He replaces negotiation
with prayer. He favors supernatural weapons. But he calculates with consummate
skill every word he speaks. And also every silence, as in the case of the young
Sudanese mother condemned to death simply because she is Christian
by Sandro Magister
ROME, June 20, 2014 –
Francis has placed back at the head of the secretariat of state a thoroughbred
diplomat, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. But with him as pope, the face of Vatican
geopolitics has changed.
The war of the worlds
fought and won by a giant like John Paul II is now a distant memory. In an age
of personalized conflicts, of despots, of armed factions, of fractured and
failed states, even diplomacy is becoming personalized, becoming
"artisanal," as Pope Francis himself likes to put it. His Argentina
is not Poland, where the dictatorship was opposed by a Church of the people,
solid and faithful. Under the heel of the military rulers the Argentine Church
was confused and divided. The young Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio acted
according to his own judgment, in secret and sovereign solitude.
Today he does
everything in public. But still with highly personal gestures that seem alien
to the old-school diplomats. Like inviting under the dome of St. Peter's, to
pray, the presidents of Israel and Palestine.
“Here in the Vatican 99
percent said that we would never succeed,” Pope Francis himself candidly
revealed afterward. But what asserted itself in the end was precisely that
stubborn one percent which he personifies.
Even in the complicated
preparations for the summit the pope did everything himself. He left the career
diplomats with only the crumbs. He preferred the help of a Franciscan friar,
custodian of the Holy Land Terra Santa Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and of an
Israeli journalist who works as a correspondent for “La Vanguardia" of
Barcelona, Henrique Cymerman.
Where diplomacy fails, Pope Francis takes the field
his own way.
No comments:
Post a Comment