Pope Francis meets with Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, retired archbishop of Hong Kong, during his general audience at the Vatican Jan. 10. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
One of my good friends in the Vatican was Archbishop Antonio
Riberi. He was born in Monaco in the Diocese of Monte Carlo in 1922 and was
appointed Apostolic Nuncio to China in 1946.
He was removed by Mao Tse-tung, father of the People’s Republic of China, and expelled together with thousands of other priests. In 1949 he went to Tapei, the capital of Taiwan – the non-communist Republic of China – where he opened the nunciature of Taipei.
Recounting his story, he wept at having to leave millions of Catholics without spiritual guides. The Holy See, however, does not want to abandon the Celestial Empire (China), and is in contact with its current president, Xi Jinping, who simultaneously serves as head of the party and the commander-in-chief of the military forces.
More intimate than its relations with China were the bonds with Russia to the point that it was called “Sancta Russia” before the Soviet regime orchestrated its cruel persecution where millions of Christians were murdered by the communist government. My article is about these two new friends of Pope Francis.
In August 2017, Pope Francis sent his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to the Kremlin. Russia’s ambassador to the Holy See, Alexander Avdeyev, was delighted by this visit, and said: “The two nations – the Vatican and Russia – share a high level of mutual trust and great harmony on many issues” and that the Holy Father is “very loved and esteemed by the citizens of my country.”
Cardinal Parolin himself was notably more reserved, saying: “After the period of ideological opposition, which obviously can’t entirely fade from today to tomorrow, and in the new scenarios that have opened up since the end of the Cold War, it is important to take advantage of every occasion to encourage respect, dialogue, and mutual collaboration in a view to promoting peace.”
The Vatican is finding that it must be more and more connected with the East, as with Russia and China. Yet reconciliation with one’s enemies always runs the risk of alienating one’s friends.
Former Soviet states like Russia and Ukraine, as well as China, are home to millions of Catholics. Most live as second-class citizens. The governments are generally willing to negotiate for the rights of Catholics. So, while Cardinal Parolin speaks of “new scenarios,” the current problems go a long way back. During the Stalin years, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was banned and its properties given to the Russian Orthodox Church. The rights of Byzantine Catholics have been a sticking point in Russo-Vatican relations. The problems were only exacerbated by the invasion of Crimea in 2014.
The Pope and the Russian Patriarch Kirill have been working diligently to reach some agreement. In 2016 they convened in Havana, the first such meeting between leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox communions. This resulted in a joint declaration that found much common ground, including their optimism at the flowering of religion in the former Soviet Union and concern for Christians being persecuted in the Middle East.
No progress was made on the Ukrainian crisis, however, and Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuck said in an interview that many of his flock felt betrayed by the meeting. This is the minefield that Cardinal Parolin entered when he arrived in Moscow, a world where religion and geopolitics are inextricably bound together.
When dealing with Vladimir Putin and his underlings, the cardinal wouldn’t have been able to say exactly whose interests were being represented – the Russian government’s or the Moscow patriarchate’s. The answer, very probably, was both. Cardinal Parolin concluded: “The diplomacy of the Catholic Church is a diplomacy of peace. It does not have power interests: neither political, economical, nor ideological.”
This was a clear echo of the Holy Father’s statement to the G20 summit in Germany just days earlier when he emphasized “the need to give absolute priority to the poor, refugees, the suffering, evacuees, and the excluded.”
This is in some ways just a revision of the Church’s Cold War era of Ostpolitik: the pursuit of rapprochement between the communist East and the capitalist West.
Take another example: China. In 1951, shortly after Mao’s revolution, the communist government broke all ties to the Vatican and began appointing its own bishops. This new group, dubbed the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, remains the only officially recognized “Catholic” body in China.
As a result, many Catholics under the authority of the bishops appointed by Rome went underground to avoid persecution. The Holy See has been anxious to restore ties with China for these estimated four million Catholics worshipping in secret, in the so-called “Catacombs Church.”
China is happy to negotiate but it has set terms that previous papacies would have considered untenable. Foreign minister Hong Lei said: “China is willing to develop relations with the Vatican if the Vatican severs its diplomatic ties with Taiwan.”
As a result the Vatican and China may reach an agreement whereby the Pope appoints bishops in consultation with the communist party.