US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held crunch war talks in the heart of the Vatican minutes before the start of the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, as the White House mounts an increasingly urgent push to strike a peace deal in Ukraine.

The meeting between the two leaders at Pope Francis’s funeral was symbolic in part because of the Pope’s advocacy for a just end to the war in Ukraine.

The president said he was attending out of respect for Pope Francis but held a brief meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.