South Korea's new President Moon Jae In has asked Pope Francis for help in working for peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, an official at the presidential office said Tuesday, amid heightened tensions following North Korea's repeated ballistic missile tests.

The office, however, denied a local news report saying that Moon requested the pope, in a letter, to try to arrange an inter-Korean summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim Hee Joong, who serves as the head of a South Korean association of bishops, is now in the Vatican to deliver Moon's personal letter to the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

In its report Tuesday, the JoongAng Ilbo, a Seoul daily, quoted Kim as saying he plans to have an audience with the Pope on Tuesday or Wednesday and deliver the letter, in which the pope was asked to be an intermediary for a summit between the two Koreas.

Moon's special envoy said that Pope Francis played an important role in normalizing diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba in 2014, according to the daily.

The two Koreas held a bilateral summit twice, in 2000 and 2007 and both in Pyongyang, when the late former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and the late President Roh Moo Hyun met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high as North Korea continues to defy international warnings by test-firing of ballistic missiles, the latest one on Sunday, and shows signs it is prepared to carry out its sixth nuclear test.