At the Vatican, the dead ceremony gave way to the Théâtre des Vivants. What was played yesterday is surrealism. Under the dome of Saint-Pierre, in the flickering light of the candles and the shadow of the frescoes of the Bernin, everything had to be silence, meditation, farewell. Instead, another scene arose. Around the coffin of Pope Francis, in a few minutes, the most powerful heads of state on the planet improvised a summit. Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, two men whom everything opposed, found themselves face to face, sitting on bruising chairs. Far from the images of the brutal clash of the oval office last February. Here it was to be a funeral mass; It was a diplomatic camera, in the shade of the vaults of Saint-Pierre.
The contrast was striking: a few meters from the pontifical body, we already negotiated the future of the world. Not in sanitized conference rooms, not in muffled palaces, but on the cold slabs of the largest Catholic sanctuary. As if, faced with the death of a pope, life suddenly resumed his rights, with his calculations, his maneuvers, his games of shadows and lights.
Yesterday, in the Vatican, religion gave way to geopolitics. Eternity in emergency. The peace of Christ to the diplomacy of the living. As if the last miracle of Pope Francis had been to tear down, at the foot of his coffin, some scraps of hope for a world at war.
On the Vatican slabs, there were no major statements or signed agreement. But there was the essentials: looks, tremors, meaningful gestures. In this improvised theater, everyone has advanced their pawns, without protocol, without official translators, but with the acute consciousness that everything could change.
The Ukrainian President understood that this unique moment had to be seized to reopen the dialogue
Donald Trump, first. He who, for months, has cultivated the ambiguity with Moscow, listened to Zelensky, his face closed, his eye worried. The Ukrainian president understood that this unique moment had to be seized to reopen the dialogue. No big sentences, no promises, but a message: kyiv is ready for a ceasefire, if he finds allies capable of imposing peace.
Around them, Emmanuel Macron sought to revive the role of Europe, multiplying the aside and hand handles, while Keir Starmer, the most discreet British Prime Minister, weighed his words. And then, this sentence, released by Donald Trump on the return plane, who surprised everyone: “Maybe Putin does not want to stop war, and go for a walk. »» Winning bet for Zelensky.
It was not an official summit. But sometimes, the real turns do not arise around a negotiation table: they arise in the vagueness, thanks to a coincidence, a fatigue, a broken meditation. Yesterday, under the frescoes of Saint-Pierre, diplomacy was raw, direct, human. And that may be what makes it, for once, credible.
One question remains: can this really change something? Can we believe that a handful of hands exchanged at the foot of a coffin, a few words whispered in the shadow of a basilica, will be enough to influence the trajectory of a war which, for two years, has grinded everything in its path? The temptation is great to get excited. After months of stagnation, after so many procrastination, tens of thousands of deaths, see the protagonists talk again about peace, even in a low voice, even in disorder, has something striking.
On paper, it is a start of opening. But in fact, prudence is essential. Because while we exchanged promises by whispering, Moscow consolidated her positions on the ground. The war continues, relentless, methodical. The front lines did not give in with an inch because in Rome, between two blessings, we exchanged some formulas.
Enough to open a breach?
However, this thin hope remains: war, sometimes, tilted less by brilliant offensives than by underground plates. Yesterday, under the dome From Saint-Pierre, something may have moved. Not yet enough to stop the fighting. But enough, perhaps, to reopen a breach. And in conflicts, the breaches, however tiny they are, sometimes end up taking the walls. In Rome, yesterday, peace was not signed. But she may have started to be thought of again.
