When Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Aug. 30, first met with Pope John Paul in December 1989, less than a month after the Berlin Wall’s collapse, the two leaders “understood each other immediately.”

Although Pope Francis repeatedly has spoken out on behalf of the Ukrainian people, this was not the first time Ukrainian officials have been upset with Pope Francis for what they see as equating the actions of the aggressor with the victim.

The pope told the patriarch that “we are not clerics of the state, we cannot use the language of politics, but of Jesus.”

For the first time since the start of the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis received in a private audience this morning a top-ranking member of the Russian Orthodox Church, second only to patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

Pope Francis will travel next month to Kazakhstan, where he could meet with Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has supported Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

I get the sense that a monumental moment in history “passed us by” this week when Russia announced on Tuesday that it would withdraw from the International Space Station before the end of the decade.