Among the accounts of the Kings of Israel in the Catholic Bible, a prophet named Elisha prays for the eyes of a blinded servant (2 Kings, Chapter 6). There is nothing wrong with that servant’s eyes. But what he cannot see are mountains “full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” Here, maybe, are the Pope’s divisions Joseph Stalin infamously derided. Here too, are what foreign policy scholars have called the spiritual power of religious movements that can topple states and empires, mediate peace, and propel to war. This, certainly, is the heritage and promise of Vatican foreign policy in the world today: a force that is real, but also one that is necessarily limited, case studies of which are afresh and aplenty in our world today.
Just in the last several years, there has been a renaissance not only in study but in practice of Vatican diplomacy. We have found the Holy See intervening in Cuba, mediating conversations between then-President Obama and the Cuban President Raúl Castro. Vatican diplomats have been on the ground in Venezuela, attempting to mediate peace between the government of Nicolás Maduro and the opposition. The Holy See has been at the forefront of a big push at the United Nations on a new global treaty banning nuclear weapons. And this is the just the front-page news. Dig into the inglorious grunt work in dusty committee rooms, and you’ll find Vatican diplomats at the 2013 Geneva peace talks to end the Syrian war, at the Truth and Reconciliation process in post-Apartheid South Africa, in the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the list goes on.
But even with all these interventions, of course, the Holy See can still seem like an old-world relic in a hyper-modern world of hard power and economic globalization. What does a small quasi-sovereign mini-state really bring to the table on the “real” issues of international relations? Where, after all, are Elisha’s angel legions in the failed states of Somalia, the civil war in Yemen, the desolate destruction of Mosul, and more? The Vatican might specialize in a kind of boutique moral-diplomacy, but the heavy lifting of the international order will always be left to states with carrier groups and IMF voting blocks.
Part of the argument of this issue is that this is not true. What counts as “real” and, indeed, what counts as “heavy lifting” in a globe often-consumed by growth rates and security dilemmas needs to be reconsidered. Just as the Vatican by its very existence challenges our common understanding of things like sovereignty and power in the international system, so its boutique diplomacy is also the “tip” of the iceberg of what the Vatican can, and has, done in foreign relations.
Legally speaking, the “Vatican” refers to two political entities of international relations: the Vatican City State and the Holy See. The minor actor is the Vatican City State founded in the Lateran Treaties between Mussolini’s Italy and the Curia of Pius XI in 1929 to solve the territorial Roman question almost 60 years after the end of the Papal State in 1870. The mini-state provides the Pope with sovereign territory with such remarkable properties like St. Peter, St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican Museums and the Vatican Gardens and a few extraterritorial real estates like a Hospital, some ancient Roman Churches, and Castel Gandolfo. The Vatican City State is a state with radio and railway station, mail, and money, and participates in various treaties on the international stage, bringing the papal face on Euro coins (at least until Pope Francis’ decision to replace the face with the coat of arms in January 2017) and on stamps as a member of the Universal Postal Union. The “real” actor in world politics, however, is the Holy See. The Holy See is a separate legal entity that “has” a state – the Vatican City State – but is none. In Canonical law, it serves as the entity which governs the Catholic Church. Dating back to the beginning of the practice of European diplomacy, the Holy See has also full legal personality as a subject in international public law. In current practice, it is the Holy See who established diplomatic relations to almost all states and obtains a member or special status in almost all international organizations with a political mission; in contrast to more functional organizations like the Universal Postal Union in which the Vatican City State is a member.
The power of the Catholic Church, and of the Holy See, is enormous in a world that is so rapidly losing a moral vocabulary beyond profit/loss, power/order, and security/strength. The language of international diplomacy has hallowed out words which that Church still remembers: dignity, the image of God, faith, and hope. It is precisely on the back of catastrophe, of systemic and terrible evil, that the liberal-secular worldview cannot bear the weight of its own inadequacies without gesturing beyond itself. Once impelled to tone down his “prayers” for a secular crowd at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Desmond Tutu tried—but halted—declaring they could not bear the weight of those proceedings apart from prayer. No purely material theory can make sense of the mystery of the human condition, its evils, or its joys, and no purely secular diplomacy is fit for the work of mediation, repentance, and reconciliation.
And yet there are also real limits. The Church speaks best and most powerfully when it does so on principle—out of the clear conviction of its confessions—and is wisely discrete on particularities, policy, and procedure. That Church has real power as convener, mediator, and prophet in a world dominated by secular-elites, but peopled by the resurging religious. That Church must also see its limits where leadership will not relent, repent, or redirect. The Vatican, then, is part of foreign policy in God’s Century; it is not the panacea. It has real promise, but it is no silver bullet.
This is one of the reasons we are delighted to draw together in this issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs such an international cast of authors and academics to tackle the issue of Vatican foreign policy, with articles emerging from the 2017 conference at the Vatican, “Popes on the Rise! Mobilization, Media, and the Political Power of the Modern Papacy.”Footnote1 The gambit of that conference, and of this issue, is that the Holy See made, makes, and will make substantive contributions to global policy and politics. The Vatican’s mediators and its diplomats can give the world of global politics back a language it so desperately needs: a language of virtue, morality, dignity, and means—not just ends—as more than long-term expedience. Its very existence and confessions are a cap and check on unrestrained capital, tyrannical governance, and hyper-individualism. But that witness is strongest when made prophetically, and it is sometimes limited and compromised when it delves too deep into policy. It is rhetoric—it is a witness—that can ennoble and mediate, but it cannot coerce nor prescribe. It has promise, but it also has limits. This issue and its authors are concerned with both the promise and limits of the Holy See in foreign policy.Footnote2
Timothy A. Byrnes structures papal politics along three spheres: (1) sovereignty and international relations; (2) supranationalism and the Church; and (3) Soft power in the global public sphere: (1) First, in the sphere of international relations the Holy See is a sovereign actor with the status of a legal person in international law and has as such diplomatic relations to most of the states and is member to many international organizations. The Holy See represents the Pope not as the sovereign of the Vatican City State but as sovereign of the Catholic Church; as such the Holy See is accepted among states as sovereign peer. Second, being the leader of the Catholic Church turns the Pope, however, also into a supranational leader who has transnational ties in every country. In this supranational capacity, the Pope is involved in the internal affairs of almost every country and can influence in some cases the majority or a major minority of a national population. Third, the media attention allows the pope to develop a soft power capacity that reaches beyond the Catholic flock and diplomatic relations into an emerging global public sphere. Nevertheless, the soft power approach reminds us also that the pope has no means of coercion to secure a chain of command. The Pope is always as powerful as his authority or advice is accepted in the different stages he tries to perform.
Drawing on system theory, Mathias Albert explains the soft power of the Holy See in international relations through its structural position within in the world system. The Holy See has a historical tradition as hard power in diplomatic relations which explains the diplomatic and legal legacy still vibrant in the modern system. The old religiously backed legacy is not able to structurally bridge the differentiation of the modern international system and the balance of power of its units and turn the pope into a real global leader. Despite the impossibility of integrating the international system, ascribing such an integrative function to the Holy See is a useful move to bridge tensions in world politics. The Holy See is ready to represent this necessary but impossible task of integration. The ability for the impossible secures its soft power in world politics.
From the perspective of the English School in International Relations, Thomas Diez explains why and how the rise of the pope in international relations was possible and is likely to continue, however also likely to be continuously contested. In an international society that rests only on pluralist principles of sovereignty, territory, and nation, the legal entity of the Holy See is an outside relict from the past. In a world, however, that increasingly develops solidarist principles the Holy See is no longer an alien but in tune with transnational, global, and universal ambitions. However, the story of solidarism in international society and the Catholic idea of one world under God do not go together smoothly. At times, harsh contestations on what values the solidarist world should be built come up; gender issues or abortion are the most salient ones. However, also environmental issues, migration, and capitalism are contested. It is open, if, how, and to what extent the Holy See can influence these debates in the future.
Capitalism and Catholicism have a long and difficult relationship. Parts of Latin American Liberation theology once even allied with Marxism to overcome the shortcomings of capitalism. While the magisterium of the Church was ready to suppress any (mis)alliances with Marxism, papal critique on capitalism continues. Robert Joustra highlights in his contribution the continuing importance of the first social encyclical of modern times—Rerum Novarum (1891) of Pope Leo XIII. The encyclical laid the ground for a sophisticated and moderate stance of the Church towards the conflicts of the modern economy. Joustra shows that Leo’s concept is still the blueprint of the social teaching of the popes, while it has been adapted and adjusted to newer developments during the following pontificates. Economic relationships, the popes argue, need not become conflictual, but can be built on a just relationship between labor and capital as both need each other. Labor unions play a crucial part in the papal teaching and are at the center of Joustra’s example of the Right-to-Work Legislation in North America, particularly in the United States, but also in Canada.
The Holy See was not brought “back from exile” when religion arguably returned to international relations. The Holy See was always around. Adrian Hänni delves back into the time of the Cold War and the pontificate of Pius XII where he finds the remarkable story of the Commission for the Persecuted Church. Founded in 1950, the Commission was set up under the auspices of the Holy See as an umbrella organization of international lay activities to ensure that the Church behind the Iron Curtain should not be forgotten but supported. During the 1950s, the small leading circle of the Commission established a network supported by the Vatican and by Western secret services to organize a strong network of charity, propaganda, and prayer to fight communism East and West beyond the Iron Curtain.
Jodok Troy’s analysis of the papal human rights discourse starts also in the pontificate of Pius XII who introduced the human rights vocabulary into papal documents. In his rigorous analysis, Troy shows that the classical liberal discourse of individual rights reached a high in the pontificate of John Paul II and the context of the Cold War. Already Benedict XVI’s pontificate marked a change as more universalist notions like the “right of the environment” were introduced and egalitarian demands on wealth distribution gained momentum. The pontificate of Francis remains inside the human rights discourse but accelerated the transformation to a more universal notion of human rights.
Petr Kratochvil and Jana Hovorková lay out a papal geopolitical map by analyzing a decade of Urbi-et-Orbi Messages in the pontificates of Benedict XVI and Francis between 2005 and 2015. These speeches delivered each Christmas and Easter by the Popes at St. Peter’s Square and broadcasted worldwide focus on what is important for the Pope in religious but also, deeply intertwined, in political perspective. Kratochvil and Hovorková show that in both pontificates global de-territorialized problems of world politics, such as war, construct the earthly space in contrast to the heavenly. Both pontificates have their focus on Africa and the Middle East while neither Benedict nor Francis prioritized their continent of origin. The popes have an eye on the global challenges of the Church and world politics.
Melanie Barbato analyzes the Deepavali messages of the Holy See as a cornerstone of Christian-Hindu dialogue and as an example of high-level interreligious dialogue. Deepavali, the festival of lights, is a happy occasion in the Hindu calendar when greetings among friends and relatives are exchanged. The Holy See, more specifically the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, uses this opportunity to engage in a friendly, sometimes also critical dialogue with the Hindu community. In her rigorous analysis, Barbato shows that a shared humanity and a shared understanding as religious people are emphasized to build a bridge between the very different languages of religious discourse of the Catholic and the Hindu communities. While discussing the messages as a form of public diplomacy, she also shows that persecution of Christians in India lead to at least two different approaches in the messages—one year much more critical than is typical for these documents, and the next year with an emphasis on Hinduism’s own resources of non-violence.
These various contributions seek to explain the strength and limits of the Holy See in international relations and stress jointly that the Vatican is not only an interesting object of study in its own right but a telling example how transformations in world politics are at work. Religion is a force in world affairs and secularizing processes add only a twist on that force instead of annihilating it. The Holy See’s soft power in world politics seems to rest on the ability to secure its position in a small niche of the international system while playing on various stages of world politics and public diplomacy thereby addressing and contesting continuously a wide range of crucial issues of world politics. Solving the puzzle of the unexpected rise of the Holy See in modern world politics is a task for international relations scholars that can not only help to explain the role of religious actors in world politics but can serve as a prism that allows understanding various fields and discourses of international relations.
At the decline of the Roman Empire, it was sometimes on the popes to defend the city against the barbarians at the gate. In 452 the Huns threatened to sack Rome when Pope Leo the Great was part of a mission sent to the Hun king Attila to beg for peace. The mission was successful. While contemporary sources gave credits to Pope Leo, historians are unable to explain Attila’s reasons to withdraw. One source, Paul the Deacon, explains Attila’s retreat by a vision, visible only to him, the king of the Huns had during the negotiations with Leo. The Roman Apostle Princes Peter and Paul with swords appeared terrifically behind Leo in order to back his words with deeds. In the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, Raffael’s fresco “The Meeting between Leo the Great and Attila,” painted 1514 more than 1000 years after the encounter of Attila and Leo, celebrates the legend.
Even though no chariots of fire or heavenly legions become visible, this legend draws attention to the need and the ability of the popes to become visible as powerful international actors. Different scripts of visibility are necessary to please the various tastes of the time. Today media coverage that shows the pope backed by masses of pilgrims at St. Peter’s Square or around the world encountering the pope on his visits may be the visible legions on parade which may gain him the respect of some Attilas of today.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mariano Barbato
Mariano Barbato is Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation at the Center for Religion and Modernity, University of Munster, and private lecturer at the Jean Monnet Chair for European Politics at the University of Passau. He leads the DFG research project “Legions of the Pope: A Case Study in Social and Political Transformations.” He earned his doctorates from LMU Munich and University of Passau.
Robert Joustra
Robert J. Joustra is Associate Professor of Politics & International Studies and Director of the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College. He is author, most recently, of The Religious Problem with Religious Freedom: Why Foreign Policy Needs Political Theology (Routledge 2017). He is a fellow with the Center for Public Justice, and an editorial fellow with The Review of Faith & International Affairs.
Notes
1. Funding for this editorial and the conference proceedings of Popes on the Rise! was provided by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Römisches Institut der Görres-Gesellschaft and Center for Religion and Modernity, University of Münster.
2. Parts of this introduction appeared on the Berkley Forum’s website under “The Pope’s Divisions” by Robert Joustra (February 21, 2017). https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/the-pope-s-divisions.