Francis have always had for their suffering."
Will Zuppi's mission to China be a failure?
And Cardinal Zuppi recognizes that “there are many difficulties, of course, it has been a tragic situation for months now. It is clear that there are many difficulties in a situation that has been created, we must always remember the aggressor and the attacked, who however must find a solution". L'expectation of this journey is to "continue to create all the conditions and push in the only direction which obviously is that of a just and secure peace".
And even if the result were a “fiasco,” doing nothing would be a failure failure for the Vatican. “If you don't do anything you don't fail, but you don't do anything. It's always better to try and then sometimes, of course it's always slow, considering the pain and suffering of war, you always arrive too late, peace always arrives too late. Sometimes there is also a need for patience, to mature the times, but also to know how to seize them, and always remember that peace always arrives late: it must arrive immediately, it must arrive as soon as possible". This shows that for peace we must try all avenues and knock on all doors and after Ukraine, Moscow and Use now it's China's turn.
