America has learned the meeting between the two religious leaders was first planned a week ago. It was not confirmed who initiated the exchange, but it was the first time the two have spoken since this war broke out.

The elderly “will be the ones to sound the alarm, the alert: ‘Be aware, this is corruption, it will bring you nothing,’” Pope Francis said during his general audience on March 16.

“Lord Jesus, born under the bombs of Kyiv, have mercy on us. Lord Jesus, dead in the arms of a mother in Kharkiv, have mercy on us.”

Pope Francis has been invited to the besieged capital of Ukraine.

“In the name of God, I ask: Stop this massacre,” the pope said March 13 at the end of his Sunday Angelus address.

"Dear brothers and sisters, may our holy father Ignatius help us to preserve discernment, our precious legacy, as an ever timely treasure to be poured out on the Church and on the world."