VATICAN CITY, September 14. /TASS/. The Vatican’s mediation in settling the Ukrainian crisis is hardly ever realistic, Pope Leo XIV said in his first interview with Crux, an online Catholic newspaper.

"I’d make a distinction in terms of the voice of the Holy See in advocating for peace and a role as mediator, which I think is very different and is not as realistic as the first one. I think that people have heard the different appeals I’ve made in terms of raising my voice, the voice of Christians, and the people of goodwill, saying that peace is the only answer," he said when asked whether the Holy See could act as a mediator in settling the Ukrainian conflict.

"To think of the Vatican as a mediator, even the couple of times that we have offered to host meetings of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, either in the Vatican or some other church property, I’m very well aware of what the implications of that are," he said. "The Holy See, since the war began, has made great efforts to maintain a position that, as difficult as it might be, [is not] one side or the other, but truly neutral."

The pontiff, who turned 70 on September 14, also noted that the positions of each side to the conflict have both positive and negative aspects and called for being guarded by supreme values.

Immediately after Leo XIV’s election as Pope after the funeral of his predecessor Francis, on the sidelines of which US President Donald Trump met with Vladimir Zelensky, the Vatican offered itself as a venue for potential peace talks on Ukraine.

Later, commenting on the Vatican’s initiative, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the option of organizing a meeting between two Orthodox countries on the Catholic soil was "somewhat inelegant" and called for not "wasting mental faculties on discussing options that are not very realistic."

The Russian side has repeatedly said that it values the Vatican’s moderate position on the Ukrainian crisis and its attempts to bring the parties’ positions closer, mainly in the humanitarian sphere. Thus, the Vatican helps return Ukrainian children who were evacuated from combat operations zones.