Pope Francis

Journeys of a Peacemaker

Mario I. Aguilar

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000514322
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

This volume is about Pope Francis, the diplomat. In his eight years of pontificate, Pope Francis as a peacemaker has propagated the ideas of human and divine cooperation to build a global human fraternity through his journeys outside the Vatican. This book discusses his endeavours to connect and develop a common peaceful international order between countries, faith communities, and even antagonistic communities through a peaceful journey of human beings. The book analyses his speeches, and meetings as a diplomat of peace, including his visits to Cuba and the United States, and his mediations for peace in Colombia, Myanmar, Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Jerusalem, the Central African Republic, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. It discusses the role of Pope Francis as mediator in different circumstances through his own writings, letters, and Vatican documents; his encounters with world leaders; as well as his contributions to a universal understanding on inter-faith dialogue, climate change and the environment, and human migration and the refugee crisis. The volume also sheds light on his ideas on a post-pandemic just social order, as summarised in his 2020 encyclical. A definitive work on the diplomacy and the travels of Pope Francis, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of religious studies, peace and conflict studies, ethics and philosophy, and political science and international relations. It will be of great interest to the general reader as well.

1 An interfaith journey

DOI: 10.4324/9781003172345-2

When Pope Francis was elected as the Bishop of Rome in March 2013, he was following on the footsteps of two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who had been at the forefront of journeys outside the Vatican.¹ John Paul II particularly had experienced the centrality of Vatican mediations of peace between nations; for example, the end of the imminent war between Chile and Argentina in November/December 1978 due to disputed limits within the Beagle Strait.² John Paul II had been a hard act to follow and an example of a person who made many journeys meeting millions of people.³ He was at ease with crowds while bored by Vatican Embassies’ receptions. Benedict XVI travelled less but did so as a teacher, teaching doctrine and catholicity to those who listened to him.⁴ Thus, when Pope Francis started his pontificate, it was assumed that at his age, he would not undertake many journeys outside Italy. However, once Pope Francis moved to the Vatican, he forcefully forwarded the agenda of the poor and the marginalised, of the common-home and ecological issues, and indeed started his pontificate with a clear sign: constant movement towards the Other was his central theological position. Pope Francis complemented his central position towards others in the peripheries by assuming Paul VI’s ideas of progress and development in Populorum Progressio as his personal manifesto.⁵ As a result of such manifesto, Pope Francis spoke of the plausibility of a contemporary better world in dialogue: A better world will come about only if attention is first paid to individuals; if human promotion is integral, taking account of every dimension of the person, including the spiritual; if no one is neglected, including the poor, the sick, prisoners, the needy and the stranger (cf. Mt 25:31–46); if we can prove capable of leaving behind a throwaway culture and embracing one of encounter and acceptance.⁶

Papal journeys outside Italy became a common occurrence since the time of Paul VI, who availing himself of the possibilities of a developing air commercial transport, visited Colombia for the Eucharistic Congress and the opening of the Second General Meeting of Latin American Bishops in Medellin. On the same year, 1968, Paul VI visited Uganda for the canonisation of the Ugandan martyrs. Both journeys marked a new understanding of the papacy as existing to affirm the life of Catholic communities outside Europe and to strengthen diplomatic ties between the Vatican and countries that maintained diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The Vatican State, founded in 1929 following the signing of the Lateran Pacts between the Holy See and Italy on 11 February 1929, and ratified on 7 June 1929, is a functioning contemporary state with ministries and with ambassadors (Apostolic Nuncios) throughout the world. John Paul II stressed the importance of papal visits to other states during his 25 years of pontificate. Pope Francis provided a continuity to such visits by choosing to visit countries in which the Vatican had been particularly involved through processes of mediation, peace, and reconciliation, as well as countries where a minority Catholic population needed affirmation within interfaith dialogue. The visit to Cuba in 2015, for example, strengthened new horizons of cooperation between Cuba and the United States as well as providing the first working meeting and mutual cooperation between a Pope and the Archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church (elected 1991), since the split of the Catholic Church into East and West in 1056.⁷ For example, in 2017 Pope Francis decided to visit Myanmar with countless requests to go and find out what was happening to the Rohingya. Before such visit, the Pope had made ten apostolic visits outside Europe, with a visit to Chile and Peru (January 2018) following his visit to Myanmar.⁸

A papal visit is a complex, challenging, and, inevitably, large-scale event and requires intense preparation in advance because there are many aspects to be looked at, including security, health, luggage, speeches, and even presents that need to be prepared and given by the Pope during his visits. The Pope and his delegation fly out of Italy in Alitalia, and he is usually transported from country to country by the national airline of the state he is visiting. Speeches that constitute the main preparation of a papal visit comprise a mixture of historical issues to be remembered and of new issues that are aired in public and usually discussed over a period after the papal visit. Thus, Pope Francis is aware that whatever he is going to say during a visit could mark diplomatic relations between the state he is visiting and the Vatican in the future. At the same time, the affirmation of Catholics and other faiths within a country is of the essence within a papal visit as well as the delivery of a clear public teaching on issues that could be contextually central to relations with the Vatican. Thus, in the case of the visit to Myanmar (2017), the eyes of the global media were set on the moment when Pope Francis addressed the government of Myanmar wondering if he was going to mention the Rohingya by name in public. He did not, and the media declared this a papal failure. Pope Francis decided not to mention the Rohingya, as he told journalists on his way back to the Vatican, as not to ‘slam the door’ on the face of his hosts. However, he was satisfied that in his private meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s powerful military chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, he had been heard. Pope Francis had defined a papal visit during his first journey outside Europe, to Brazil, when he said that a papal visit was for the good of society, the good of young people, and the good of the elderly.

It is a fact that most countries in the world have diplomatic relations with the Holy See and that heads of state regularly visit the Vatican to discuss matters of common interest with the Pope. Thus, when the Pope decides to visit another state, it is for serious and pressing reasons. For example, Pope Francis’ visit to the United States was a visit aimed at the affirmation of the Catholic communities after the scandals of child abuse, amid major discussions on the treatment of refugees, within ongoing racial and religious divisions, and after the opening of diplomatic conversations between the United States and Cuba. For the Pope cannot arrive in another country without the consent of the host government, and therefore common issues of interest are quickly established, and permissions granted either for a state visit, an apostolic visit, or a pastoral visit.

Journey to Lampedusa

Pope Francis’ first papal visit was to Lampedusa, the island in southern Italy where so many boats sank, and migrants died, trying to reach the safety and protection of Italy and of the European Union.⁹ Many of those migrants did not reach the point whereby according to the Dublin Protocol they needed to claim asylum at the first point of entry into the European Union. Pope Francis had reacted as many times he did with his own agenda rather than a present agenda, as he read reports on those migrants dying at sea. He could relate very closely to such experience of migration as his paternal grandparents had left Italy for Argentina with their six children looking for better opportunities. They had nearly died at sea as the ship they were initially booked in for the passage to Argentina, the Principessa Mafalda, sank.¹⁰ There at Lampedusa, on the 8th of July 2013, Pope Francis prayed together with Patriarch Bartholomew for those who had lost their lives during the perilous journey, and greeted the many immigrants who attended the public Eucharist. The common humanity present at Lampedusa was not only human but also Christian as African immigrants started filling pews in parishes and churches, having sought employment caring for the elderly and filling jobs that had been avoided by young Italians.

For Pope Francis, and as outlined in the sixth anniversary of his visit to Lampedusa, ‘migrants are the symbol of all those rejected by society’.¹¹ On the seventh anniversary of that memorable manifesto at the start of his pontificate Pope Francis, also confined by the pandemic in Rome, celebrated the Eucharist at Santa Marta together with health workers but making a clear point about the significance of such anniversary within a period of pandemic in the world. Furthermore, he remembered the conversations and narratives of prison and oppression the migrants had spoken of in Lampedusa.¹² In his homily, Pope Francis remembered his words concerning ‘the globalization of indifference’ when at Lampedusa he told those present that ‘in this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!’¹³ However, in that search for a personal encounter with the Lord, ‘the encounter with the other is also an encounter with Christ’ for ‘he is the one knocking in our door, hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned; he is the one seeking an encounter with us, asking our help, asking to come ashore’ (cf. Mt. 25:40).¹⁴

It could be argued that the interfaith journey and the deep friendship between Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew started with such public display of concern for humanity in Lampedusa and continued during the seven years that followed. In every journey and every interaction with European leaders during those years after Lampedusa, Pope Francis stressed the demands of welcoming a suffering humanity to European shores during times in which suffering, war, and death surrounded such migrants’ journeys. Welcoming them was not only an obligation under international law but an act of salvation welcoming them to the global Eucharistic celebration.¹⁵ In 2013, Pope Francis, together with Patriarch Bartholomew, committed a wreath to the sea in memory of those who lost their lives at sea trying to make the crossing from Africa and the Middle East to Europe. In my African lectures at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Louvain, I opened such lectures with a reflection on the point of encounter between Africa and Europe. Africans are buried where they came from so that home is the place of a lineage, of ancestors, of a village that maybe many Africans have never lived in. The graveyards at the sea, made of thousands of migrants who attempted the crossing, unite Africa and Europe. The rescue boats of several European volunteer organisations are made of people who do not ask a political-border question about papers and rights, but they provide that hand of humanity in times of distress. The boats of migrants are not dissimilar of cargo boats of slaves who have entrusted their lives, in desperation of love for their families, to selfish human beings who manage to fill their boats with whoever wants to pay with disastrous consequences. However, unlike the boats of slavery and the slave trade, this is our chance to free them and to welcome them because they are the Christ disembarking in Europe. The borders of Europe and the neat borders for immigration have become an impediment and a challenge not only to a universal humanity but also to a European-centred social doctrine of the Church.¹⁶

That exchange between the desperate poor, the carriers who profit by death, and the European states that receive them was deeply highlighted by Pope Francis’ presence in the island of Lampedusa.¹⁷ In the words of Tina Catania, Pope Francis made those immigrants visible within a Lampedusa that sits geographically at Italy’s social margins.¹⁸ Indeed, Pope Francis managed to unite the very Catholic sense of aiding migrants with discourses on religion in the field of international relations where religious and nonreligious actors respond to a humanitarian challenge.¹⁹ It was the first journey away from Rome and a clear public sign of where the ‘the boat of Peter’ was going; it was not improvisation, but, according to Paulina Guzik, refugees and migrants constitute the core and trademark of Francis’ pontificate.²⁰ The framework of synodality is clearly reflected in the first long journey towards others when Pope Francis recalls while celebrating the Eucharist with host Italians and migrants, God’s question to Cain who had killed his brother: ‘Cain, where is your brother?’ For Pope Francis, ‘the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! In the Gospel we have heard the crying, the wailing, the great lamentation: “Rachel weeps for her children … because they are no more”’.²¹ And Pope Francis ends his address with the following powerful words: ‘Today too, Lord, we hear you asking: “Adam, where are you?” “where is the blood of your brother?”’²² The globalisation of indifference became the target for critiques against the markets and an economic system that was providing such framework of indifference being discussed by international articles on international finance.²³

Against the globalisation of indifference

The opposite of indifference for Pope Francis was always dialogue, and particularly interfaith dialogue. Interfaith dialogue on the part of Francis is a coming-out of a dialogue within the globalisation of indifference....