The Vatican under the early papacy of Leo XIV is being viewed as a negotiating site for international politics and peace talks, if not a partner in such negotiations, writes Massimo Faggioli in Commonweal magazine (June 24). Already, there was talk that the Holy See under Leo could serve as a “facilitator” or “observer” for ending the war in Ukraine, though Vladimir Putin ignored such an offer. In the past, the Vatican was fully involved as a negotiator in peacemaking efforts, such as during the Cuban Missile Crisis and in the run-up to the Helsinki Accords of 1975. But the bipolar nature of such Cold War-era initiatives has been replaced by a more complex multipolar world where the place of the Vatican is less clear-cut. Yet the Vatican still retains its world influence. An example is international leaders using the occasions of Pope Francis’s funeral and Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass as opportunities to talk face-to-face. “The image of President Trump and President Zelensky meeting in St. Peter’s Basilica before Francis’s funeral was an almost iconic portrait of the power of the Vatican as a world stage—while suggesting the current impotence of secular diplomacy and international organizations,” writes Faggioli. While the international community may accept the humanitarian or peacemaking efforts of Catholic organizations (such as the Community of Sant’Egidio), it “does not accept the Holy See per se as a real mediator between countries at war, and especially in cases of war with significant interecclesial (Ukraine and Russia) or interreligious narratives (Israel, Palestine, and Iran).”
Faggioli writes that the papacy currently embodies a “cool-headed approach to religion and politics, in which men and women of good will and hope will prevail.” Lately, however, “there is nostalgia—especially in right-wing U.S. Catholicism—for a pre–Vatican II political theology. Leo XIV will have to deal with new attempts to influence papal teaching about the role of the Church in international affairs—and in ways that differ significantly from the era of Catholic neoconservatives: Is a holy-war mindset overtaking the tradition of just-war teaching?” Faggioli adds that Leo sees a central role for Vatican diplomacy. In his June 10 speech to papal representatives, Leo said that “the diplomacy of the Holy See constitutes in its very personnel a model—certainly not perfect, but very significant—of the message it proposes, namely that of human fraternity and peace among peoples.” While Francis relegated the Secretariat of State to the margins, Leo immediately restored it as the cornerstone, not only of diplomacy, but of the entire Apostolic See, designed in his time by Paul VI in his 1967 reform of the Roman Curia. “Francis’s position on war and peace was actually somewhat radical, closer to pacifism than to the stance of his predecessors. It remains to be seen what Leo the Augustinian’s posture will be.” Faggioli notes that in a 2022 interview, “when he was bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, he articulated his view of the war in Ukraine as an act of ‘imperialist invasion.’ Since his papal election, a rebalancing of the Vatican’s position toward the side of Ukraine has been apparent.”
(Commonweal, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/)
