VATICAN CITY, Holy See (AFP) — Pope Leo XIV held a first meeting on Saturday with a senior Russian Orthodox cleric at the Vatican since becoming the head of the Catholic church earlier this year, the Holy See said without giving further details.

Leo — who has called on the Kremlin to make a “gesture” towards peace in Ukraine — received Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, the head of external relations at the Russian Orthodox Church.

Relations between the Vatican and Moscow has been frosty for centuries.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has sanctified Moscow’s Ukraine invasion, which he has described as a “holy war.”

But Moscow had a dialogue with the late Pope Francis, widely criticised in Ukraine, with Metropolitan Anthony hold around a dozen meetings with the Argentinian pontiff.

The Russian cleric told Italian newspaper La Repubblica days before the meeting that Francis had a “balanced approach” on Ukraine, while he did not know Leo’s stance yet.

Leo is the first American pope. He took over the church at a time when the United States is pushing for peace in Ukraine, in efforts that have so far yielded few results to stop the three-year war.

Leo had received Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month and has also spoken to Russia’s Vladimir Putin by phone.

The Vatican had earlier this year been floated as a possible platform for peace talks, but that idea was refuted by the Kremlin and negotiations have stayed in Istanbul.

Anthony reiterated that, for Moscow, the Vatican would not be a “neutral” ground for any peace talks.

Metropolitan Anthony was appointed as head of the Moscow church’s external relations in 2022 — the year Russia invaded Ukraine — and had earlier been a church envoy in Italy.