Pope Francis welcomes Vladimir Putin to Vatican

Putin's meeting with the Pope is the third in history, and comes a day before the arrival of Ukrainian Catholic leaders in the Vatican, where talks are expected to be held on the crisis east of the country.

This visit also comes several months after the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which for several centuries was led by the Russian Orthodox Church, declared independence, considered one of the largest divisions in the history of Christianity since 1054, when the Christian world was divided into Catholic and Orthodox.

Russia had rejected this decision, thus making it more political than religious.