Dictators used to tremble when the Pope spoke/ Why does Francis make statements that justify tyrannical regimes in China and Russia?

2023-09-09 15:14:00, Blog Edward Lucas

Dictators used to tremble when the Pope spoke/ Why does Francis make statements

When Pope John Paul II visited his homeland, Poland, in 1979, he drew huge crowds of worshipers, dispelling the communist regime's "clouds" of fear and lies and showing the world and the Poles themselves a true picture of the country. theirs.

The pope's advice to the hundreds of thousands in attendance in the square, "Do not be afraid," echoed similar statements by prominent politicians, including US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and predicted a tragic end to the empire of of evil.

Today the message coming from the Holy See is somewhat different. During a visit to the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, Pope Francis intended to deliver a message of greeting to the neighboring country, asking the Chinese faithful to "be good Christians as well as good citizens."

However, the communist dictatorship in Beijing has no concept of citizenship: it demands the unquestioning, absolute and continuous obedience of Chinese citizens. Photos of a brave handful of Chinese Christian believers who went to Mongolia to see the Pope showed them covering their faces in the hope of escaping the clutches of the party-state surveillance machinery.

Catholic bishops in mainland China - now appointed only with the permission of the Communist Party leadership - were barred from traveling to Mongolia. An even more spectacular blunder was seen last month during an online meeting with young Catholics from St. Petersburg.

Francis said to them: “You are the heirs of great Russia. The great Russia of the saints, of the kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II. Imperial Great Russia, cultivated with so much culture and humanity. Never forget this legacy. You are the heirs of the Great Mother Russia, so move forward!".

An odd statement, to say the least. It is hard to imagine the Roman Catholic leader telling the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese or Spanish faithful to boast of the great imperial traditions of their countries.

In today's perspective, European empires were greedy and brutal to the colonized and ultimately corrosive to the colonizer. In fact, if the Pope were to consult the history of his church, he would see that the interaction of the Roman Empire with Christianity, from the moment of its foundation, has hardly been without friction.

Moreover, Russia's imperial sentiments are not only a matter of historical debate. They are more than alive today. For this, it is enough to listen for a few minutes to the moderators and experts on Russian TV shows who talk about the neighboring countries in contemptuous and threatening terms.

And for Ukrainians, Russian imperialism is an existential, life-or-death issue. The Pope's statements caused tremendous public criticism, starting with the head of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church.

His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk condemned, in particular, the Pope's laudatory references to the 2 Russian Tsars, Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, who both tried to eradicate the Ukrainian language, identity and culture. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov upheld Pope Francis' words.

He said that the Pope's knowledge of Russian history was "a source of satisfaction for Russians" and "in unison" with the efforts of the Russian state to teach history to young people as interpreted by Vladimir Putin. This brought alarm bells ringing albeit belatedly, and Vatican officials tried to play down the significance of the Pope's words.

But the damage was done. It is very easy to justify these blunders with the bad advice given to the Pope. The diplomatic (and intelligence) skills of the Vatican are remarkable.

Dictators used to tremble when the Pope spoke/ Why does Francis make statements

Some attribute the pope's hard-line stance to his latent anti-Americanism, which stems from his early experience under the US-backed Argentine junta of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Perhaps it is so. But the ugliest aspect of this situation is that the Pope does not seem to be learning from his mistakes. There is a great danger that the Holy See will renounce diplomatic recognition of Taiwan (an increasingly isolated position) in the vain hope of winning some concessions from the Beijing regime.

Another danger is that the benevolence shown to the Kremlin strengthens war-weary voices in the West who want to bring Ukraine back to a ceasefire agreement. Pope Francis is not the John Paul II we miss so much./ Adapted from CNA