Putin arrives 1 hour late to meet with Pope in Vatican

Conflict with Ukraine was one of the main topics on the agenda of the meeting between the Russian President and the Pontiff

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, met on Thursday, 4, with Francis Pope in the Vatican. As well as in their other two meetings with the Pontiff, the Russian was delayed and left Francisco waiting for 1 hour.

The Russian President's visit to Rome takes place one day before the arrival of Catholic leaders of the Ukraine to the Vatican to discuss the crisis in your country and amid speculation that the meeting could be the prelude to the first pass of a Pope by Russia.

"Thank you for your time devoted," said Putin at the end of the 55-minute conversation with the Pope. "It was a very substantive and interesting debate," he said.

The Russian President arrived with 1 hour delay at the international airport of Rome and was followed by a train to Vatican City. Francisco received Putin behind closed doors at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

The details of the conversation were not disclosed, but during the meeting Putin presented the Pope with an icon of the Apostles Peter and Paul and a DVD of the film "Il peccato" (SIN), Russian Director Andrey Konchalovsky Sin on the painter Michelangelo.

"This film is very good," said the Russian President to the Pope, according to the news agency Tass.

The Pope also presented Putin. The head of State received a message for the world day of peace of 2019, an official Medal of the sixth year of your pontificate and a 1774 painting by Giuseppe Vasi portraying Saint Peter's square.

Putin, who had met with Francisco twice in the past, reached the compromise Thursday with 1 hour delay. He was delayed 50 minutes on your first encounter with Francisco in 2013 and more than 1 hour on the second date of 2015.

After your trip to the Vatican, Putin should meet with the President and the Prime Minister of Italy and return to Moscow at the end of the day, after a state dinner.

It is believed that Ukraine, which remains a difficult topic in relations between the Vatican and Russia, would be one of the main topics of conversation in the official papal library in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican.

When they met for the last time, in 2015, the Pope asked Putin a "sincere effort and great" to make amends with Kiev and help to end the fighting between Government forces and separatist rebels Ukrainian pró-Rússia in the East.

On Friday, 5, leaders of the Catholic Church of Ukraine and Vatican officials begin two days of meetings to address various problems of the nation, a former Soviet Republic.

The Ukrainian religious world if tensionou last year, when the local Orthodox Church, which in practice has spent centuries under control of the Russian Orthodox Church, declared your independence and created a national church.

The Russia does not accept that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church if rule itself, saying that the measure has more political than religious reasons.

Putin if aligned closely to the Russian Orthodox Church and accused the Government of Kiev to interfere in Ukraine's Orthodox life flagrantly.