Pope Leo called Vladimir Putin from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Friday, Oct. 16, to ask for a humanitarian ceasefire that would allow medical and food assistance to enter the frontline Ukrainian city of Oleshky and for its citizens to safely and voluntarily evacuate. The Kremlin said Mr. Putin “supported the Vatican’s intention” for aid to be delivered and said “cooperation in this regard was agreed upon,” without committing to a ceasefire. On Monday—perhaps due to the absence of visible progress—Leo called Volodymyr Zelensky with the same proposal.

At issue is the livelihood of some 2,000 Ukrainians, including 40 children, who are facing hunger and dropping temperatures as the infrastructure around them has been destroyed. While Mr. Putin agreed on Wednesday to trilateral peace negotiations with Ukraine and the United States to be held sometime in November, the fate of Oleshky hangs in the balance, and it is too early to tell whether Leo’s appeal will have the desired result.

Still, the phone call was remarkable, both considering Leo’s hospitalization—which surely brought an added gravitas to his appeal—as well as the fact that, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis was never able to speak to Mr. Putin again. The two had enjoyed a fairly cordial relationship up until the February 2022 invasion, with Mr. Putin calling to wish Francis a happy birthday in December 2021.

To what can we attribute this shift in Vatican-Kremlin relations? Mr. Putin and Leo were in contact over the phone just after Leo’s election, in summer 2025, marking an opening in the relationship, and it can’t be discounted that the Russian president may have sensed that an improvement in relations with the world’s foremost moral power would be good for him, for various reasons. Another part of it, though, may come down to the difference in approach between Pope Francis and Pope Leo, even as the work of Vatican diplomats has remained consistent.

Pope Francis took what could be described as a pastoral, prophetic and at times improvisational approach to the conflict. The morning after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he memorably made a surprise visit to the Russian embassy to the Holy See to personally appeal for an end to the fighting, and he made reference to Ukraine as “martyred” hundreds of times in his public addresses, speaking to the moral outrage felt by many in the West. The Jesuit pope used strong language to denounce Russian aggression, comparing the war to a “genocide,” calling it “barbaric,” “repugnant,” “inhumane” and “sacriligeous” and denouncing Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s endorsement of the war, saying Kirill should not become “Putin’s altar boy.”

At the same time, Francis often faced criticism for not going as far as some would have liked in his denunciations (following Vatican protocol, he never named Russia) and for, at times, seemingly playing into Russian talking points, as when he suggested NATO may have provoked the war by “barking at the gates” of Russia or when he spoke about Ukraine needing to have the “courage of the white flag,” which the Vatican later clarified referred to negotiation rather than surrender. Francis’ intention was to keep dialogue open with Russia and Ukraine, but his personal interventions and improvised comments may have made Mr. Putin wary of a top-level bilateral conversation, even as diplomatic work continued between the Holy See and Russia.

Pope Leo XIV, on the other hand, has taken a much more calculated, institutional approach, one that reflects his status as a Vatican “insider” in contrast with Pope Francis, who never held a Vatican role before his election. Leo, from the beginning of his pontificate, has demonstrated trust in the Vatican Secretariat of State—keeping in place the same team Francis had in that department—while initially saying he faced a “huge learning curve” when it came to assuming his role as a world leader, implying he would be leaning more on his team of diplomats for advice.

That institutional approach has led to more measured, specific and scripted appeals for peace: Leo’s strongest words are often reserved for more general denunciations of war, the arms race and the resulting increases in hatred and suffering, while his personal interventions—like the ones we saw this week—have often come with calculated, almost surgical requests. In his first conversation with Mr. Putin, for example, Leo reportedly asked for a concrete gesture of peace and brought up humanitarian assistance and prisoner exchanges—key areas in which Vatican diplomats have already been able to make a difference during this war. Likewise, his request to Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky this week called for a humanitarian ceasefire, the delivery of aid and medicine and, vitally, the “safe and voluntary” evacuation of Oleshky.

In the end, while the two popes’ styles differ, their goals and requests are largely the same, informed by the work that Vatican diplomats who have remained in place through the papal transition—and special peace envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi—have been able to accomplish. Despite continued offers to serve as a mediator or meeting place for Russia and Ukraine to discuss peace, the Vatican’s primary achievements in the conflict have been the delivery of various types of aid, the return of Ukrainian children to their parents and the exchanges of prisoners, although the numbers are difficult to quantify or to attribute exclusively to the Vatican, as it cooperates with other nations and organizations.

Colleen Dulle is the Vatican Correspondent at America and co-hosts the "Inside the Vatican" podcast. She is the author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter (Image, 2025).