[en] We show that pairs of atoms optically excited to the Rydberg states can strongly interact with each other via effective long-range dipole-dipole or van der Waals interactions mediated by their nonresonant coupling to a common microwave field mode of a superconducting coplanar waveguide cavity. These cavity mediated interactions can be employed to generate single photons and to realize in a scalable configuration a universal phase gate between pairs of single photon pulses propagating or stored in atomic ensembles in the regime of electromagnetically induced transparency