Pope Francis has suspended plans to meet the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin, according to the Argentine newspaper La Nacion.
The 85-year-old pontiff had been considering a meeting with Patriarch Kirill in Jerusalem on 14 June, Reuters reported earlier this month.
However, Francis has now told La Nacion that he regretted the plan had to be “suspended” because Vatican diplomats advised that such a meeting “could lend itself to much confusion at this moment”.
It would have been only their second meeting.
Their first, in Cuba in 2016, was the first between a pope and a leader of the Russian Orthodox Church since the Great Schism that split Christianity into Eastern and Western branches in 1054.
Last month, Kirill, 75, appeared to endorse Moscowās invasion of Ukraine and claimed Russia had “entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance”.
He has become one of the most prominent backers of Mr Putin’s invasion and has been accused by Orthodox priests in Ukraine of “blessing the war”.
Putin, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, has described Moscow’s actions as a “special military operation” in Ukraine designed not to occupy territory but to demilitarise and “denazify” the country.