The G7 countries, the group of the world's seven most industrialised democracies, endorsed the Olympic truce last Friday and called on the world to join it, according to the summit declaration in southern Italy. 

The group's leaders, meeting until Saturday in a hotel in the Puglia region of Italy, recalled that the truce was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on 21 November last year. It was adopted with 118 votes in favour and two abstentions, those of Russia and Syria, who protested against Russia's expulsion from the International Olympic Committee. 

The Olympic truce would mean that guns would fall silent during the two weeks of the Olympic Games, but never in recent decades has it coincided with two wars of enormous global impact, such as those in Ukraine and Gaza. 

Pope Francis also joined the call for an Olympic truce, as proposed by the United Nations for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, given the current "particularly dark historical moment", as he wrote in the preface to the book "Games of Peace. The Soul of the Olympic and Paralympic Games", an initiative of Athletica Vaticana. 

"My hope is that Olympic and Paralympic sport - with its exciting human stories of redemption and brotherhood, of sacrifice and loyalty, of team spirit and inclusion - can be an original diplomatic channel to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles," he wrote. 

The presidents of France and China, Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping, had already called in May for an Olympic truce in all conflicts during the forthcoming Paris Games, which would also allow progress to be made in the search for solutions.

Emmanuel Macron has tried and tried again, but his pleas for a peaceful Olympics without war in Russia and Ukraine remain ineffective. Vladimir Putin rejected the French president's call for a ceasefire during the Paris 2024 Games, as did his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.