Saint Peter's Square, Rome. The Vatican is worried about the lack of progress being made in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The Vatican is concerned about the lack of movement in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Christian Radio reported on Wednesday.

“The Holy See is deeply concerned at the total lack of progress of the negotiations between Palestine and Israel,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican’s delegate to the United Nations, said in a speech to the UN Security Council.

He added, “It is difficult not to share the frustration expressed by the then UN Special Coordinator of the Middle East Peace Process, Mr. Robert Serry, during his last Security Council briefing on March 27.”

Serry, who ended his position as UN peace envoy in March, was pessimistic about the peace talks in his final briefing to the UN Security Council last month. He said, “I cannot but express an overriding feeling that I have been part of a peace process in which a can is kicked down an endless road.”

Archbishop Auza also told the UN Security Council that the Vatican recognizes Israel’s “genuine and legitimate concerns for its own security.”

However, he said safety in the Jewish state will not come from Israel isolating itself but rather through the implementation of the two-state solution, which “has the support of the Holy See and of the international community in general.”

“The Holy See joins its voice once more with all people of peace to call for serious and concrete negotiations that will reinvigorate the peace process,” he said.