CIA and Vatican visits converge in Moscow amid rising tensions over Ukraine

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The CIA director made an unannounced visit to Moscow on Tuesday (Aug. 25) as the Vatican’s foreign minister led a five-day mission to the Russian capital, in disparate attempts to influence an end to the war in Ukraine.

Multiple reports said CIA Director John Ratcliffe privately delivered a warning to the Kremlin to avoid an escalation to the conflict, although accounts differed over the principal purpose of his visit. Meanwhile, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, who leads the Vatican’s diplomacy with states, publicly offered Russian officials dialogue and humanitarian assistance.

“In a simplistic way, it looked like a good cop, bad cop operation,” said Victor Gaetan, author of “ God’s Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy and America’s Armageddon .”

Gallagher’s visit marked an important moment for Vatican diplomacy under Pope Leo XIV, who has expressed more conspicuous sympathy for Ukraine than his predecessor, Pope Francis, while preserving the Holy See’s traditional insistence on dialogue with both sides. And the simultaneous presence of Ratcliffe raised questions about whether the first U.S. pope’s peace diplomacy might intersect with Washington’s…