The Pope, the Public, and International Relations: Postsecular Transformations [1st ed.] 9783030461065, 9783030461072

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
The Holy See, Public Spheres and Postsecular Transformations of International Relations: An Introduction (Mariano P. Barbato)....Pages 1-22
Front Matter ....Pages 23-23
Papal Diplomacy and the Rise of @pontifex (Chiara De Franco)....Pages 25-43
The “Media Pope” as a Challenger of Socialism: Pope John Paul II’s First Trip to Poland (Frank Bösch)....Pages 45-61
“I Put No Stock in Consensus”: The Young Pope and the Progressive/Conservative Cleavage in Filmic Narrations of Papal Power (Melanie Barbato)....Pages 63-77
Front Matter ....Pages 79-79
The Holy See’s Vision of an Abrahamic Middle East: Islam, Israel, and Oriental Churches (Mariano P. Barbato)....Pages 81-96
Papal Presence in East and South Asia: China, India and Beyond (Jörg Friedrichs)....Pages 97-117
Thought and Pilgrimage: Polish Heritage of St. John Paul II (Ryszard Zajączkowski)....Pages 119-132
Spectacle and Power: Sites and Spaces of Papal Visits in Spain (Rubén C. Lois González, Belén Castro-Fernández)....Pages 133-150
Front Matter ....Pages 151-151
Transatlantic Solidarities: Ultramontanism and Papal Mobilization in Latin America (Francisco Javier Ramón Solans)....Pages 153-169
Holy Alliance? The Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and the Holy See (Tassilo Wanner)....Pages 171-188
The Holy See as Hybrid Actor: Religion in International, Transnational, and World Society (Katharina McLarren, Bernhard Stahl)....Pages 189-201
Back Matter ....Pages 203-209

Citation preview

CULTURE AND RELIGION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The Pope, the Public, and International Relations Postsecular Transformations Edited by Mariano P. Barbato

Culture and Religion in International Relations

Series Editor Yosef Lapid Department of Government New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM, USA

Looking at how religion and culture interact with and affect international relations, this series deals with both theory and case studies.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14946

Mariano P. Barbato Editor

The Pope, the Public, and International Relations Postsecular Transformations

Editor Mariano P. Barbato Center for Religion and Modernity University of Münster Münster, Germany

Culture and Religion in International Relations ISBN 978-3-030-46106-5 ISBN 978-3-030-46107-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: luminous/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

The volume is the fruit of the efforts of many people who supported and contributed to the project Legions of the Pope: A Case Study in Social and Political Transformation. I can only mention a few but would like to express my gratitude to all of them. Most of the chapters started their life as conference papers presented at the Popes on the Rise! Conference in March 2017, which was held at the Roman Institute of the Görres Society at the Campo Santo Teutonico in Rome, very close to the Vatican. I would like to thank in particular Prof. Stefan Heid, Director of the Roman Institute, who was a wonderful host and co-organizer. Many thanks to all the supporters and contributors who turned the conference into an impressive event. I would like to mention in particular my colleagues at the Center for Religion and Modernity of the University of Munster who supported the project, the conference, and the book. A special thanks goes to Johannes Löffler for his excellent assistance. The conference took place in the same week when, for the first time, the heads of governments of the European Union met jointly with the pontiff. This coincidence can be taken as a sign that the ongoing postsecular transformations of the International and the Public are, indeed, worth a longer and more focused look. I thank all the presenters at the conference and those who joined later for their contributions. Conference and project have been generously funded by the German Research Foundation (426657443, 288978882). I am very thankful for v

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

this support. Many thanks also to the Palgrave editors Anca Pusca and Katelyn Zingg and the series editors Fritz Kratochwil and Yosef Lapid for including our manuscript in the Palgrave series Culture and Religion in International Relations. Many people read and discussed the papers on various occasions. Many thanks to all of them, in particular to the two anonymous peer reviewers for their very supportive comments. Errors are, of course, still mine. Münster, Germany January 2020

Mariano P. Barbato

Praise for The Pope, the Public, and International Relations

“‘The Papacy’ and ‘modernity’ are two terms that rarely intersect in international relations, but it will be impossible to ignore the former’s impact on the latter—and vice versa—after reading this fascinating book. Through multiple forms of intertextual analysis, from a stroll through Paris to the Pope’s Twitter feed to examinations of individual Popes and the Papacy’s impact in radically different parts of the world, this book reconfigures our conceptions of time and space to foreground the dynamic nature of Papal politics in contemporary world politics.” —Cecilia M. Lynch, Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA “This is not the first IR work paying attention to the Holy See. None, however, matches this volume, edited by one of the most promising IR scholars of his generation, Marian Barbato. The volume is multidisciplinary, not ‘monochrome,’ but very colorful with contributors from many countries with the background not just in IR or political science but, in the humanities, including among other a philosopher, an art historian, scholar of religion, literary scholar. Barbato begins by taking you for a walk through Paris, the city that rose during the long–and for modern international relations pivotal–19th century to the capital of secular nationalism showing the undeniable and enduring entanglements of the public, religion, and world affairs. The multidisciplinary tesserae the contributors put together into a mosaic is an alternative to the foundational IR narrative excluding or vii

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PRAISE FOR THE POPE, THE PUBLIC, AND INTERNATIONAL …

playing down religion. You are invited to re-think Western history; you are led to consider new perspectives on the global transformation. The Holy See is a ‘hybrid actor’ on the world scene, merging religious and political but also international and transnational elements. In the uncertain fluid 21st century, with the use of media technology, there may be others.” —Vendulka Kubalkova, University of Miami, Florida, USA

Contents

1

The Holy See, Public Spheres and Postsecular Transformations of International Relations: An Introduction Mariano P. Barbato

Part I

Media Formats

2

Papal Diplomacy and the Rise of @pontifex Chiara De Franco

3

The “Media Pope” as a Challenger of Socialism: Pope John Paul II’s First Trip to Poland Frank Bösch

4

1

“I Put No Stock in Consensus”: The Young Pope and the Progressive/Conservative Cleavage in Filmic Narrations of Papal Power Melanie Barbato

25

45

63

ix

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CONTENTS

Part II 5

6

7

8

The Holy See’s Vision of an Abrahamic Middle East: Islam, Israel, and Oriental Churches Mariano P. Barbato

81

Papal Presence in East and South Asia: China, India and Beyond Jörg Friedrichs

97

Thought and Pilgrimage: Polish Heritage of St. John Paul II Ryszard Zaj˛aczkowski

119

Spectacle and Power: Sites and Spaces of Papal Visits in Spain Rubén C. Lois González and Belén Castro-Fernández

133

Part III 9

10

11

Geopolitical Stages

Global Transformation

Transatlantic Solidarities: Ultramontanism and Papal Mobilization in Latin America Francisco Javier Ramón Solans

153

Holy Alliance? The Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and the Holy See Tassilo Wanner

171

The Holy See as Hybrid Actor: Religion in International, Transnational, and World Society Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl

189

Index

203

Notes on Contributors

Mariano P. Barbato is Professor for Political Science at the University of Passau and Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation at the Center for Religion and Modernity, University of Munster (426657443, 288978882). His articles appeared in journals such as Millennium, Review of International Politics, Journal of International Relations and Development, and European Political Science Review. He coedited the Review of Faith and International Affairs special issue on the Holy See and is author and editor of several books, including Pilgrimage, Politics, and International Relations: Religious Semantics for World Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2012). Melanie Barbato holds a doctorate in Indology and Religious Studies from LMU Munich. She is based at the University of Munster, where she is researching the involvement of the Vatican and the World Council of Churches in Hindu–Christian relations (DFG project 411280951). She has co-edited the book Wege zum digitalen Papsttum: Der Vatikan im Wandel medialer Öffentlichkeit (2018). Frank Bösch is Director of the Leibniz-Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam and Professor of European Twentieth Century History at the University of Potsdam. He is author of several books, including Media and Historical Change (2015), and Zeitenwende 1979 (2019).

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Belén Castro-Fernández is Lecturer in Didactics of Social Sciences and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of Santiago. She earned a doctorate in Art History with a work on historicist restorations on the Camino de Santiago and has published in various international journals on the subject of contemporary pilgrimages. Chiara De Franco is Associate Professor in International Relations and Deputy Head of the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. She is the author of Media Power and the Transformation of War (2012) and Warning about War: Conflict, Persuasion, and Foreign Policy (2019). Jörg Friedrichs (Dr. Phil., LMU Munich) is Associate Professor of Politics at the Department of International Development and Official Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford. His latest book is on HinduMuslim Relations: What Europe Might Learn from India (2018). He has also worked on Muslim minorities and their relations with nonMuslim majorities in China and England. His articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as International Organization, International Theory, Third World Studies, and Philosophical Psychology. Rubén C. Lois González is Professor of Geography at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and Vice President of the International Geographical Union (IGU/UGI). He has published a study on peregrinations and Cultural Geography in journals such as Tourism Geographies, Tourism Management Perspectives, Culture and Religion, Mobilities and Gender, and Place and Culture. Katharina McLarren is currently the Deputy Director of the FrankenAkademie in Bavaria. She previously worked as researcher and lecturer at the University of Passau, focusing on religion in IR theories and FPA. She holds a B.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and an M.A. in Governance and Public Policy from the University of Passau and is pursuing her Ph.D. in International Relations. Francisco Javier Ramón Solans is Juan de la Cierva Researcher at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Zaragoza and the University of Paris 8, and has been a research fellow in France, the United States, and Germany. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Annales HSS, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, Politics, Religion & Ideology,

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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Hispania, and Ayer. He is the author of La Virgen del Pilar dice… Usos políticos y nacionales de un culto mariano en la España contemporánea (2014) and he has co-edited with Roberto Di Stefano, Marian Devotions, Political Mobilization, and Nationalism in Europe and America (2016). Bernhard Stahl (Ph.D) is Professor of International Politics and currently Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Passau. From 2009 to 2011 he was Senior Lecturer in an M.A. program for Palestinian, Israeli, and Jordanian students at the University of Düsseldorf. His research areas cover European foreign policy (German, French, and EU in particular), identity theory, and comparative regionalism. Recent publications examine domestic legitimation of military intervention and identity-related problems in the accession process as well as the phenomenon of “silencing” of mass atrocities. Tassilo Wanner is the VP Global Public & Regulatory Affairs of Lilium, the global technology leader in the newly evolving air taxi industry. Prior to joining Lilium, he served as a senior manager at the strategy consultancy McKinsey & Company, where he focused on client projects in the areas of strategy, organization, and change management. Tassilo Wanner had started his professional career in different political planning and strategic communication roles for the parliamentary leadership in the German Bundestag as well as for the German Federal Minister of the Interior in Berlin. He studied at LMU Munich and Georgetown University, and earned a doctorate in political science and modern history. Ryszard Zaj˛aczkowski is a literary scholar and philosopher from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. In the years 1997–1999, he was a lecturer at the Catholic University of Eichstätt and a scholarship holder at the American universities of Yale (2005) and Harvard (2011), as well as at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (2015). He is the author of five monographs as well as many articles devoted to nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, editor, contributing editor of the book series The Literary Dimension of Culture, publicist, and translator of more than a hundred books.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4

@HolySeePress’ most retweeted users (Source Author’s own creation) @HolySeePress’ most used hashtags (Source Author’s own creation) Users most mentioned by @pontifex (Source Author’s own creation) @pontifex’s most used hashtags (Source Author’s own creation)

34 35 35 36

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CHAPTER 1

The Holy See, Public Spheres and Postsecular Transformations of International Relations: An Introduction Mariano P. Barbato

Scholars usually conceptualize international relations as being dominated by secular and sovereign nation states that contain an internal public sphere with specific arrangements for religious communities and individual believers, too.1 In doing so, they reflect, maybe too uncritically, the political project of state building first in the Western, and later in the post-colonial, world. The state project seemed to replace the old networks of towns and empires, sometimes chaotic, certainly full of nooks and crannies, that grew not only around the market place or the palace, but also around the temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques. Instead, like the grid plan of urban planning, a new international checkerboard was imagined which allowed only nation states, albeit differentiated in power, to act and play.

M. P. Barbato (B) Center for Religion and Modernity, University of Münster, Münster, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_1

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M. P. BARBATO

It is safe to say that, from the European Reformation onwards, the rise of the states increasingly pushed the Holy See from the center of medieval politics to the fringes of the state system. Usually, this displacement of the papacy from politics and publics is applauded as a progressive step, even from within the Roman Church. Given the dark side of the entanglement of the papacy with politics, this perspective has its points. However, the story could also be told in a different way. The modern grid plan of politics could be understood as a reaction to the astonishing rise of the papal actor in the public sphere, which managed to institutionalize the revolutionary impulse of the so-called Axial Age2 to free spiritual intellectuals from the domination of warrior lords. From this perspective, the papacy played a key role in establishing an institutionally protected public space, beyond kin, tribe, and nation. It is perhaps risky to call Jürgen Habermas as a witness for this thesis, as he is still willing to stress the merits of later secularization processes.3 However, his seminal history of philosophy, in which the “papal revolution”4 of the eleventh century echoes the axial revolution, opens up the possibility of thinking in this direction.5 A new space emerged when priests, prophets and philosophers no longer restricted their role to that of a critical counselor to the prince or a disputing scholar among scholars, but instead started to understand themselves as facilitators in their own right for the poor and illiterate masses. In this new re-telling of the story, the pope and his clergy can be seen as pioneering a full-scale operation to reach out to the masses.6 The point is not to frame the pope as a liberation theologian who leads the crowd in the uprising against the oppressor. Instead, a case could be made that the pope’s claim to independence and supremacy based on theological doctrine and canon law secured and enlarged the space of rules and deliberation beyond the arbitrariness of the noble warrior.7 The papal reforms inspired by Cluny and culminating in the papal revolution of 1075 focused on three points. A precondition was the presence of institutionalized intellectuals, an independent elite of celibate clerics who had not bought their ministry for the sake of the sinecure, but had been chosen to fulfil the mission. The main issue was papal supremacy over the emperor, which stripped all secular rule—for king and princes cannot claim what the emperor does not have—of direct religious legitimacy. In effect, the juridical system of canon law, with the pope as last resort, absorbed the Cluniac inspired Peace and Truce Movement to end noble feud.8

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3

The papacy was not able to pacify Europe by creating a public space of deliberation and law, but Habermas seems to see papal efforts in that direction as being successful.9 He seems to acknowledge the pope as a forerunner and comrade for those who argue today for a cosmopolitan public sphere. Such a perspective might answer the question of why the papacy managed to survive and flourish under the conditions of an increasingly open, transnational, and global public sphere: the papacy is flourishing in a re-cultivated habitat. This re-thinking of Western history provides an alternative to the wellestablished narrative of the structural transformation of the public, also endorsed by Habermas.10 The established narrative tells the formation of the nation state as a secular enterprise that was enabled by a structural transformation of the public sphere. According to this version, the religious representation of legitimate power was replaced, incrementally and with revolutionary ruptures, by discursive debates and their recourse to reason. National identity, not religious belonging, was created and backed by mass mobilization.11 This narrative has long been accepted almost universally. While the emergence of a global market, transnational migrant communities, and cosmopolitan circles of communication occurred simultaneously with the construction of the nation state, which was never the only actor, it took some time for the Westphalian Myth and the Hobbesian image of the Leviathan to lose some of their persuasive power. Now, however, in a world in which the twitter messages of politicians are partly replacing the international channels of diplomacy, and in which religious extremists can recruit foreign fighters globally for an instant nation-building project based on a fusion of archaic cruelty and hypermodern communication,12 there is an enormous and still growing body of literature discussing the overlaps and mergers of the public and the international.13 The public and political power of religion within these transformations is often understood as a reactionary force, an unpleasant but limited reaction to progress, in which the power of identity stands up against the network society.14 While this picture has its points, it is certainly biased and insufficient. Even the Islamic State was part of the network society, and the Holy See offers its own vision of universal progress.15 Despite hostile ruptures and partisan contestations, religion in general and the Holy See in particular have always been part of the transformations of the public and of international relations. The Holy See is not returning from exile, where the papacy has supposedly been since the Peace of Westphalia.

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M. P. BARBATO

The rise of the pope in public16 is not necessarily part of a “neo-mediaeval form of universal political order”,17 as the papacy does not belong to the European medieval period alone. While the Holy See certainly had its ups and downs on the diplomatic level and in public opinion, and the particulars were always subject to change, modernity also saw the constant entanglement of the Holy See, the public, and the international. This might be illustrated by a walk through the city that became the capital of secular nationalism during the long—and, for modern international relations, pivotal—nineteenth century.18

A Walk with the Pope Through Paris Paris is the capital of the French Revolution. It is certainly not known for its devotion to the pope. Looking in the streets and squares of Paris for historical and recent papal traces might therefore make a good starting point for understanding how the public, religion, and world affairs are entangled. As secularization theory has told us, religious relicts from a distant past are reshaped or become an object of museification in a modernizing world. However, in the twenty-first century, entanglements of public, politics, international relations, and religion are still alive. Walking through Paris on a spring day at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, a little like Walter Benjamin a hundred years before, but discovering papal traces in the midst of global modernity, can be a diverting experience with unexpected discoveries. When the Cathedral of Notre Dame succumbed to flames on the Monday of Passion Week in 2019, world leaders and an affected global public looked through the dramatically untiled roof at the sculpture of the pietà. While Christianity in France and Western Europe is in decline, Christian cultural codes are still entangled with politics and publics. These entanglements can trigger high emotions today as they did 200 years ago, when, only decades after the iconoclastic storm of the French Revolution, Victor Hugo mobilized the French public for the derelict building with his novel Notre Dame de Paris . But it is not Notre Dame alone that can tell the story of the entanglements of religion, the public, and international relations. The vast and open square in front of the cathedral does not date back to the same time as the masterpiece of medieval art itself, which was built by the religious and political elites of European feudalism and their craftsmen and artists. The star architect and urban planner of Napoleon

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5

III, Baron Haussmann, who created with his boulevards, view axes and squares the modern image of Paris, had to tear down a whole quarter to construct this place as the modern center of Paris and France. This new center was created in front of the cathedral that saw feudal funerals and masses but also the vandalism of the French Revolution and the cult of reason, mockingly worshiping a prostitute on the altar, as well as the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor, in which Pope Pius VI served only as an extra in the play. To testify the prominence and importance of the place, it was chosen as the location for the kilomètre zero, the reference point of all distance indications to Paris of the revolutionary metric system, which replaced previous units of measurements in continental Europe. All distance markers in France showing the way to Paris point in the direction of this square. Despite public disputes and discussions, the socialist (and gay) mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, managed to mobilize a majority in the city assembly in 2006 to rename the square after Pope John Paul II.19 The center of Paris and France has since then been called “Place de Jean Paul II”. Less than a decade later, the Polish Mission of Paris asked permission to erect a statue of John Paul II, hands folded in prayer, which had been created and donated by the Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli to honor the man who had helped liberate millions of people from Communist rule.20 A public dispute arose over a suitable location for the statue, and the plan also met resistance from the city administration. Finally, the new, but still socialist, mayor, Anne Hidalgo, allowed the statue to be placed in the small park between Notre Dame and the river Seine. The park was also already named after a pope: John XXIII.21 Shortly before the erection of the papal statue in Paris, these two popes were canonized in Rome on the same day by their successor, Pope Francis. An international crowd of more than a million people celebrated the sanctification and filled the streets and bridges from St. Peter’s, where world leaders and diplomats gathered, to Castel Sant’Angelo and beyond, while the event was broadcast and transmitted by mass and social media to a global audience. John Paul II’s funeral saw even more people and heads of states in Rome, with estimates ranging from two to four million people. The illustrious list of attendees included 17 kings, queens and princes, three crown princes, 57 heads of state, 28 heads of government, twelve foreign ministers, a total of 157 national delegations, 14 delegations from international organizations, and 14 emissaries from other religions.22

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But back to the flaneur in Paris and the statue of John Paul II there. The pedestal of the papal statue deserves a closer look. The pope’s name and dates on the front as well as the famous quote from his first papal address about fearlessness and openness to God on the back might be expected, but the quotes on the left and right side of the pedestal sound more like a political program. Taken from the 2003 New Year address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See during the buildup to the Iraq invasion that had been opposed by the pope, the quote, there in French, and here in the official English translation, says: “‘NO TO WAR’! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity”.23 The other quote is the motto of the annual peace message of January 2002, months after 9/11 and shortly after the initially successful campaign of the invasion of Afghanistan: “No Peace Without Justice–No Justice Without Forgiveness”.24 Across the river Seine, a short walking distance from the statue, the flaneur can reach the Collège des Bernardins, where John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, gave an address in 2008 to representatives from the “world of culture”, including the minister of culture and two former French presidents, in which he claimed that the search and longing for God was the foundation of culture, and applied the rules of Biblical exegesis to public discourse: With the word of Spirit and of freedom, a further horizon opens up, but at the same time a clear limit is placed upon arbitrariness and subjectivity, which unequivocally binds both the individual and the community and brings about a new, higher obligation than that of the letter: namely, the obligation of insight and love. This tension between obligation and freedom, which extends far beyond the literary problem of scriptural exegesis, has also determined the thinking and acting of monasticism and has deeply marked Western culture. This tension presents itself anew as a challenge for our own generation as we face two poles: on the one hand, subjective arbitrariness, and on the other, fundamentalist fanaticism. It would be a disaster if today’s European culture could only conceive freedom as absence of obligation, which would inevitably play into the hands of fanaticism and arbitrariness. Absence of obligation and arbitrariness do not signify freedom, but its destruction.25

The long papal program of obliging rulers to adopt a public discourse of faith and reason in order to secure a spiritually embedded freedom against arbitrary and fanatical decision-making is still in effect.

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Past and current entanglements of popes and politics seemed to be concentrated on the Ile de France and across the river Seine. An equestrian statue of Charlemagne, the Frankish king who was coronated by Pope Leo III in 800 as the first Germanic emperor, thereby laying the foundations of the alliance and tensions between popes, emperors, and French kings for the European Middle Ages, was placed in front of the Notre Dame in 1882. After its presentation at the World Exhibition in 1878, alongside the head of New York’s Lady Liberty, the statue also caused some heated discussions before it was placed in front of the cathedral, where it has remained ever since. The emperor and the pope cannot see each other. John Paul II looks towards the river and Charlemagne is riding in the opposite direction, towards the former city palace of the French kings. But, for the flaneur, it is only a two-minute walk, and one that links the history of popes and emperors. Heading in the same direction as the emperor, the next landmark to the right is Saint Chapelle. Saint Louis, the medieval model king, commissioned the building in 1244 to harbor his most precious investments, the passion relics of Christ, which he had purchased from the Latin prince of Constantinople to pay his Venetian debts. Like most of France’s prominent relicts, they were destroyed by the revolutionaries—with the exception of the rescued crown of thorns. Today, Saint Chapelle is a museum, presenting the stained-glass beauty of its windows, at least one third original and the other post-revolutionary renovations of the nineteenth century, and the statue of its builder with chopped-off hands—an example of a religious monarchy transformed into a secular republic. Crossing the bridge over the river, the picture changes again. The flaneur reaches the spectacular Fontaine St. Michel, created in 1860 as part of Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris to mark the beginning of a new boulevard. The Archangel Michael, commander of the heavenly host and patron saint of empire and church,26 has defeated Lucifer and now greets Charlemagne and the pope across the river. A decade after the construction of the Fontaine St. Michel, Leo XIII, a pope under political pressure from various sides, sought for ways to mobilize worldly and other-worldly supporters, and decreed that a prayer be made to the Archangel after mass. Its martial timbre made it popular: “St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle!” Masses of pilgrims from Europe but also the Americas flocked, then as today, to Rome in support of the public and political role of the popes.

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Going down the lively Boul’Mich, the flaneur walks through the Quartier Latin, the quarter of the Latin-speaking scholars who gathered here from all over medieval Europe, among them many great historical figures, including St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Ignatius of Loyola. After a short walk, the flaneur passes the National Museum of the Middle Ages, housed in the former residence of the abbots of Cluny, who were probably the most powerful abbots of the European medieval period. The next impressive building is La Sorbonne, or more precisely its chapel façade. The impact that the theologians of the previous Collège de Sorbonne had on Christian thinking was so great that the name became synonymous for all scholars at the University of Paris. The name survived all revolutions and transformations as a brand for higher education. On the lively square in front of the university stands a small statue of Auguste Comte, who founded sociology as a substitute for theology and who had in vain asked the papacy to join forces in establishing a new religion for modernity. Nothing on the square reminds us today either of the medieval scholars or the Marxist students and their occupation of the university in the unrests of May 1968. The third and last building that the interested flaneur cannot ignore is the Pantheon, the mausoleum for national heroes of the French Republic, like Voltaire, Rousseau and Zola. It was originally the church that housed the Patron Saint of Paris, Saint Genevieve. The legendary woman of the fifth century managed to defend Paris against the Huns by inspiring the women to perpetual prayer. She remained popular enough throughout the ages for a new and triumphant church for her remains to have been erected only decades before the French Revolution. Her decline was steep, however. The revolutionaries destroyed her relicts, at least partly, and smelted her sarcophagus before transforming her church into a revolutionary shrine. This walk down Boulevard Saint Michel confirms what secularization theory tells us. The religious past of Western civilization was consumed by the new enlightened spirit of Voltaire and Rousseau, whose bodies replaced the relicts of the saints. Religion disentangled from politics left the public square and faded away into the niches of the private life of some. If we remember the encounters with emperors, angels, and popes along the way, we know, however, that this is only part of the picture. José Casanova showed in his seminal study how religious mobilization defended its role in the public square.27 Casanova argued that, while there has indeed been a separation of state and church on the political level, religion is still alive and kicking on the public level. Why has the papacy

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been successful? Looking at Casanova’s levels, one can see that the pope is indeed successful on the political and the public level, performing on the diplomatic stage of international relations and of transnational public spheres.28 If one looks at the numerous discussions inside the Catholic Church, however, the pope is less successful on the private level. Not too many Catholics, for instance, organize their sex lives around Saint Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae.29 Church attendance is in decline and polls about private beliefs in Western countries are, from a Christian point of view, devastating when self-declared Christians are not so sure whether Jesus is the Son of God and rose from the dead, or whether God created the universe. But why was the return of the archangel, the emperor, and the pope possible? Why is the pope nevertheless successful in public life and on the diplomatic level? How can the doctrinal faith of the pope spill over onto the public discourse in Paris and in world society? The city that masterminded revolutionary secularization might also add some pieces to the puzzle of desecularization.30 One answer could be found in a less prominent street in a walking distance of fifteen minutes, a few streets away from the Pantheon. The flaneur might not resist taking a detour through the Jardin de Luxembourg, where the Queens of France watch over the children playing with their vintage toy boats. A more direct way leads over Saint Sulpice at Rue Bonaparte, the seminar in which the revolutionary clerics Abbe Sieyès and Talleyrand were educated. The street is called Rue du Bac and its name stands for a Marian devotion in a backyard church of a nunnery. There occurred the first post-revolutionary Marian apparition, which was accepted by the pope as authentic and which was followed by many other apparitions like at Lourdes and Fatima. Marian apparitions with a public appeal, often entangled with political implications, if not directly aiming at political ends, are a modern mass phenomenon.31 In the apparitions of Rue du Bac, the Virgin revealed herself to a young nun, thereby linking Marian apparitions experienced as part of a monastic life to public apparitions experienced by lay seers. These lay seers, like in Lourdes and Fatima, were usually children or young people with little or no religious education in remote areas, which then became sites of mass pilgrimage due to the messages spread by the seers on behalf of the Virgin. Usually, these apparitions were initially suppressed by political authority, then accepted by the local clergy, and finally granted authenticity by the pope who is the final authority within the Catholic universe who can decide whether the Virgin Mary had actually appeared or not.

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In order to reach the pope, the apparition must have already attracted massive public interest. The apparition need not necessarily require the seer to have a saintly life, either before or after the apparition, but many of the seers have indeed been canonized. Examples are Catharine Labouré, the nun of Rue du Bac, and, most recently, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, the children of Fatima, who were canonized by Pope Francis in 2017. Decisive, however, is the backing by the masses, which shows not only their curiosity, but also that they have been publicly, and sometimes politically, influenced by the messages of the apparitions. The preconditions for an acceptable apparition are that nothing must be stated in the apparition message that stands against doctrinal norms, and that public miracles must have been witnessed. Beyond that, being in tune with the theological and political agenda of the pope is certainly an advantage. Bernadette Soubirous’ visions in Lourdes were approved after she could introduce the beautiful lady of her apparition to the local pastor as the Immaculate Conception. That traditional but contested title of the Virgin Mary, which at the time had just been granted dogmatic status by the pope, had already been associated with the apparition of Rue du Bac. Before the pope backs the apparitions, the apparitions back the pope. The masses who were interested in the apparition looked at the pope and expected his consent. Events, mobilizations, and the expectations of the masses, like those related to Marian apparitions, maintained the pope as a figure of public discourse. The apparition in Rue du Bac never reached the public uncontrolled. The nun told her confessor and later her superior of her experiences in 1830. She remained anonymous and dedicated her life to serving the poor until her death at an old age. What nevertheless made this the first modern apparition was the message that the public was told in a very specific way. The Virgin Mary not only consoled the nun, but asked her to distribute the image of the apparition imprinted on a medal. Billions of these medals showing the Virgin Mary have since been made in gold, silver and copper (and later in various other metals) and distributed across the world. The immediate and enormous success of the medal was caused by the Virgin Mary’s healing powers in the midst of the cholera epidemic of 1832, which soon gave the medal the name by which it became famous: Médaille Miraculeuse. Not medicine, science, or human agency attracted the hopes of the masses, but a miraculous medal. Monastery and Médaille became a hotspot of anti-secularism. Pope Gregory XVI as well

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as his successor Pius IX supported the production and distribution of the medal.32 Materializing and reproducing a vision on a medal on such a scale was only possible due to the industrial revolution that had reached France. France, and in particular Paris, was stripped during the revolution of its saintly relicts to which people had previously gone to pray for miracles, and was in dire need of new religious objects with a miraculous impact. The Virgin Mary and the industrial revolution gave back what the Jacobins and the political revolution had taken away. Two generations before Max Weber wrote about the disenchantment of the world, the reenchantment had already begun. The analytical frame “material religion” has been established to understand religion not only as doctrine, ideas, and faith, but also as a praxis that constitutes itself through spaces and objects.33 Such a perspective can help us understand how religion can flourish in the public of an industrialized and capitalist society that might have reservations towards arguments based on doctrinal faith in public discourse. Religion and the popes have also survived and flourished as part of the consumer culture. A ritual praxis that constitutes a belonging to a transnational community, beyond the obligations of the nation state, depends on an infrastructure that allows the pressing of medals but also pilgrimages to shrines and sacred sites. Technological capitalism offered the infrastructure for a leisure industry that impacted on religious and public life: “Protestants went on trains to the seaside, Catholics to light a candle in a holy place”.34 The reverse side of the Médaille Miraculeuse shows an M for Mary, a cross, and two hearts. The Sacred Hearts of Jesus Christ and the Immaculate Heart of Mary have a long history. The modern story again began with an apparition to a young French nun, Margaret Mary Alacoque, in Paray-le-Monial in 1673. The innovative message of the visionary Christ was to promote the veneration of the Sacred Heart as a devotional praxis for the masses. It took two centuries to become a widespread social and political phenomenon that not only distributed its image, but also impacted on the public and political formation of Catholics in modern Europe.35 The modern papal “ralliement” from the kings to the people originated here. An hour’s walk away from Rue du Bac is the most impressive church devoted to the Sacred Heart, which is on Montmartre, the sacred hill of Paris. It is where Paris’ first bishop, Saint Denis, was martyred. Ignatius of Loyola and his scholar friends built their pre-Jesuit community there. It

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has been famous since the nineteenth century for its artists and nightlife, but also for the church: Sacré Cœur.36 The construction of the church was decreed by the French national assembly of the Third Republic on 24 July 1873. The story of Sacré Cœur can serve as a kind of prism or ideal type to show the entanglements of the Holy See, the public, and the international sphere. In 1870, the regular and irregular Italian troops had reduced the Papal States to its Roman core. The final conquest to turn Rome into the capital of the new Italian state was only prevented by a transnational legion of Catholic volunteers37 and, crucially, by French troops. After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the French troops were relocated to the German front. Pius IX did not use his remaining troops but surrendered after a symbolic show of resistance to demonstrate that Rome was taken by force. In 1870, the Papal States ceased to exist. In the following year, the French Empire was defeated, too, and Paris saw the uprising and short reign of the Commune. Due to the French withdrawal from Rome, these two defeats were constructed and memorized as one, which boosted the Catholic revival in France in favor of the papal “prisoner in the Vatican”.38 The incoming bishop of Paris (his predecessor had been executed by the communards) launched the idea of a church of repentance for Paris. Public opinion supported the decision of the national assembly to build the church as a symbol of the national vow that the revival of France should also be a Catholic revival based on an alliance with the papacy. The Catholic revival was shipwrecked by the Dreyfus affair and, finally, in 1905, by the law on the separation of church and state, which established laicism as state doctrine. The construction of the Sacré Cœur continued despite growing resistance, and was completed in 1919. A perpetual adoration of the Holy Eucharist has been held at the shrine since 1885. In 1899, in preparation for the papal Holy Year of 1900 (the popes celebrate a regular Holy Year every 25 years to remember the incarnation and to grant a special indulgence), Pope Leo XIII consecrated the whole human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. Leo XIII was the pope who started modern Catholic social doctrine with his encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891). He also developed the mass mobilization for the public role of the papacy that had been initiated by his predecessor, Pius IX. The altarpiece of Sacré Cœur shows Leo XIII donating the whole globe to the Lord. A walk through the interior of the church, while in the center the adoration continues, passes various papal traces, among them

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relicts of Saint John Paul II and a mock gate, a remnant of the Extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy, decreed by Pope Francis for 2015/2016, symbolizing the mercy of God. The gate is decorated with a newer version of the Sacred Heart iconography, an image inspired by the Polish nun Faustyna Kowalska and promoted by John Paul II, which quickly gained the status of a global but also contested icon. Apart from its alleged classification as kitsch, opinion on the image is also divided because it links the mercy of God with a strong call for individual and public repentance and threats of punishment. John Paul II visited Paris twice. First, in 1980 to meet various political representatives and diverse groups in society. Notre Dame, Rue du Bac, and Sacré Cœur were key sites of his public encounter with the masses. The second visit was for the 12th World Youth Day in 1997, a festival of Catholic youth and friends initiated under the pontificate of John Paul II to mobilize young people and turn whole cities into a public stage for prayer, celebration, and papal preaching. Despite expectations that such a format would not work in a secularized city like Paris, 1.2 million young pilgrims gathered at the final mass in the field of the Longchamps racecourse, famous for its horse races but also the site of the 14 July military parade from 1880 to 1914 and the biggest public square in Paris. Public mass mobilization continues to maintain the pope’s public profile. Within the context of social and political change, mass mobilizations have continued to provide a public landscape in which the pope can appear and raise his public voice. That social mass base, which manifested itself even in the capital of the secular revolution, was strong enough to keep the pope, in the juridical garments of the Holy See, in the game of the society of states, too. The contributions in this volume will add examples from various interdisciplinary perspectives to illustrate this thesis. Before offering its empirical cases, the book should integrate at least briefly the Parisian panorama of the flaneur (or was she a pilgrim?) into a conceptual framework.

The Force of a Postsecular Public, the Pope, and International Relations Pierre Bourdieu differentiates four forms of accumulative and partially fungible capital: economic, cultural, social, and, last but certainly not least, symbolic capital, which is constituted by prestige and recognition.39 Those who lack one form of capital need more of the other to survive and

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flourish in the struggles for public dominance. As Bourdieu points out, the economic capital of the church, which is still an entrepreneur running schools, charitable institutions, and bureaucracies, cannot be neglected. The vandalism of the French Revolution, in addition to the expropriation of economic capital, understood, however, that culture is also a form of capital relevant to public and political power. The renovation of cultural heritage and the industrial production and distribution of sacred objects constructed and reconstructed a public sphere in which religion is still alive, even if faith is declining as a constant factor of political, public, and private life. Based on objectified cultural capital like buildings, art, and squares, but also smaller objects that the masses can possess individually like icons and medals, a religious habitus can survive, not necessarily as a comprehensive doctrine but in fragments, still important enough to inform a political and public practice and its social struggles. Grace Davie speaks of “vicarious religion” in order to link the disengaged Christian population with the cultural heritage and the practicing minority.40 In an urban landscape with cultural places and gatherings, social capital, which, in Robert D. Putnam’s terms, is sometimes bonding, sometimes bridging,41 is still available for religious people and their networks. Obviously, the pope is not only accepted within these networks, but is also able, as pontiff, to invest his social capital to help these networks flourish. Defending, regaining, and accumulating cultural and social capital helps the pope to maintain his public profile. The pope is able to mobilize the masses not necessarily for all Catholic doctrines but for the idea of the papacy as such. Ideas, as Bourdieu understood well, have to become an “idée-force”, an idea that is powerful enough to mobilize forces. An idea can be formulated as an argument, and the papacy is constantly involved in that business when the pope addresses all kinds of public topics. However, an idea has to become an “idée-force” to survive in the social struggles. Or, as Bourdieu formulates it: “A truthful idea can only be countered by a refutation, whereas an idée-force must be countered by another idée-force, which is capable of mobilizing a counter force, a counter manifestation”.42 The papacy was and is able to mobilize such a counter force, such a counter manifestation. The pope is able to mobilize pilgrims to come to St. Peter’s Square, but also to flock to the streets and squares of Paris or gather in Longchamp if he comes for a visit. Since 1964, when Paul VI restarted papal international traveling, the pope has embarked on 169 international journeys (until 2020: Paul VI, 9; John Paul II, 104; Benedict XVI, 24;

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Francis, 32). Almost everywhere, the pope has been able to mobilize the masses. In the struggles of modernity, there have been times and places where papal symbolic capital, papal prestige, has been devalued. But the papal idée-force, and also transport and communication technology, have enabled the pope to defend papal symbolic capital elsewhere and to regain it sometimes and in some places. The symbolic capital of the papacy is, like all symbolic capital, under pressure and contested, ridiculed or directly attacked, but, overall, the transformation of modernity has turned the pope into a charismatic leader rather than making him fade away. It is open to debate whether the power of an actor that rests on symbolic capital has to be formulated as symbolic violence (as Bourdieu understood it) or as soft power (as Joseph Nye put it).43 The soft-power approach is at least popular in the IR debate on the papacy.44 Obviously, Bourdieu’s concept of an idée-force undermines Habermas’ strict separation of communicative and strategic action. It confirms, however, the insight of the IR debate on Habermas’ thesis that communicative action is possible within a context of strategic action. The limited scope of all communicative action has been captured in Nicole Deitelhoff’s image of the “islands of persuasion”.45 Nevertheless, Habermas’ classical study of structural transformation, as well as his more recent concept of postsecular society, can help us understand the revival of the modern papacy. From a Habermasian perspective, religion and philosophy share (albeit at an abstract level) a cognitive common ground: a simultaneous interest in knowledge about the world as a whole and in the thinking and acting self within a social and historical community. This shared interest produces a discourse of speaking about humanity and addressing humans. Habermas thus justifies why he has devised his recent book on philosophy as an intertwined history of faith and knowledge.46 On this common ground, Habermas already encountered Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in Munich in 2004, shortly before Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI.47 While philosopher and pope disagreed on the concrete demarcation lines of who is in and who is out, they distinguished their common ground from strong naturalism, functionalism, and postmodernism (or, in Ratzinger’s terms, “relativism”), and also from fanaticism, which favors coercion and violence over argument and reason. An intertwined history of faith and knowledge, however, does not mean indistinguishable categories. Habermas positions himself between John Rawls’ reasonable overlapping consensus of communal worldviews and Karl Jasper’s philosophical faith. He insists on the Kantian intuition

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that the public use of one’s own reason is possible and desirable as an intersubjective practice of communication.48 When Habermas started his inquiry into faith and knowledge under the terms of a postsecular society in 2001, shortly after and as a response to 9/11, he positioned himself as a critic of an opaque and militant secularism.49 However, he was also keen to avoid becoming “an easy prey for theology”.50 Habermas was ready to open up the public reasoning for religiously informed and expressed arguments, but insisted on their translation into a secular language, which he saw as a precondition for an argument that could be expressed in the institutional setting of a parliament and become enforceable law. He stuck with his previous concept that a public sphere only emerged in earnest with the Enlightened Republic of Letters of the eighteenth century.51 The approach of the intertwined history of faith and knowledge can open up a new perspective. The history of the reasoning public seems to have started before the Age of Enlightenment. Not just the French Revolution of 1789, but also the “papal revolution” of 1075, were decisive for that development. The open question of the postsecular approach as to whether religion is a constitutive or a temporary element of the public discourse might be informed by the question of whether an actor like the pope was part of the public sphere not only a thousand years ago, but has always played a role in public and politics. Such an answer will also have an impact on the image of international relations as a domain of secular nation states alone. The Holy See is neither a state nor a nation, but nevertheless an active part of world affairs. Mobilized masses are the backbone of the papal role in international relations, but their effect on the Holy See’s position in the society of states does not only depend on the interaction between pope and people. The effect is transmitted by two crucial factors, the media and papal diplomats. The media transform the cheering and listening masses on a square into a transnational and global public, and make the political sphere aware of the papal audience. The papal diplomats, in the narrow sense of the curia and the nuncios, but also in the broader sense of a transnational clerical elite, including cardinals and bishops in particular, are the agents who turn the mass backing into a papal role on the diplomatic level, sometimes with concrete results, always by strengthening the public and political actorness of the papacy as the Holy See. How the interactions between masses, media, diplomats, and popes vary is the story of this book.

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The Structure of the Book A growing literature in IR and political science is paying attention to the Holy See as an international player that acts on various levels.52 Embarking on a multi- and interdisciplinary journey (half of the book’s chapters are written by IR scholars or political scientists, and the other half by authors with a background in the humanities), the book offers a fresh perspective by looking at these papal entanglements of the public and the international. The first part deals with the media; the second, with geopolitical spaces; and the third, with new perspectives on turning points in the global transformation since the nineteenth century. A public beyond a square is not possible without the media. Modern masses parade and fight on the streets if necessary, but prefer to sit on the sofa watching TV or communicating on social media platforms. The complex relationship of media, public, and politics in national, transnational, and global realms constantly change, also due to media technology and markets. By analyzing papal twitter activity from the perspective of classical and public diplomacy, the IR scholar Chiara De Franco opens up the panorama of the new media ecology. The historian Frank Bösch contributes a detailed study of a crucial media event for international politics: John Paul II’s first journey to Poland in 1979, which arguably meant the beginning of the end of communism in Europe. The media do not only mirror the reality of the public square, but also participate in the public struggles, also by fictional dramatization. As the scholar of religious studies Melanie Barbato shows, fiction and docufictions on the papacy nourish the public image of the pope, which is predominantly presented along the progressive/conservative cleavage. The impact of the delegation of the Holy See was so significant at the UN conferences in Cairo and Beijing that even critics were impressed, if not shocked. The pope speaks quite regularly at UN General Assemblies and increasingly before parliaments, most recently in 2015 when Pope Francis addressed a joint meeting of the United States Congress. However, the square, as Richard Sennett has insisted,53 is still an important stage for the public where the pictures of mass mobilization are taken that feed the media image of the pope as a powerful actor. As there is no global agora, the pope and his diplomats have to delve into the cultural backgrounds of specific public spheres. Not all of them open their squares to the papal pilgrim. The four case studies in the second part of the book

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shed some light on the geopolitical variations of the public. The political scientist Mariano Barbato focuses on the ambitious papal attempt to act as a facilitator of interreligious Abrahamic peace in the Middle East. Focusing on India and China, the political scientist Jörg Friedrichs warns the Holy See not to overrate the diplomatic sphere and nor to underestimate the long-lasting public culture. The literary scholar and philosopher Ryszard Zaj˛aczkowski offers an interpretation of the thinking of John Paul II from the perspective of the Polish culture of pilgrimage. The geographer Rubén C. Lois González and the art historian Belén CastroFernández present the cultural and political landscape that the pope has to take into account when visiting Spain. The third part presents three studies analyzing the Holy See at different turning points in the global transformations since the nineteenth century. One turning point for the papacy was certainly the fall of Rome in the Italian nation-building process. The historian Francisco Javier Ramón Solans offers a fresh look at this often-told story from a Latin American perspective. A transatlantic public sphere emerged in the nineteenth century due to the support of the contested public role of the papacy in Italy and Europe, which closely bound the South American continent to Rome. The election of an Argentinian pope has a longer historical background than the current rise of the Global South. Was the Cold War won by a “Holy Alliance” of the United States and the Holy See, as a cover story of Time magazine once claimed? The political scientist Tassilo Wanner presents an empirically rich study that shows that, although the claim of a holy alliance is an exaggeration, at least full diplomatic relations between Washington and the Vatican were established by the Reagan administration in the context of a close and confident cooperation between pope, president and their diplomats. The final chapter by two IR scholars, Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl, discusses the Holy See as a hybrid actor that merged religious and political, but also international and transnational, elements. The Holy See is not alone in this endeavor. By comparing the Holy See with the quite different but also hybrid actor Iran, and by looking at the interreligious and diplomatic relations of these two actors, they can show how significant hybridity is in the entanglements of the global public sphere.

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Notes 1. All major schools and approaches of International Relations agree upon that image. And those which developed early a global perspective, like Marxist world system theory, did not have religion on their list. IR theory still struggles to integrate religion, although the last few decades have seen a remarkable effort to overcome the secularist shortcomings of the discipline. For an introduction, see Jeffrey Haynes, An Introduction to International Relations and Religion (London: Routledge, 2014). For an approach which focuses on the continuity of religious and transnational actors’ involvement in world affairs, see, for instance: Cecelia Lynch, “Christian Ethics, Actors, and Diplomacy: Mediating Universalist Pretentions,” in Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 168–191. 2. The term Axial Age (Achsenzeit in the German original) was coined by Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ende der Geschichte (München: Piper, 1949), and has recently found a growing audience. See, for example, Hans Joas and Robert N. Bellah (eds.), The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012). 3. Jürgen Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 2 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019). 4. The term is Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s, Out of Revolution: The Autobiography of Western Man (Eugene: Wipf, 1969), 516–561; see Harold Bermans, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); see also Hauke Brunkhorst, “Die Verrechtlichung des Sakralen: Webers Protestantismusthese im Lichte der Studien Harold Bermans über die Bildung der westlichen Rechtstradition,” Leviathan, 25, 2 (1997): 241–250. 5. Jürgen Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 1 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019), 637–675. 6. Peter Heathen has a critical view of the papal empire, but he nevertheless acknowledges its interest in the masses and its revolutionary character. Peter Heathen, The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 349–404. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of the “slave moral” is a late echo of this transformation. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (London: Penguin, 2013). 8. Bermans, Law and Revolution. 9. Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 1, 637–675. 10. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).

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11. Benedict Anderson, The Imagined Community: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1981). 12. Maja Šimunjak and Alessandro Caliandro, “Twiplomacy in the Age of Donald Trump: Is the Diplomatic Code Changing?” The Information Society, 35, 1 (2019): 13–25; Mariano Barbato, Sinja Hantscher, and Markus Lederer, “Imagining Jihad,” Global Affairs, 2, 4 (2016): 419–429. 13. See, for example, from an English School perspective: Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power Values, and the Constitution of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Barry Buzan and Laust Schouenborg, Global International Society: A New Framework of Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 14. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Second Edition (Wiley: Chichester, 2010); Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity, Second Edition (Wiley: Chichester, 2010). 15. Mariano Barbato, “Keep the Faith: Progress, Social Justice and the Papacy,” Globalizations 14, 7 (2017): 1157–1171. 16. Mariano Barbato and Robert Joustra, “Introduction: Popes on the Rise,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 15, 4 (2017): 1–5. 17. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, Second Edition (London: Macmillan, 1995), 246. 18. Barry Buzan and George Lawson, The Global Transformation: The Nineteenth Century and the Making of Modern International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 19. Marie Simon, “La place de la discord,” L’Express, September 1, 2006. 20. The cover of this book shows an image of the statue. 21. Anne Laure-Filhol, “La statue de Jean-Paul II n’a toujours pas de place à Paris,” Le Figaro, December 17, 2012; “La statue de Jean-Paul II a enfin trouvé sa place,” Le Parisien, October 9, 2014. 22. René Schlott, “Papal Requiems as Political Events Since the End of the Papal State,” European Review of History—Revue Européenne d’Histoire, 15, 6 (2008): 603–614. 23. John Paul II, Address of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the Diplomatic Corps, Monday January 13, 2003. 24. John Paul II, Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2002. 25. Benedict XVI, Meeting with the Representatives from the World of Culture, Collége des Bernardins, Paris, Friday, September 12, 2008. 26. John Arnold, The Footprints of Michael the Archangel: The Formation and Diffusion of a Saintly Cult, c. 300–c. 800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 27. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

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28. Timothy A. Byrnes, “Sovereignty, Supranationalism, and Soft Power: The Holy See in International Relations,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 15, 4 (2017): 6–20; Mariano Barbato, “A State, a Diplomat, and a transnational Church: The Multi-layered Actorness of the Holy See,” Perspectives: Review of Central European Affairs, 2 (2013): 27–48. 29. Paul VI, Encyclical letter Humanae Vitae of the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI, Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1968. 30. Peter L. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” in Peter L. Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999), 1–18. 31. Roberto di Stefano and Francisco Javier Ramón Solans (eds.), Marian Devotions, Political Mobilization, and Nationalism in Europe and America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Chris Maunder, Our Lady of the Nations: Apparitions of Mary in Twentieth-Century Catholic Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 32. Hans Körner, Die falschen Bilder. Marienerscheinungen im französischen 19. Jahrhundert und ihre Repräsentation (München: Morisel, 2018), 11–57. 33. See, for example, David Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (New York: Routledge, 2010). 34. Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (London: Penguin, 2009), 820. 35. Tine Van Osselaer, The Pious Sex: Catholic Constructions of Masculinity and Femininity in Belgium, c. 1800–1940 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013); David Morgan, The Sacred Heart of Jesus (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009). 36. Jacques Benoist, Le Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre. De 1870 à nos jours (Paris: Èditions Ouvrières, 1992). 37. Charles A. Coulombe, The Pope’s Legion: The Multinational Fighting Force that Defended the Vatican (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 38. Bruno Horaist, La dévotion au Pape et les catholiques français sous le pontificat de Pie I X (1846–1878) (Roma: École francaise de Rome, 1995). 39. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital (1986),” in Imre Szeman and Timothy Kaposy (eds.), Cultural Theory: An Anthology 1 (Singapore: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 81–93; Pierre Bourdieu, “Symbolic Power,” Critique of Anthropology, 4, 13–14 (1979), 77–85. 40. Grace Davie, “Vicarious Religion: A Methodological Challenge,” in Nancy T. Ammerman (ed.), Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 21–36. 41. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).

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42. Pierre Bourdieu, “Understanding,” Theory, Culture & Society, 13, 2 (1996), 17–37, here 29. 43. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). 44. Jodok Troy, “Die Soft Power des Heiligen Stuhls. Unsichtbare Legionen zwischen internationaler Gesellschaft und Weltgesellschaft,” Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik, 3, 4 (2010), 489–511; Timothy A Byrnes, “Sovereignty, Supranationalism, and Soft Power: The Holy See in International Relations.” 45. Nicole Deitelhoff, “The Discursive Process of Legalization: Charting Islands of Persuasion in the ICC Case,” International organization, 63, 1 (2009), 33–65. 46. Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 1, 27–28. 47. Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, On the Dialectics of Secularization (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006). 48. Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 1, 91–109. 49. Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 101–115. 50. Habermas and Ratzinger, On the Dialectics, 41. 51. For a discussion, see Mariano Barbato and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-secular Political Order?” European Political Science Review, 1, 3 (2009): 317–340; Mariano Barbato, “Das Papsttum im Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit,” in Mariano Barbato, Melanie Barbato, and Johannes Löffler (eds.), Wege zum digitalen Papsttum. Der Vatikan im Wandel medialer Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 2018), 11–45. 52. For an overview, see, for instance, Mariano P. Barbato, Robert J. Joustra, and Dennis R. Hoover (eds.), Modern Papal Diplomacy and Social Teaching in World Affairs (London: Routledge, 2019). 53. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Knopf, 1977).

PART I

Media Formats

CHAPTER 2

Papal Diplomacy and the Rise of @pontifex Chiara De Franco

This chapter investigates if and how the rise of @pontifex—the pope’s Twitter account—should be understood as an indicator of the pope’s rising relevance in international politics. According to recent studies, most world leaders have social media accounts with steadily increasing audiences, which signals a growing relevance of social media presence for the very notion and recognition of “world leaders.”1 In fact, a number of different rankings have been produced on the basis of numbers of followers and/or interactions on social media to establish who are the most popular and influential world leaders.2 Pope Francis enjoys a pretty exceptional position on those rankings. On Twitter he is the second mostfollowed world leader with his 47 million followers across nine language accounts (in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish) and the third most influential leader with an average 22 million interactions (likes and re-tweets) per year—surpassed only by Donald Trump (with a stunning 264 million interactions in

C. De Franco (B) Department of Political Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_2

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2017) and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (with 52 million interactions in the same year). Also, since the inception of his Instagram account in March 2016, Pope Francis has become the third-most followed world leader also on that other platform. Given that, according to the Annuario Pontificio 2019, the number of baptized Catholics reached 1.313 billion in 2017,3 the pope’s popularity on social media platforms is hardly surprising. Moreover, it is worth remembering that after all, it is the Catholic Church that ran the first fully-fledged form of propaganda and the very word “propaganda” comes from the Church’s “Propaganda Fide”. This is a Department (Congregation) of the Holy See, founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, in charge of the missionary activities of the Church and renamed ‘Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples’ by Pope John Paul II. Pope Pius XI made the first papal radio broadcast in 1931. His successor, Pope Pius XII, made the first papal television appearance in 1946. John Paul II was the first pontiff to use the Internet, so Benedict XVI’s and then Francis’s use of social media might be looked at as a natural evolution of the pope’s engagement with mass communication in the context of evangelization. However, looking at the pope’s presence on social media as if it were an issue of mere propaganda would be misleading. In this chapter, I will demonstrate that the pope’s activities on social media deserve some attention by International Relations (IR) scholars as they offer a vantage point to anyone interested in papal diplomacy and diplomatic practices in general. In fact, @pontifex’s messages reach their audience in a developing media ecology4 where what is known as “digital diplomacy” is observed to be affecting traditional diplomatic practices.5 As world leaders use social media—Twitter in particular—to practice digital diplomacy, what the pope does on Twitter becomes significant to evaluate the evolution of papal diplomacy. The rankings mentioned at the beginning of this chapter seem to suggest that in the twitter sphere the pope is back to his preWestphalian status of “world leader.” Issues of ranking and recognition are certainly important, as the literature on status in international politics has established.6 However, numbers alone might be misleading. Not only does the pope’s ranking in the twitter-sphere require further evaluation, but it also calls for an enquiry into the connection between digital and traditional diplomatic practices. In other words, we need to understand if and how what the pope does on-line differs from his off-line diplomatic practice to appreciate the significance of the pope’s presence and popularity on social media. Also, we need to compare papal and Ministries of

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Foreign Affairs’s digital diplomacies to fully grasp how relevant @pontifex is or might become in the diplomatic order. In this chapter, I attempt at tackling this puzzle by cross-fertilizing research in international political communication and international political sociology. I build on the so-called “practice turn” in IR7 as well as on my previous research on the relevance of media ecology for the study of international practices.8 I also bridge studies on “traditional” diplomacy9 with scholarly work on “digital diplomacy”10 to evaluate how the pope’s diplomatic practices on- and off-line diverge from what it is generally considered to be the “standard” in diplomacy. First, I discuss why the pope and the Holy See-the pope’s diplomatic corps-are generally understood as fringe actors in the international diplomatic order. Building on Barbato11 and Bátora and Hynek,12 I identify the main traits of the pope’s diplomatic practice as a basis to understand the pope’s take on digital diplomacy. In particular, I discuss how papal diplomacy never developed as a practice of state representation nor as a bureaucracy preoccupied with the State’s external relations. I argue that differently from state diplomacy, papal diplomacy breaks the divide between interior and exterior practices and builds on the cult of a man believed to speak the voice of God. By employing a combination of discourse analysis and digital ethnography to study the tweets by Francis, I show how what the pope does through his social media accounts is very much in continuity with how papal diplomacy unfolded in the last couple of centuries. I discuss how digital diplomacy’s blurring of traditional distinctions between interior and external politics and opening to forms of personal representation next to state representation bring substantive changes into the practice of states’ foreign services but not into papal diplomacy. Thus, I conclude that the pope is ahead of the curve and well suited to gain prestige and influence, should the rise of digital diplomacy affect diplomatic practice in substantive ways and should the pope remain a forerunner in this diplomatic domain.

Traditional Diplomacy and the Pope as a Fringe Actor Taking the practice turn in IR seriously means “to assess diplomacy empirically as a set of durable practices.”13 On this view, diplomacy is to be understood as the social practice of states by which states interact with other states.14 It is a practice of claiming authority and jurisdiction that

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involves both representation and governing and is essentially relational as it operates at the interface of at least two polities.15 Also, in the last two centuries or so, diplomacy has evolved into a bureaucracy distinct and separated from the state bureaucracy dealing with the domestic business of the state. Diplomacy became a practice about the foreign and therefore constitutive of the foreign as such.16 Against this backdrop, the pope is considered a “fringe actor” in the diplomatic order, that is, a non-state entity with diplomatic privileges that is recognized as a legitimate player on a par with states.17 As a fringe player, the pope can be observed conforming to the diplomatic order and its rules, but not always: some of his practices, structures and patterns of interactions depart from the core tenets of the Westphalian diplomatic community.18 In fact, even if the Holy See developed in the seventeenth century into a diplomatic peer, when the modern state started rising and states’ permanent diplomatic missions were created, papal diplomacy has deviated from the “norm” of diplomatic practice in important respects since the beginning. Modern diplomacy as a practice of the state’s permanent representation emerged in the preparation to the Westphalian treaty, which was aimed at transforming the existing international order based on the primacy of the pope and the emperor in European politics.19 The Holy See survived these transformations retaining recognition as a legitimate actor in international diplomacy but remained anchored to a diplomatic practice of representation of an individual while the international order—and diplomacy as an institution thereof—continued its transformations that would slowly wipe off absolutist kingdoms and support the emergence of modern and more or less democratic states. The Holy See also remained anchored to the understanding of diplomatic practice that dominated medieval Christendom, when diplomacy was imbricated with religious discourse,20 diplomatic messengers were called angeloi and followed the Church’s procedures for negotiation and verification, such as kissing the cross.21 However, the Holy See cannot be easily dismissed as just a relic of a past international order and medieval diplomatic practice as it is still fully accepted “as a sovereign and special peer among states in diplomatic respects.”22 The Holy See’s place in the contemporary diplomatic order is in fact remarkable as it—and not the Vatican State that was established in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty— was made a “Permanent Observer” at the United Nations in 1964 and obtained a similar status in other organizations such as UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the African Union, and the World Trade Organization

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as well as full membership in the OSCE, the IAEA, and the UNCTAD, among many other organizations, and a special membership in the Arab League.23 Paradoxically, this is possible not despite but because the Holy See represents the Head of a Church and acts on the basis of “ethical principles which are meant to constitute an order above and on the fundaments of the states as well as on a global public sphere.”24 This means that in the social practice of states and by which states interact with other states, that is diplomacy, there has been always a player playing a substantially different game. The Holy See’s diplomatic practice has embodied and acted out ideas about the pope as the leader of the Church—or even more the “voice of God.”25 It is true that the head of the Holy See is called “Secretary of State,” but as described by one of them, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, this should be still understood as a “service to the pope” and “a way to follow Jesus, be with him, be one of his followers.”26 Another Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli was even calling himself “ambassador of Christ.”27 Similarly, Pope Francis himself has talked about the papal emissary— the nuncio—as a “diplomat, a priest and a pastor whose action, while remaining rigorously institutional, is imbued with pastoral afflatus.”28 This is why Bertone very explicitly claimed that by using the instrument of diplomacy not only does the Holy See “achieve its own goals, which are different from those of States, but according to its peculiar nature it also gives diplomacy a different substance and meaning.”29 Thus, “the Holy See assumes a unique character in its action because it chooses fields of action that are not part of civilian diplomacy.”30 In particular, papal diplomacy is understood by its own practitioners as “primarily an instrument for the cohesion of the Church, because it belongs to a community which is scattered across the whole world and has its center of unity in the office of Peter.”31 As an important corollary to this understanding and practice of diplomacy, the Holy See’s main objective in the interaction with states is to protect religious freedom and more precisely the “autonomy of organization and action of the catholic community vis-à-vis a possible intervention of state authorities.”32 Thus, “in addition to some of the traditional diplomatic functions, papal diplomatic representatives also execute pastoral functions related to governance of religious matters in the host countries.”33 Two interesting considerations can be drawn on the basis of this characterization of the Holy See’s diplomatic practices. First, as papal

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diplomacy has very much been an exercise in spiritual authority irrespective of geographical or political borders, it has known no distinction between the domestic and the foreign and no differentiation between public and private business. Protecting the religious freedom of (Catholic) individuals and Churches is entangled with political objectives like the defense of human dignity, the development of harmony among states and the establishment of a just and peaceful international order. Take the habit of inviting the pope regularly to give speeches to the General Assembly: From Paul VI on, the Holy See has interpreted such invitations as an occasion to let the pope talk as an “expert in humanity” and “serve the needs of the human family.”34 In this context, religious freedom becomes the primary need of the human family as it is presented as the foundation of peace. In the words of Benedict XVI: “peace is built and maintained only when men can freely search for and serve God in their heart, in their lives and in their relations with others.”35 Second, as the pope himself has been at the very center of the development of diplomatic efforts—which led some scholars to write about the pope’s soft power36 —papal diplomacy has exhibited a high degree of personalization, a phenomenon normally investigated in relation to politics and not diplomacy.37 Personalization means that political leaders have become more important in democratic societies and it is often explained as the result of a multi-causal process where leaders’ visibility on the media is a key contributing factor. In fact, personalization is generally connected with mediatization, that is, the “process through which core elements of a social or cultural activity (like work, leisure, play etc.) assume media form.”38 The pontificate of John Paul II was a milestone in this direction and the papal journeys made a crucial contribution.39 The new concept of a travelling pope that was invented by Paul VI was turned into a central feature of any papal appearance by John Paul II. Thus, while also premodern and early modern popes were travelling occasionally for diplomatic purposes40 and the Catholic Church has used emissaries since the fifth century as part of institutionalized permanent representations between the Eastern and the Western churches,41 the travelling pope as a permanent feature of public papal appearance is a more recent development fueled by the changing media ecology. By travelling around the world to visit his flock, address people of different faiths and world views and speak to governments, parliaments and international organizations, the pope has weaved a global net of social contacts constituting a truly global public sphere.42 In this context, exposure to the global media has

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been seen as a factor that has contributed to a “modernized Vatican diplomacy and expanded the breadth of the influence of the Catholic Church on certain issues.”43 This form of personalized diplomacy diverges from typical diplomatic practice, but it has been flagged as a trait of digital diplomacy.44 Thus, the travelling pope filling TV screens and magazines covers with his messages can be seen as a forerunner of the “digital diplomat.”

Digital Diplomacy: What’s New About It? In the previous section, I have discussed how we can understand diplomacy as an international practice and the specific diplomacy carried out by the pope and the Holy See as a “fringe” practice. Focusing on fringe practice is not a simple add-on to the study of state diplomacy. On the contrary, the study of fringe practice can reveal important and underanalyzed characteristics of diplomacy as an international practice, can contribute “to loosen up the conceptual straight-jacket imposed by the leading state-centric interpretations of international politics”,45 and can lead us to a better understanding of how practices change. In this context, studying the pope’s digital diplomatic practices is a promising way to further our understanding of papal diplomacy and its divergence (or alignment) with state diplomacy. Digital diplomacy is often considered as the use of information and communication technologies and social media platforms in the conduct of public diplomacy. In other words, digital diplomacy is normally not understood as new form of what we understand as “diplomacy” but as a form of public diplomacy that makes use of new technologies.46 However, there are good reasons to argue that the picture is significantly more complex. First, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and embassies have used their social network accounts to perform tasks that do not normally go under the public diplomacy umbrella label, such as coordinating responses to humanitarian disasters, gathering information and managing relationships not just with foreign populations, but also with peers. It is also becoming known that while many diplomats don’t read their own e-mail,47 some of them use Twitter to communicate among themselves, even if this is only a small proportion of their overall activities on the social media.48 Finally, examples of leaders’ tweets that provoke the same reactions as formal diplomatic communication are increasing: Trump’s tweets are an obvious case in point. Still, how “real” digital diplomacy is remains a

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subject of debate among practitioners and scholars alike. In 2013, the then US Secretary of State John Kerry famously stated that “the term digital diplomacy is almost redundant – it’s just diplomacy, period.”49 In contrast, in an interview with Andreas Sandre, Carne Ross, founder and executive director of Independent Diplomat has argued that: “Technology is not dramatically changing the fundamental nature of foreign affairs. The fundamental nature of classical diplomacy rests in the relations between governments, and that is still largely a private business […] Diplomats don’t come out and tweet – or don’t tweet – what’s going on at the negotiating table.”50 However, this is not true either as we know that some diplomats tweeted from behind closed doors—as in the case of Susan Rice’s famous tweet from the UN on 4 February 2012. Some diplomats would say that “the most important thing social media do for us is that, for the first time, it gives us the means to influence the countries we work in on a massive scale, not just through elites51 and that “the internet brings non-state actors into the conversation.”52 Some diplomats argue that this affects the traditional “government-to-government nature […,] the very DNA of traditional diplomacy,”53 others instead argue this is just about minor innovations to the technique and the strategy of public diplomacy as suggested in much of the scholarly literature. From a practice theory perspective, the very distinction between diplomacy, public diplomacy and digital diplomacy is simplistic and generally not based on an understanding of diplomacy as a practice but on a reductionist mapping of actors performing some sort of diplomacy-related activity via specific tools and by delivering specific messages more than on field research investigating what diplomats do, in what kind of social situation, by embodying what kind of knowledge and performing what kind of competent emotional practice. Then, the expression “public diplomacy” seems to register an increase in activities directed towards foreign publics and the birth of specific offices within governments and embassies tasked with those kinds of activities, but not at understanding if and how diplomats perform those practices, too. Thus, a practice-based research can contribute to go beyond labels and refocus on diplomacy as a category of analysis. From this perspective, digital diplomacy can very well be seen as a new diplomatic practice where diplomats are no longer the only ones controlling the “mutually recognized public sphere of international life”54 and no longer appear like representing only the states when they occupy the public sphere. The very presence of state leaders and diplomats in the

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twitter sphere comes to change perceptions about the mutually recognized public sphere between states, and the difference between tweets and official statements or diplomatic messages becomes more and more difficult to appreciate. Thus, on the one hand, state leaders tend to take control and occupy a space that was previously a reserve of the professional diplomat. On the other hand, the professional diplomat “administers” the public sphere between states through a form of representation articulating the state and the private self in new ways. Also, diplomacy appears affected by a process of personalization going hand in hand with mediatization55 so that the secret and often boring work of the diplomat as described by Neumann (2012) is at least partly transformed by the temptation of celebrity. Diplomats’ habit to take selfies and post them via their twitter accounts speaks volumes about such a tendency. In the words of Charles Firestone “the ambassador now has to be basically a media star.”56 “Gone is the image of the diplomat as a person of secrecy, luxury, exclusivity, and privilege,” argues Bjola.57 “By going ‘digital,’ the once secretive and exclusive domain of the elite has also gone public, requiring diplomats to regularly look outside their once closed doors, and perhaps more importantly, for the first time, allowing citizens to look in.”58 Interestingly enough, if we understand digital diplomacy as a practice where both state leaders and professional diplomats administer the public sphere between states in new ways, we will also have to acknowledge that its novelty might result from a comparison with standard diplomatic practice. But what about fringe players like the pope and the Holy See? Are they playing a substantially new game when they practice digital diplomacy?

The Diplomatic Practice of @pontifex As counterintuitive as it might sound, when using his Twitter account the pope is not reinventing his way of conducting diplomacy, but he rather carries on with the kind of fringe diplomatic practice that has distinguished him and the Holy See from state diplomats for centuries. So, what is it exactly that the pope and the Holy See do with their Twitter accounts?59 First, papal diplomacy stays centered on the pope’s diplomatic action and the charisma of his persona, while the Holy See’s diplomatic corps remains anchored to its traditional role of representation of the pope.60 A comparison between the pope’s twitter account with the Holy

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Fig. 2.1 @HolySeePress’ most retweeted users (Source Author’s own creation)

Agisotti, 3

Pontifex_fr, 28 Pontifex, 66 Pontifex_es, 31

Pontifex_it, 32

See’s shows that the latter has only a small fraction of the followers of the former (about 23.000) and that most of its tweets are actually retweets from the pope, as Fig. 2.1 shows.61 The Holy See seems also to target a different and smaller audience, mainly journalists and professional observers of the pope, as the main language of @HolySeePress, which is the most followed account of the Holy See, is Italian, still the lingua franca of the papacy. A content analysis of the messages of @HolySeePress also reveals that the travelling pope is at the very center of most of its tweets,62 as indicated by an analysis of the most used hashtags as in Fig. 2.2 and the most used words, which are Francesco (Francis), Sua Santita’ (His Holiness), Giappone (Japan), Thailandia (Thailand), santo padre (Holy Father), incontro (encounter), udienza (audience), and visita (visit).63 While also relaying the Holy See’s press conferences and reporting about the works of the Council of Cardinal advisors, @HolySeePress mainly works as a public relations service to the pope and contributes to spreading his message among professional observers. In contrast, @pontifex doesn’t retweet anybody and makes a very limited use of mentions as in Fig. 2.3.64 The use of multimedia content is also restricted to the visualization of the pope’s prayers as I will discuss later on. Thus, in general @pontifex provides original content only voicing prayers, wishes, and concerns of the pope.

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mazambique, 3 apostolicjourney, 3 madagascar, 5

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mauritious, 2

romania, 5

papafrancesco, 7 popeinromani a, 9

sinodoamazonico , 30

viaggioapostolico, 27 popefrancis, 9

Fig. 2.2 @HolySeePress’ most used hashtags (Source Author’s own creation)

Fig. 2.3 Users most mentioned by @pontifex (Source Author’s own creation)

clicktoprayapp; 1 LaityFamilyLife, 1 ponƟfex, 1 acn_int, 1 WMOF2018, 1 M_RsecƟon, 12 InfoScholas, 1

Second, through @pontifex the pope reaches out to Roman Catholics around the world by spreading prayers and wishes entangled with statements on political issues. A content analysis of @pontifex’s tweets65 reveals that the most frequent topics, as highlighted by the most used hashtags as in Fig. 2.4 are the practice of praying, the gospel and the

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Fig. 2.4 @pontifex’s most used hashtags (Source Author’s own creation)

panama2019, 9

missionaryoctober, 10 generalaudience, 12 prayforpeace, 15

santamarta, 66 jmj, 17 rio2013, 17 apostolicjourney, 55

lent, 17 laudatosi, 27

pope’s journeys.66 The most used words,67 instead, emphasize emotions. In most cases emotions are mobilized in the context of prayers calling explicitly on God’s help or within explicit requests that followers pray with the pope. Prayers are sometimes charged with emotions through visualization in such a way that it is possible to argue that the pope’s tweets contribute to constitute him as a father figure through emotional building.68 This is the case, for example, for the tweets relaying videos from the so-called “Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network”—such as the prayer for peace aired on 6 November 2018, for the victims of human trafficking aired on 7 February 2019, and for the protection of the seas and oceans aired on 31 August 2019. The practice of distributing monthly papal prayer intentions dates back to the nineteenth century. Since January 2016, the “Pope Video” produces clips featuring the pope reading these prayer requests, embedded in an emotional visualization of the prayer intentions. Since October 2018, these one-minute video clips, aired on a Youtube channel, are distributed over the papal twitter account. By connecting his emotions and his identity in his digital diplomatic practice, the pope does exactly what the social media environment requires of agents to successfully establish relationships with followers.69 The father figure comes to be constituted also through @pontifex’s tweets that have the form of wisdom sayings or aphorisms. Often God is at the center of these sayings and therefore the pope becomes the “father”

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by enacting the role of interpreter and megaphone of the “Father.” This is also achieved by dealing with political issues in indirect ways. It is not that the pope doesn’t express opinions and views. He certainly does it, but he rarely engages a political debate directly or addresses specific politicians or their policies or statements. A good example are @pontifex’s tweets on peace where the pope often insists that “We begin building peace in our homes, streets, and workplaces: wherever we craft communion and community”.70 Sometimes, however, the reference to a specific political development is clearer than others. For example, when in March 2017 Trump announced he would build a wall between the US and Mexico, Francis replied by summoning his audience: “I invite you not build walls but bridges, to conquer evil with good, offence with forgiveness, to live in peace with everyone.”71 Even more explicitly, following the killing of 52 Palestinians during protests over the opening of a US embassy in Jerusalem on 14 May 2018, the pope tweeted: “I express my great sorrow over the dead and wounded in the Holy Land and the Middle East. Violence never leads to peace. Therefore, I call on all sides involved and the international community to renew efforts so that dialogue, justice and peace may prevail”.72 Besides these episodic references to specific events, regular interventions can be noted with reference to three political themes: religious freedom, migration, and peace. These themes are not treated as issues of “international politics” but very much as issues of conscience, humanity and good Christian practice. The pope approaches them as a “father” to the human family who has humanity’s interest at heart and discusses them so that their public, social and political dimensions are always connected with private individual choices and ultimately faith. For example, in May 2018 the pope tweeted on the conflict in Syria by connecting the act of praying with the act of loving: “Today, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Love, as we recite the Rosary, we pray especially for peace in Syria and throughout the world. I invite you to pray the Rosary for peace during the entire month of May.”73 Similarly in July he tweeted: “The God of all consolation, who heals the broken hearts and takes care of the wounds, hear our prayers: Let there be peace in the Middle East!”74 It is worth noting that the content and form of these messages is very much in line with both content and form of the Holy See’s official positions in diplomatic venues like the UN General Assembly.75

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However, while attracting high numbers of retweets and likes @pontifex does not really interact with followers. The day his seven twitter accounts were launched in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI invited the world to send him questions about faith via the hashtag #AskPontifex. He promised to respond to some of these questions nine days later and so he did on 12 December 2012 during a live tweeting session. #AskPontifex was quickly hijacked by a great number of users to ridicule the pope’s attempt at using Twitter in a dialogic way and even if in principle it could still be used to start conversations with the pope, @pontifex has ever since used Twitter mainly as a platform for the dissemination of his views. This is in line with the pope’s traditional diplomatic practices such as giving speeches to governments, parliaments and in the UN General Assembly. Above all, this is in line with a general trend in digital diplomacy showing that most Ministries of Foreign Affairs and digital diplomats use Twitter to spread messages unilaterally. Yet, to some this is a missed opportunity as it is believed that the incorporation of social media in the conduct of diplomacy might represent a true conceptual shift in the practice of diplomacy depending on digital diplomatic actors’ ability to exploit social media’s potential to foster dialogue with their followers, whether they are fellow diplomats, national citizens or foreigners. In fact, adopting dialogic models of communication as opposed to monologic ones is believed to produce long-lasting relationships between digital diplomats and their followers and facilitate the acceptance of a nation’s foreign policy.76 For the pope this would mean going back to the very early days of #AskPontifex and invest in new live tweeting sessions despite the risk that the hashtag is hijacked again.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that what the pope does through his social media accounts is very much in continuity with how papal diplomacy unfolded in the last centuries. By employing a combination of discourse and content analysis to study the tweets by Francis, I explored how the pope’s digital diplomacy perpetuates the practice of assigning to the pope the function of representing not the Vatican State but God in the diplomatic order as well as the practice of entangling issues of religious freedom and faith with global political issues. I also clarified how this means that in the practice of digital diplomacy the pope is no longer really a fringe actor. This is not because the pope has aligned with state diplomats but because

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state diplomats had to adapt to the new media ecology and accept a mediatization of diplomacy, which makes digital diplomatic practice similar to the pope’s “fringe practice”. How relevant this is for the understanding of the popes’ rise depends very much on how important digital diplomacy will become in the wider context of global diplomatic practices, but also on the pope’s ability to remain a forerunner in the practice of digital diplomacy. Following Kampf et al.,77 this would mean going back to the very early days of #AskPontifex.

Notes 1. Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen, “Diplomacy in the Digital Age,” The Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael (2015); Corneliu Bjola, “Digital Diplomacy—The State of the Art,” Global Affairs, 2, 3 (2016): 297–299; Jonathan McClory and Olivia Harvey, “The Soft Power 30: Getting to Grips with the Measurement Challenge,” Global Affairs, 2, 3 (2016): 309–319. 2. See e.g. Burson Cohn and Wolfe, “Twiplomacy Study 2017,” Twiplomacy. 3. Iacopo Scaramuzzi, “Chiesa, crescono i cattolici nel mondo: sono il 17,7% della popolazione,” La Stampa, March 7, 2019. 4. Chiara De Franco, “Media Ecology and the Blurring of Public and Private Practices: A Case from the Middle East,” Politik, 19, 4 (2016): 11–29. 5. Corneliu Bjola and Marcus Holmes (eds.), Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2015); Hocking and Melissen, “Diplomacy in the Digital Age”; Andreas Sandre, Digital Diplomacy: Conversations on Innovation in Foreign Policy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015); Ilan Manor and Rhys Crilley, “The Mediatisation of MFAS: Diplomacy in the New Media Ecology,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 1 (2019): 1–27. 6. William C. Wohlforth et al., “Moral Authority and Status in International Relations: Good States and the Social Dimension of Status Seeking,” Review of International Studies, 44, 3 (2018): 526–546. 7. Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (eds.), International Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 8. Chiara De Franco, Media Power and The Transformation of War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); De Franco, “Media Ecology and the Blurring of Public and Private Practices”. 9. Iver B. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 10. Bjola and Holmes, Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice.

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11. Mariano Barbato, “A State, a Diplomat, and a Transnational Church: The Multi-layered Actorness of the Holy See,” Perspectives, 21, 2 (2013): 27–48. 12. Jozef Bátora and Nik Hynek, Fringe Players and the Diplomatic Order (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 13. Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann, “Introduction,” in Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics, 1–28, here 5. 14. Ian Hurd, “International Law and the Politics of Diplomacy,” in Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics, 31–54, here 31. 15. Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann, “Introduction,” 6. 16. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats, 45. 17. Bátora and Hynek, Fringe Players and the Diplomatic Order, 1. 18. Ibid., 4. 19. Barbato, “A State, a Diplomat, and a Transnational Church,” 28. 20. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats, 25. 21. James Der Derian, “Mediating Estrangement: A Theory for Diplomacy,” Review of International Studies, 13, 2 (1987): 91–110. 22. Barbato, “A State, a Diplomat, and a Transnational Church,” 29. 23. The General Assembly of the United Nation confirmed the status of the Holy See in 2004 by adopting the resolution 58/314 which also contains a remarkable list of the involvement of the Holy See in international organizations. 24. Barbato, “A State, a Diplomat, and a Transnational Church,” 29. 25. Conversation with a nuncio, New York 2005. 26. Tarcisio Bertone, La Diplomazia Pontificia in Un Mondo Globalizzato, ed. Vincenzo Buonomo (Citta’ del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), 136. Translations from Italian of all quotes from Bertone 2013 are mine. 27. Bertone, 118. 28. Pope Francis, “Preface,” in La Diplomazia Ponteficia in Un Mondo Globalizzato (Citta’ del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), 3. Translation from Italian is mine. On the debate about the hybrid status of the Holy See see also the contribution of McLarren and Stahl in this volume and Jodok Troy, “‘The Pope’s Own Hand Outstretched’: Holy See Diplomacy as a Hybrid Mode of Diplomatic Agency,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 20, 3 (2018): 521–539. 29. Bertone, La Diplomazia Pontificia in Un Mondo Globalizzato, 139. 30. Ibid., 141. 31. Ibid., 139. 32. Ibid., 141. 33. Bátora and Hynek, Fringe Players and the Diplomatic Order, 89.

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34. Angelo Sodano, “Foreword,” in Carl J. Marucci (ed.), Serving the Human Family: The Holy See at the Major United Nations Conferences (New York: The Path to Peace Foundation, 1997), 7. 35. Pope Benedict XVI, Discorso al Corpo Diplomatico Accreditato Presso La Santa Sede, December 9, 2006. 36. Timothy A. Byrnes, “Sovereignty, Supranationalism, and Soft Power: The Holy See in International Relations,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 15, 4 (2017): 6–20; Ricardo A. Crespo and Christina C. Gregory, “The Doctrine of Mercy: Moral Authority, Soft Power, and the Foreign Policy of Pope Francis,” International Politics, early view, September 10, 2019. 37. Ian McAllister, “The Personalization of Politics,” in Russell J. Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 571–588. 38. Stig Hjarvard, “From Bricks to Bytes: The Mediatization of a Global Toy Industry,” in Ib Bondebjerg and Peter Golding (eds.), European Culture and the Media (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2004), 43–63, here 48. 39. Gregory C. Sisk, “John Paul II: The Quintessential Religious Witness in the Public Square Symposium: The Jurisprudential Legacy of John Paul II,” Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, 45, 2 (2006): 241–276. 40. Pope Leo III’s visit at the Court of Charlemagne in Paderborn in 799 laid the ground for the creation of an emperor crowned by the pope. In 1782, Pius VI went on a last diplomatic mission of the Papal State to Vienna. 41. Der Derian, “Mediating Estrangement”. 42. Barbato, “A State, a Diplomat, and a Transnational Church”. 43. Philip Seib, The Future of Diplomacy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 97. 44. Bjola, “Digital Diplomacy—The State of the Art”. 45. Bátora and Hynek, Fringe Players and the Diplomatic Order, 90. 46. Seib, The Future of Diplomacy. 47. The Economist, “Virtual Relations: Foreign Ministries Are Getting the Hang of Social Media,” The Economist, September 22, 2012. 48. Jennifer Cassidy and Ilan Manor, “Crafting Strategic MFA Communication Policies During Times of Political Crisis: A Note to MFA Policy Makers,” Global Affairs, 2, 3 (2016): 1–13. 49. John Kerry, “Digital Diplomacy: Adapting Our Diplomatic Engagement,” DipNote, May 6, 2013. 50. In Sandre, Digital Diplomacy, 25. 51. Tom Fletcher, “Preface: Naked Diplomacy,” in Andreas Sandre (ed.), Digital Diplomacy: Conversations on Innovation in Foreign Policy (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015), xii. 52. Fletcher, “Preface: Naked Diplomacy”. 53. Sandre, Digital Diplomacy, xix. 54. Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann, “Introduction,” 5.

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55. Manor and Crilley, “The Mediatisation of MFAS”. 56. Andreas Sandre, “The Arab Spring of Diplomacy. A Conversation with Charles Firestone, Executive Director, Communication and Society Programme, The Aspen Institute,” in Andreas Sandre (ed.), Digital Diplomacy: Conversations on Innovation in Foreign Policy (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015), 17–24, here 23. 57. Bjola, “Digital Diplomacy—The State of the Art,” 297. 58. Ibid., 298. 59. See also Johannes Löffler, “Habemus Twitter! Die digitale Revolution des Heiligen Stuhles,” in Mariano Barbato, Melanie Barbato, and Johannes Löffler (eds.), Wege zum digitalen Papsttum. Der Vatikan im Wandel medialer Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt/Main: Campus 2018), 199–226. 60. Data from the twitter accounts of the pope (@pontifex) and the Holy See (@HolySeePress and @HolySeeUN) have been scraped and analyzed via free software: foller.me and twitonomy. While twitonomy analyses all available tweets, foller.me analyses only the most recent 100 tweets. This analysis has been complemented with text analysis combining discourse analysis and interpretative digital-ethnographic methods (see e.g. E. Gabriella Coleman, “Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 1 (2010): 487–505; Dhiraj Murthy, “Emergent Digital Ethnographic Methods for Social Research,” in Sharlene Hesse-Biber (ed.), Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 158–179), which shift the focus from the text to the practice—as observable with the simultaneous capture of verbal, audio, and visual texts. The text analysis was conducted on about 2000 tweets available at different stages of my research, that is, tweets posted between March 2017 and December 2019. 61. This is based on twitonomy’s analysis of all available 682 tweets. 62. As of December 2, 2019, there were 682 available tweets. 63. This is based on the analysis of the most recent 100 tweets as provided by foller.me. 64. Based on the analysis of 2245 tweets as provided by twitonomy. 65. As of December 12, 2019, there were 2245 available tweets. 66. Based on the analysis of 2245 tweets as provided by twitonomy. 67. The most used words are: Lord, God, Jesus, life, pray, mission, love, God’s heart, word, world, people, hope and faith. This is based on the analysis of the last 100 tweets as elaborated by foller.me. 68. Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Katrine Emilie Andersen, and Lene Hansen, “Images, Emotions, and International Politics: The Death of Alan Kurdi,” Review of International Studies, 46, 1 (2020): 75–95. 69. Constance Duncombe, “Digital Diplomacy: Emotion and Identity in the Public Realm,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 14, 1–2 (2019): 102–116.

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@pontifex’s tweet, May 11, 2018. @pontifex’s tweet, March 18, 2017. @pontifex’s tweet, May 16, 2018. @pontifex’s tweet, May 1, 2018. @pontifex’s tweet, July 7, 2018. Carl J. Marucci (ed.), Serving the Human Family: The Holy See at the Major United Nations Conferences (New York: The Path to Peace Foundation, 1997). 76. See e.g. Ronit Kampf, Ilan Manor, and Elad Segev, “Digital Diplomacy 2.0: A Cross-National Comparison of Public Engagement in Facebook and Twitter,” Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 10, 4 (2015): 331–362. 77. Ibid.

CHAPTER 3

The “Media Pope” as a Challenger of Socialism: Pope John Paul II’s First Trip to Poland Frank Bösch

John Paul II was often referred to as the “Media Pope”. Many reports describe how he courted journalists and sought media coverage. However, there has been virtually no examination of the ways that his attention-getting public appearances were prepared, orchestrated, and supported, nor of their concrete impact. Accordingly, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at both the conditions that were set during the preparatory decision-making stages and the execution of the trips, as well as their societal and historical contexts.1 The fruitfulness of this approach can be illustrated by Pope John Paul II’s perhaps most important and influential journey–his first, nineday long trip to Poland in 1979. Many historians and contemporary observers, including foreign politicians such as Gorbachev or Kohl, saw this papal trip as marking a turning point in the history of the Cold War

F. Bösch (B) Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_3

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and as the beginning of the end of socialism.2 Similarly, the religious scholar José Casanova interpreted the mobilisation triggered by the pope as a central example of a new public sphere for religion–a “public religion” that contradicted the assumption of secularisation that religion is relegated to the private sphere.3 This chapter analyses how the 1979 trip could have such an enormous public impact. Using contemporary Polish documents, it will show how public appearances with major media coverage were negotiated in advance and staged. The Vatican emphasised certain aspects of the trip; the Polish government had its own strategies. This article will examine both, and also elucidate the perceptions of the Polish population. This article relies first and foremost on documents and reports stemming from the Catholic Church and participants of the event.4 In particular, contemporary eyewitness accounts and impressions published in the Catholic journal Wi˛ez´ prove to be an especially rich source.5 Second, I consider internal records of the Party Central Committee and the Ministry of the Interior, which prepared the visit and evaluated it immediately afterward.6 Third, this chapter draws upon the findings of internal Polish government opinion research conducted during and after the papal visit. They enable at least a measure of a representative approximation of the perceptions of the population.7 Fourth and finally, I evaluate contemporary reports in the Polish and international press.

The Increasing International Importance of Religion The mass public gatherings that were sparked by the appearance of Pope John Paul II cannot be explained simply by his personality or media strategy. Rather, large-scale attendance of public events was a characteristic of the era. In early February 1979, for example, Khomeini was welcomed by around three million people in Teheran, and around the same time, in Western nations, millions of people took to the streets to demonstrate against nuclear energy and the NATO double-track decision. The fact that such mass gatherings of people took place was closely connected to media developments: the mass spread of television, which, since the 1970s, could broadcast live globally, did not lead to a retreat to the TV armchair. Instead, the TV animated people to take what they saw in the media and experience it personally in real life. Their actions would be broadcast, in turn, and seen on television.8 Television strengthened

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the yearning to become personally involved in a media event. We can see this effect during John Paul II’s first foreign trip, to Central America in early 1979, when millions of people thronged the streets. From a structural standpoint, clergy such as Khomeini and John Paul II shared something in common. Both sought to harness the media: Khomeini gave around 130 interviews during his four months of exile in Paris and even created a certain level of mutual trust with a few journalists.9 Both religious leaders took along selected journalists in their airplanes during their first big trips in early February 1979, so that their journey became part of the media production.10 Within just a few months, starting in the fall of 1978, the media transformed these two virtually unknown clergymen into global icons: quickly, each of them was seen as a religious antipode to the secular rulers in their homelands and to the ideologies and superpowers that stood behind them. Thus, both of them were hailed, even beyond their homelands, as charismatic “third force figures” whose worldviews were not bound to either the US or the USSR. The February 1979 revolution in Iran, which had been supported by a religious movement, and which overthrew a dictatorship, was widely publicised both in Poland and by the international media. In June 1979, Adam Michnik reported: “[m]any compare the coming of the pope to Khomeini’s return to Iran, and in the Warsaw coffeehouses you can hear that ‘the Redeemer Khomeini’ is coming.”11 The upheaval in Iran showed that protest and transformation was possible in a dictatorship, despite a strong army and protection by a superpower. Similarly, just a short time earlier, the socialist revolution in Nicaragua demonstrated the power that liberation theology could exert. The new political power of religion was evident even in the United States, where the evangelicals were no less media-savvy. They created an organisation dubbed the “Moral Majority” in 1979 that supported the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In West Germany, as well, the churches undertook a more intensive media-based communication programme starting in the late 1960s.12 No less important for the Poles were the images of the pope’s earlier trip to Mexico in February 1979, which gave a foretaste of the wild enthusiasm of the masses. The emotional exuberance of the faithful there, described by many journalists as hysterical, resembled the reaction to the Ayatollah in Iran, as did the carnival-like mood, as millions of Mexicans welcomed the pope with banners, confetti and rejoicing. While in Mexico, a secularly ruled state, the pope had emphasised the independent position

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of the Church with respect to politics–in opposition to both socialistaccented liberation theology and capitalist exploitation.13 In advance of the pope’s visit to Poland, the Polish Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny boasted that the Poles could outdo even the enthusiasm of the Mexicans. At the same time, based on the pictures of the Mexican trip, they anticipated an accessible pope who would set the tone.

Negotiating the Visit How did the visit to Poland occur? The fact that Karol Wojtyła, a Pole, had been elected as pope in October 1978 had already made the Polish regime very uneasy. Moreover, Poland was in the midst of a severe economic crisis in the late 1970s with high indebtedness to the West and rising prices, leading to fears of renewed protests. This constellation helps to explain why the Polish regime authorised the pope’s state visit as a way to improve its image amongst the Polish people and the West. According to his own description, party leader Edward Gierek held his ground about the papal visit, even though Brezhnev had called him by telephone to try to persuade him to cancel it.14 The negotiation of the visit shows how strongly the potential media impact of the papal sojourn in Poland was anticipated in advance in the Vatican and by the Polish communists. The question of the date for the visit had already turned into a battle of symbolic politics that revolved around the interpretation of Polish history and nationhood. John Paul II proposed a date in May 1979 to honour the 900th anniversary of the death of the Kraków Bishop Saint Stanislaus, a national patron saint of Poland, who symbolised the conflict between Church and state; he had been condemned to death by the Polish king. He was executed, sparking an uprising and compelling the king to flee to Hungary. Gierek thought that potential analogies to the present were too dangerous to accept this date. After long negotiations with Church representatives, the government succeeded in moving the trip to 2–10 June 1979.15 As concession of sorts for this change in dates, it unexpectedly granted broad freedom of action concerning the pope’s itinerary. While the Vatican had first expected a brief stay concentrated on Warsaw, Kraków and Cze¸stochowa, the authorities now granted the pope nine days in Poland, and thus unexpected opportunities to reach out to a larger part of the country and people and to set different emphases in the public spotlight.

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Every stopover of the trip was likewise painstakingly negotiated, since each contained a potentially significant symbolic charge. Thus, when ´ askie in the the Church requested visits to the shrine of Piekary Sl˛ Upper Silesian industrial area and Trzebnica in Lower Silesia, government representatives countered with a proposal to hold an additional mass in Auschwitz instead. They were anticipating that, at Auschwitz, the pope would give a speech in favour of peace, which would at the same time explicitly or at least implicitly be directed against the Germans and enhance Poland’s reputation in the wake of the Helsinki Accords.16 In fact, Auschwitz had received so much attention from the global success of the 1979 television series Holocaust that a papal visit would further boost the interest of the global media. Finally, no less contested was the basic character of the trip. Gierek and the party leadership wanted to define the papal visit for the world as a state visit, which had specific implications for protocol and ceremony. The journalists of the official press were thus instructed in advance to present the papal visit in their reporting as a reflection of support for the regime, and frame the visit in the context of the 40th anniversary of the German invasion and the 35th birthday of the People’s Republic of Poland.17 By contrast, in order to emphasise the religious dimension of the trip and to free himself from government demands, the pope spoke repeatedly about a “pilgrimage”. In fact, he expressed this in front of the cameras as well, increasingly freeing himself throughout his appearances from the protocols of the “state visit”. Thus, all of the government attempts at containment instead opened up the playing field for the pope.

Government Involvement and Public Performance The Polish government set as a goal for itself to show the global public a different Poland. In anticipation of international camera crews, streets were repaired and cleaned, and permission was given for Christian symbols to replace socialist ones. In this respect, the regime settled on a double strategy. On the one hand, it wanted to look as tolerant as possible to the outside world, in order to put Poland and its population in a positive light for the international and transnational public. On the other hand, the Politburo made every effort to prepare for and direct the upcoming events. In advance negotiations, certain compromises were made between the Church and the state: masses for millions of people were, indeed, allowed, but admission tickets that were to be distributed

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in advance in the parishes would regulate access. The media, especially state television, would be allowed to report, but sound and image editing would be subject to political control. Similarly, religious symbols were permitted, but in large measure, it was the state that organised their mass production and sale.18 In fact, the state itself produced the majority of the Christian symbols and devotional materials that were visible during the papal trip. By official decision, book publications, stamps, gold and silver coins, and commemorative medals were made “for internal and external export,” which would be sold for foreign currency in the “Pewex” shops.19 Foreign language publications for the international market such as John Paul II and his homeland, Freedom of thought and religion in Poland and Cultural treasures in Jasna Góra were printed in advance by the state press in a total edition of 130,000 copies. Ultimately, the regime’s hope to keep Church symbolism under control while also profiting financially from it may have contributed to turning the communists themselves into purveyors of religious communication. The aim was that foreign journalists would neither see a grey socialist surveillance state nor a Poland characterised by opposition. Overall, the state tried to show its liberal side: it avoided arrests and house searches and even tolerated contacts with Western media by members of the opposition. In addition, Church representatives had negotiated in advance that the city landscapes should include as few visible uniformed men as possible. In fact, the state security forces largely avoided a visible presence and carrying weapons.20 Instead, the Church organised its own security service, whose personnel were provided with photo identification passes, and made recognisable by yellow caps.21 In exchange, the Church supposedly promised to discourage the public display of oppositional symbols and banners. Many members of opposition groups were part of the Church security service, at least in Warsaw, and participated especially in the youth masses, for which no admission tickets were required for entry. At the same time, they largely refrained from distributing leaflets or other actions. During the papal visit, only a few scattered activists from resistance groups made public appearances.22 In fact, many of them took part in the exuberant atmosphere and joyful demeanour of the attendees. Young people played guitars, sang and camped out.23 It was often noted that drunkards were rarely seen in the streets. The fact that summer-like temperatures prevailed during the papal trip and that people on the streets

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were often in light clothing rather than being dressed up all supported this image of exuberance. Global media attention hinged in part on the number of participants attracted to each event; attendance numbers were invariably considered a barometer of newsworthiness. It is difficult to assess exact numbers, but Western observers and the Church spoke, presumably estimating high, of 13 million individuals who saw the pope in person.24 Internal government reports, which counted only those attendees who travelled particularly to events with the pope, cited a figure of four million.25 The final internal report of the Polish Ministry of the Interior described 2,670,000 participants on the pope’s travel routes and 5,961,000 attending the festivities, including 2,667,000 with admission tickets to the larger events. The specificity of these numbers alone would suggest that the security organs had had everything under control.26 Even if the actual figure was somewhere between government and Church numbers, it was especially impressive given that the Polish government had provided virtually no logistical support. There was only a limited use of special trains and busses, and factory workers were only granted leave on a limited basis.27 This probably contributed to the fact that young people and women were especially well represented. Overall, in terms of organisation, it is evident that the Church and government sought and found reciprocal compromises in order to meet the wishes of the international media and Polish onlookers.

Failed Containment of the Media Events One effect of the papal visit was that Poland no longer presented a socialist face to the world but could instead be seen as a fundamentally Catholic country. While Western reports about socialist nations generally featured images dominated by party functionaries, a grey subsistence economy, and miserable prefabricated apartment blocks, they now showed photos of colourful mass pilgrimages, the pope, and people knelt in prayer, thus highlighting the strength of Poland’s Catholic faith.28 In this way, Poland appeared more devout than the secularised nations of Western Europe, despite its socialist political system. Journalists from all over the world arrived with the pope and were courted by the socialist regime as well as by the Church. The Church decided in advance to lower the costly $350 accreditation fee for foreign journalists,29 and, as for the

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government, it even granted and sanctioned interviews with the opposition. The journalists of Poland’s Catholic press, however, obtained only limited access to the events.30 Pope John Paul II was known to put high value on involving journalists and in gaining media presence. While he was not dubbed “Media Pope” until a later date, the omnipresence of the media was certainly remarked upon during the 1979 trip to Poland. “Even in prayer, his hands are folded around the microphone,” commented the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.31 As television was also the central medium in Poland at this time, the Vatican and the Polish regime negotiated in advance the particulars of the Polish TV broadcasts. Obviously, the socialists feared the impact of the pontiff’s speech on the TV screen. The compromise stipulated that only the events in Warsaw and Auschwitz would be transmitted on national television, while the visits to Gniezno, Cze¸stochowa and Krákow would be broadcast only on regional television, and the papal visit to the Carpathian foothills would be relegated to excerpts in the general news reports.32 There were brief summaries of the day’s events on the national evening news programme. This level of coverage was permitted in recognition of the general public’s high level of interest in the pope’s visit, as internal opinion surveys conducted by the government revealed. The broadcast of the papal inauguration in October 1978 had achieved a record audience rating of 92%, and an additional three per cent had heard it on the radio, and virtually all viewers and listeners expressed satisfaction with the broadcasts.33 In May 1979, shortly before the papal visit, 98% of those surveyed expressed the hope that the pope’s mass celebrations would be televised.34 Accordingly, the communist government was all but forced to accommodate this high level of interest. The very fact that Polish government television reported the papal visit live was a sensation in itself but it was the result of a strategic calculation: the state hoped in this way to limit the number of visitors to the masses. Since 81% of Poles surveyed in advance indicated that they “intended to confine themselves to watching the visit on television”, the announcement of television coverage would deliberately stem the rush of pilgrims attending the events, limiting them to “only” three million Poles. For this reason, state television specifically issued regional reports to help keep people from the surrounding region from personally attending, and, at the same time to keep national attention as low as possible. On television, the regime could use imaging, excerpts, and sound to better

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maintain its power of interpretation. In fact, the first television transmission of the mass in Warsaw actually aroused people’s curiosity, as indicated by internal party analyses. “The interest of the workforce in the factories in the pope’s visit reached its maximum point on the day of his arrival. The television transmissions from the first day of his visit contributed to a burst of curiosity and emotions. On the following day, these diminished and were characterised by more restraint.”35 Polish television camera work intentionally left out the unmistakeable numbers of the faithful. The live transmissions concentrated the camera views entirely on the pope himself, while blurring out, to the greatest extent possible, the surrounding mass and its symbols. They barely showed the people’s reactions and enthusiasm. When the broadcast included spectators, these were mostly images of old people or nuns, something the directors had decided upon in advance.36 Thus, Polish television censored the pope less than the throngs at the masses. This was because, for the ruling powers, it was the millions of enthusiastic spectators rather than the pope himself that represented the real threat. During the pope’s appearances, laborious secret polls were conducted to determine how many viewers tuned into each television broadcast and what they thought about it. Around 80% of the citizens of Warsaw saw the pope’s arrival on TV, and the later transmissions achieved similarly high audience shares.37 On the first day, viewers expressed high approval of the reports. However, only three days later, two thirds of viewers voiced criticism and only one out of ten Poles were still satisfied. The viewers polled complained that the reports were too brief and did not show enough of the popular response. They said things like: You could have shown more of the people and not just the clergy. There were too few big picture views, only close-ups, you couldn’t see how many people were there. […] There was no sound in the report about the meeting of the Pope with the clergy. The masses of people were not shown–the camera only showed old grandmothers or priests and religious.38

In this way, the television coverage fostered the very resentment it was intended to attenuate. Another cause of discontent was the fact that due to various technical problems in the Polish-Soviet border area and Lithuania, the pope’s appearances could not be broadcast there.39

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The party leadership and television officials responded quickly to the massive criticism. The very next day, after the mass at AuschwitzBirkenau, the public assessment was once again positive: “Finally, the participants in the worship service were shown. For the first time, you could appreciate the real extent of the pope’s welcome by his countrymen […] You didn’t have to glean this information from foreign broadcasters any longer”, they now said.40 Since this was the event in which the government placed special ideological stock, it granted it the most extensive reporting. In the days that followed, there was an attempt to again downplay the papal visit. Once again, half of the viewers polled were complaining that they had only been able to get an incomplete picture of the visits in Krákow and Nowy Targ. They also complained that in the evening news headlines, the pope was not the lead story. However, in the age of international mass media, it was impossible to suppress the pope’s appearances and his words. Many Poles turned more to the radio, where the pope’s speeches were all accessible on Radio Free Europe, which was broadcast from Munich organized by the US.41 Even in the official opinion polls, 13% of those queried did not hesitate to report that they had followed the full text of the pope’s sermons on these Western broadcasts.42 The reports in the print media were hardly surprising. The official state newspapers and magazines all followed the instructions from above to handle the visit matter-of-factly as a state visit, and to not emphasise the masses, but rather, specifically focus on the consensual nature of the meetings with representatives of the government.43 It was forbidden in advance to report on the commemoration of St. Stanislaus.44 Similarly, the importance of the Church was relativized; for example, the magazine Kultura stressed that only the Party could solve Poland’s economic problems.45 Of course, as one might expect, the reports in the official Catholic papers were different, especially in the heavily sanctioned Church press. They reported on emotional mass gatherings and more explicitly highlighted the pope’s appeals.46 So, despite press censorship, even those Poles who could not participate in the pope’s visit in person had considerable opportunities to take part in the event through the media. According to the regime’s internal assessments, the papal visit, on balance, went off quite well. As they saw it, just the fact that “calm and order” prevailed everywhere was unto itself a success.47 They noted:

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The majority of the banners were religious in content, such as ‘We are with you, Father’, and ‘Young people are faithful to their Church and the Pope’, but there were also slogans with harmful political statements, such as ‘Freedom and Independence–Movement to Protect Human and Civil Rights.’48

The party leadership was especially uneasy about the strength of participation by young people, who accounted for half of the visitors at many of the pope’s appearances.49

Consequences of the Media Event The pope’s visit was not a flash in the pan that was soon forgotten. The connections between the papal visit and mass public demonstrations in the ensuing decade are unmistakeable. Shortly after the papal visit, the Catholic Bishop’s Conference interpreted it as a multi-layered experience of awakening with “multidimensional implications: at once religious, national, patriotic, pan-Slavic, political and international. Thanks to this pilgrimage, a grand awakening of the hearts and minds of millions of Poles occurred, kindling a major moral transformation in the societal life of our country.”50 For those outside the government elite, this breach of the socialist order was a key experience. A team of Catholic intellectual authors, which followed all of the pope’s appearances, summarised the impact as follows: It was an awakening of self-confidence: because we reflected on ourselves and gained confidence in ourselves, confidence in our own powers and confidence in the collective values to which these days bore witness. […] He left behind a programme and a testimony of faith; a style of speaking, and a style of appearance.51

The papal visit was also interpreted in social psychological terms. In this vein, an influential 1983 sociological study emphasised that there was an advent of unique, collective feelings of happiness resulting from the “summer of the pope.”52 Another study asserted that the nine days had contributed to the development or restoration of subjectivity (podmiotowo´sc´ ), whereby Polish society liberated itself from the strictures of state socialism.53 Other sociological essays, also based on personal experience, emphasised the feeling of public community.54 Such testimonials and interpretations indicate that we should include in our

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understanding of the pope’s visit the emotional-historical aspects and take seriously its performative nature—the emotional experience of the rituals–especially if we wish to understand the ground-breaking upheaval in Poland during the 1980s.55 The papal visit was a hands-on school for organisational action. The organisation of mass events each with its own brief was an experience of mobilisation that paved the way for the subsequent founding of Solidarity (Solidarno´sc´ ). Millions of Poles gained the self-awareness needed to assemble collectively and to link their public civil protests to the pope’s visit.56 Alongside national symbols, Christian symbols and images of the pope became central elements of their protests. In addition, this created a powerful symbolic connection between the Church and the opposition. At the Gdansk ´ factory gates, the strikers in 1980 fastened a cross, an image of the Madonna of Cze¸stochowa, and a picture of the pope, which also adorned Lech Wał˛esa’s lapel. Religion, meant to be relegated to the private sphere, thus enjoyed a new public presence. Clergymen made their spaces available to the opposition movement, and until the imposition of martial law, they also often explicitly supported the opposition movement. The many day-to-day interactions between the clergy and the opposition created an “appealing oppositional identity”, as one sociological study described the context that made the mass protests possible.57 Yet, the papal visit triggered no hard confrontations between state and Church. According to the polls, half of the population saw relations between Church and state as good, and although this reflected a slight decrease, it was nevertheless still a good rating.58 In a letter to Cardinal Wyszynski, ´ Pope John Paul II supported the resistance in Poland, while also expressing the need for moderation, and he called upon Solidarno´sc´ for patience and non-violence while warning the Soviet Union against an invasion. His invitation to Lech Wał˛esa in January 1981 for a long audience at the Vatican underscored the bond between Solidarno´sc´ and the Catholic Church, and for this reason, the Soviets harshly criticised the issuance of a travel permit for Wał˛esa.59 Cardinal Wyszynski ´ spoke against a strike, because he feared a violent suppression and advised Solidarno´sc´ in his sermons to be patient.60 There was speculation whether this advice tempered the Polish protest movement, which could perhaps have otherwise led to a collapse of the regime as early as 1979–1980.61 It seems that the papal visit actually fortified not only the patience but also the persistence of the protestors. Even though Solidarno´sc´ could link itself to earlier protests, the papal visit provided the

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protests with a stronger symbolic foundation.62 At the same time, the developments in Poland altered the pope’s messages. As an observer of the papal visit pointed out, in his sermons up to 1981, a primary focus was placed on global Christian conversion. Starting in 1989, he focused on solidarity, and later, he concentrated on critiquing the inhumane aspects of capitalism.63 It is more difficult to estimate whether the papal visit promoted religiosity, that is, the confession of faith and commitment to religious practices. Regarding this question, the data available for Poland in the 1970s and 1980s are mixed. An internal state poll by the OPOB suggests a slight increase in practicing Christian believers, whose percentage rose from 76% in 1978 to 79% in 1980.64 Other opinion research data for the longer period from 1974 to 1982 show a clear increase in the proportion of believers and practicing Catholics (from 73 to 83%) as well as a decrease in the proportion of non-believers (from 9 to 2%).65 If we look at religious behaviour, surveys consistently indicate a 55% participation in weekly religious services and 86% of Poles fasted on Good Friday.66 In any case, these data demonstrate that besides the events, there was a general rise in religiosity, and the significance of these expressions of “public religion” did not evaporate quickly. Of course, we cannot determine the precise extent to which these trends were related to Pope John Paul II and his impact on Poland. However, the papal visit certainly changed Poland as a whole, and the places that he visited continue to be particular focal points of Polish and Catholic remembrance culture. They represent the traditions of pilgrimage and protest, and it was the interaction of these traditions that gave the pope’s 1979 visit its special impact.67

Notes 1. First published in German as “Der ‘Medienpapst ’ als Herausforderer des Sozialismus: Die erste Polenreise von Papst Johannes Paul II,” Römische Quartalschrift: Zeitschrift für Christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, 112, 1–2 (2017): 50–63. All German and Polish quotes are own translations. 2. See Stefan Samerski, “Teufel und Weihwasser: Der Papst und die Erosion des Kommunismus,” Osteuropa, 59 (2009): 183–194; Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 421–437; John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War. A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005), 193–194. Similar arguments were made especially in Polish and Catholic depictions, but also by liberal Polish historians. For examples, see

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3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Andrzej Friszke, “Jan Paweł II: na polskiej drodze do wolno´sci,” Wi˛ez´ , 48 (2005): 21–37. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 228f. See for example: Peter Raina (ed.), Ko´sciół w PRL: Ko´sciół katolicki a panstwo ´ w s´wietle dokumentów 1945–1989 [The Church in the People’s Republic of Poland: Catholic Church and State as Seen in Documents 1945–1989] (=Vol. 3: Lata 1975–1989 [The years 1975–1989]) (Poznan: ´ W drodze, 1996). Wi˛ez´ , 22 (1979). Among the printed sources, see in particular, with a very good introduction: Andrzej Friszke and Marcin Zaremba (eds.), Wizyta Jana Pawła II w Polsce 1979: Dokumenty KC PZPR i MSW [John Paul II’s Visit to Poland in 1979: Documents of the Central Committee of the United Polish Worker’s Party and of the Interior Ministry] (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, 2005). The file of the “O´srodek Badania Opinii Publicznej i Studiów Programowych” (OBOP, that is, Research Centre for Public Opinion and Programme Studies) are in large part available online. On the history and methodology of the OBOP: Klaus Bachmann, Repression, Protest, Toleranz: Wertewandel und Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Polen nach 1956 (Dresden: Neisse Verlag, 2010). Also pp. 210–219 on the development of religiosity in the Polish people, e.g. in consideration of the papal visits of 1979 and 1983. On the connection between medialisation and event construction: Frank Bösch and Patrick Schmidt (eds.), Medialisierte Ereignisse–Performanz, Inszenierung und Medien seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2010). Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 49. Khomeini did not privilege Iranian journalists, as the Iranian journalist Amir Taheri recalls: Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1985), 205. Information on the numbers of journalists on the airplane varies, some speak of up to 200; Carole Jerome, “Back to the Veil,” New Internationalist, September 1, 1980. See also the contribution of Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl in this volume. As a contemporary report, see for example: Hansjakob Stehle, “‘Vor allem die Hoffnung auf Glauben’,” Die ZEIT , February 2, 1979. Television recordings, some direct from the airplane, such as: 1979. Pope John Paul II during his first visit to Mexico. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjc 4V5Iwv1I. Adam Michnik, “Demonstration der Sehnsucht nach Freiheit,” Der Spiegel, June 4, 1979, 116f.

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12. For West Germany: Nicolai Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit: Medien, Religion und Kirche in der Bundesrepublik 1945–1980 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010); Benjamin Städter, Verwandelte Blicke: Eine Visual History von Kirche und Religion in der Bundesrepublik 1945–1980 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2011). 13. On the Mexico trip, see for example from contemporary observations: Ernst Trost, Der Papst aus einem fernen Land: Johannes Paul II. und seine Kirche (Vienna: Molden, 1979), 11–21. 14. See Gierek’s recollection from 1990 in the document collection: Agnieszka D˛ebska (ed.), Droga do Solidarno´sci. 1975–1980 [The Road to Solidarno´sc´ , 1975–1980] (Warszawa: Dom Spotkan´ z Histori˛a, 2010). 15. Andrzej Friszke and Marcin Zaremba, “Wokół pierwszej pielgrzymki [Around the first papal visit],” in Friszke and Zaremba, Wizyta Jana Pawła II w Polsce 1979, 35–41. 16. On the negotiations for the trip, see Antoni Dudek and Ryszard Gryz, Komuni´sci i Ko´sciół w Polsce. 1945–1989 [Communists and Church in Poland, 1945–1989] (Kraków: Znak, 2006), 340–349. 17. The regulations for the government press are published in Marian S. Mazgaj, Church and State in Communist Poland: A History, 1944–1989 (Jefferson: McFarland, 2010), 122. 18. Friszke and Zaremba, Wizyta Jana Pawła II w Polsce 1979, 49. 19. A list of publications and memorabilia planned during the papal visit is available in ibid., 53, 226–229. 20. See the internal reports of the Ministry of Interior in Grzegorz Majchrzak, “Pierwsza pielgrzymka Jana Pawła II do Polski w s´wietle materiałow MSW [John Paul II’s first pilgrimage to Poland in the light of materials from the Ministry of Interior],” Dzieje najnowsze, 34 (2002): 191–216, here 206. 21. Notes of Mirek Budzinski, ´ a student and member of the Church security staff: Stefan Frankiewicz, Cezary Gawry´s, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Zdzisław Szpakowski, Wojciech Wieczorek, Kazimierz Wóycicki, “Dziewi˛ec´ dni w Polsce [Nine days in Poland],” Wi˛ez´ , 22 (1979): 80–178, here 92f. 22. Andrzej Friszke, Czas KOR-u. Jacek Kuron´ a geneza Solidarno´sci [The era of the KOR: Jacek Kuron´ and the birth of Solidarno´sc´ ] (Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak, 2011), 415. 23. Frankiewicz et al., “Dziewi˛ec´ dni w Polsce [Nine days in Poland],” 80–83. 24. Samerski, “Teufel und Weihwasser,” 186. 25. Friszke and Zaremba, Wokół pierwszej pielgrzymki, 68. 26. Majchrzak, “Pierwsza pielgrzymka Jana Pawła II,” 202. 27. This had been agreed in advance: See the notes on the meeting of Stanislaw Kania (Central Committee Secretary, Member of the Politburo) with the First Party Secretaries of the affected voivodeships on March 22, 1979, in Friszke and Zaremba, Wokół pierwszej pielgrzymki, 179.

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28. “Papstreise: ‘Freue dich, Mutter Polen’,” Der Spiegel, June 4, 1979, 107. 29. Friszke and Zaremba, Wokół pierwszej pielgrzymki, 50. 30. On the creation of the pool: Wydział Prasy, “Radia i Telewizji KC PZPR [Dept. for the Press, Radio and Television of the Central Committee of the Polish United Worker’s Party]. Zasady akredytacji dziennikarzy polskich i obsługi prasowej wizyty papieza ˙ w Polsce [Ground rules for the accreditation of Polish journalists and press coverage of the papal visit to Poland],” Kultura (Paris), 33/7/8 (1979): 233–238. 31. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 16, 1979, 6. 32. Friszke and Zaremba, Wokół pierwszej pielgrzymki, 49f. 33. OBOP, Opinia społeczna o wyborze nowego Papieza ˙ i prezentacji tego wydarzenia w telewizji [Social opinion about the election of the new pope and the television presentation of this event] (October 15, 1978), Sign. K. 013/78). 34. OBOP, O wizycie Papieza ˙ w Polsce. [On the papal visit to Poland.] (May 1979), Sign. K.07/157/79. 35. See the internal reports of the Ministry of the Interior in Majchrzak, “Pierwsza pielgrzymka Jana Pawła II,” 206. 36. Friszke and Zaremba, Wokół pierwszej pielgrzymki, 52. 37. OBOP, Wizyta Papieza. ˙ Sprawozdania z 5 VI, 7 VI, 8 VI, 9 VI, 11 VI. [The Papal Visit: Reports from 5.6., 7.6., 8.6., 9.6., 11.6.] (June 1979), Sign. K. 008/79. 38. Ibid. 39. “Papstreise: Kontrast zur Wirklichkeit,” Der Spiegel, June 11, 1979, 113. 40. OBOP, Wizyta Papieza. ˙ Sprawozdania z 5 VI, 7 VI, 8 VI, 9 VI, 11 VI. [Der Papstbesuch. Berichte vom 5.6., 7.6., 8.6., 9.6., 11.6.]. 41. See their report: Radio Free Europe Research. The Pope in Poland (Munich: Radio Free Europe, 1979). 42. OBOP, Wizyta Papieza. ˙ Sprawozdania z 5 VI, 7 VI, 8 VI, 9 VI, 11 VI. [Der Papstbesuch. Berichte vom 5.6., 7.6., 8.6., 9.6., 11.6.]. 43. Polityka, June 2, 1979, 1f. 44. Friszke and Zaremba, Wokół pierwszej pielgrzymki, 46. 45. Kultura, June 2, 1979, 1f. 46. See: Tygodnik Powszechny, June 10, 1978; Słowo Powszechny, June 8, 1979 and June 24, 1979. 47. Majchrzak, “Pierwsza pielgrzymka Jana Pawła II,” 192. 48. Ibid., 204. 49. Ibid. 50. Pismo Okólne [Newsletter], 36, 1–3 (1979), printed in Raina, Ko´sciół w PRL, 135. 51. Frankiewicz et al., “Dziewi˛ec´ dni w Polsce,” 171. 52. Generally, also from personal experiences: Adam Biela, Papieskie lato w Polsce. Szkic psychologiczny wizyty-pielgrzymki papieza ˙ Jana Pawła II w Polsce [The Summer of the Pope in Poland: A Psychological Outline of the Visit of Pope John Paul II in Poland] (London: Veritas, 1983)

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53. Dudek and Gryz, Komuni´sci i Ko´sciół w Polsce, 346. 54. Zdzisław Mach, “Uwagi o społecznym znaczeniu pielgrzymek Jana Pawła II do Polski [Commentary on the Societal Impact of the Papal Visit of John Paul II in Poland],” Peregrinus cracoviensis, 20 (2009): 49–64. 55. Strongly pursuing this approach, if only briefly addressing the papal visit: Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 138. 56. See also on the significance of the pope and the Church: Berenike Szymanski, Theatraler Protest und der Weg Polens zu 1989: Zum Aushandeln von Öffentlichkeit im Jahrzehnt der Solidarnosc (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012). 57. Hella Dietz, Polnischer Protest: Zur pragmatistischen Fundierung von Theorien sozialen Wandels (Frankfurt: Campus, 2015). 58. OBOP, Brak zmian w stopniu religijno´sci społeczenstwa ´ polskiego. [No change in the level of religiosity in Polish society.] (October 4, 1980), Sign. K.12/174/80. 59. CPSU to the Polish ambassador 14 January 1981, printed in Andrzej Paczokowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), From Solidarity to Martial Law: The Polish Crisis of 1980–1981: A Documentary History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007), 176–179. 60. See the documents in Bernard Wiaderny (ed.), Die Katholische Kirche in Polen (1945–1989). Eine Quellenedition (Berlin: VWF, 2004), 178–184; Paczokowski and Byrne, From Solidarity to Martial Law, 51–56; Samerski, “Teufel und Weihwasser,” 188. 61. Marcin Zaremba, “Karol Wojtyła the Pope: Complications for Comrades of the Polish United Workers’ Party,” Cold War History, 5 (2005): 317–336. 62. Maryjane Osa, “Creating Solidarity: The Religious Foundations of the Polish Social Movement,” East European Politics and Societies, 11 (1997): 339–365. 63. At least, this was the opinion of the often accompanying journalist Norbert Sommer: Norbert Sommer, Fliegender Fels: Der Reise-Papst Johannes Paul II (Berlin: Wichern, 2003), 111. 64. OBOP, Brak zmian w stopniu religijno´sci społeczenstwa ´ polskiego. [No change in the level of religiosity in Polish society.]. 65. See Bachmann, Repression, Protest, Toleranz, 214. 66. OBOP, Brak zmian w stopniu religijno´sci społeczenstwa ´ polskiego. [No change in the level of religiosity in Polish society.]. 67. See also the contribution of Ryszard Zaj˛aczkowski in this volume.

CHAPTER 4

“I Put No Stock in Consensus”: The Young Pope and the Progressive/Conservative Cleavage in Filmic Narrations of Papal Power Melanie Barbato

Films can influence the public but they are also mirroring society, on the one hand because they cater to the tastes of their audience, on the other hand because they reflect what the directors and production teams consider desirable or normal.1 While the papal theme occurs in different variations since the beginning of the film era, a recurrent motive is the painting of the papacy along the pattern of a progressive/conservative cleavage. This suggests that the overall question of the public on the papacy can be summed up as: Are you modern or not? Historically, the emergence of such a dominant dichotomy may be tied to the historical shifts of the Second Vatican Council, which offered the vision of a Church open to modernity and a papacy that could be radically different from the venerable Vicar of Christ who stood above if not against but certainly not

M. Barbato (B) Institute for Religious Studies and Inter-Faith Theology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_4

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in line with modernity.2 It appears that this tension is still being reiterated in the filmic narrations of papal lives, and may have gained visibility particularly in the current situation in which a “modern” Pope Francis has succeeded a more “conservative” Pope Benedict XVI, leading many in the Church to ask what turn the Church is likely to take next. From the large number of films on the popes, the series The Young Pope (2016) has been selected as the focus of this chapter. The Young Pope can serve as an interesting case of narrating papal power because it takes up the typical dichotomy but plays with it mockingly, also sampling alternative visions of papal agency.

Popes in Film The pope as an eminent contemporary figure has been represented in films since the beginning of the film industry. Pope Leo XIII, who was “along with monarchs and political leaders […] one of the public figures most sought after by [the] film companies” of his time, may in fact “be the oldest documented person ever recorded on film.”3 Films about popes did not only cater to an interest in the papacy but also reinforced and increased the pope’s status as an important public figure. As Federico Ruozzi argued, films such as Pastor Angelicus played an important part “in building the personality cult of the pope”.4 Pastor Angelicus, a 1942 film about and with Pius XII, does not directly address Mussolini’s fascism but sets out to present Pius XII as an alternative and superior leader. Since then, numerous biopics have been made to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of concrete popes, such as The Good Pope: John XXIII (2003), Paolo VI -Il Papa nella tempesta (2008), Pope John Paul I: The Smile of God (2006), Pope John Paul II: The Movie (1984), and Karol-A Man Who Became Pope (2005). Documentaries about individual popes, while aiming for an appearance of objectivity, also tend to have a strong narrative scripting and either follow the idealization of these religious biopics (Francesco und der Papst, 2011, a homage to Benedict XVI through the lens of a choir boy preparing for singing in front of the pope) or present the pope according to the taste of his critics as product of a bygone time (Verteidiger des Glaubens, 2019, also about Benedict XVI). John Paul II has also been the subject of a 2002 mockumentary, The Papal Chase (2004), which follows a man’s whimsical attempts to meet the pope for a bet.

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Not all movies in which a historical pope features centrally are films about the papacy. The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) depicts the struggle between Pope Julius II and Michelangelo, whom the pope insists on painting the Sistine Chapple. The younger and manly representation of the pope may owe more to catering to the taste of an audience accustomed to the male heroes of the epic historical drama, including at that time popular Roman and Biblical themes, than to an intrinsic reflection on the public and political role of the pope.5 Fictional popes allow for more creative freedom and can hence be found in a wider range of genres. In some films the pope plays a minor part that anchors the story in a bigger historical and political context (as in the Netflix series Suburra: Blood on Rome, first season in 2017).6 Comedy features the pope on the whole spectrum from Christian feelgood movie (Saving Grace, 1986) to comic irreverence (Habemus Papam, 2011) to anticlerical films (The Pope must die, later changed to The Pope must diet, 1991). More serious films about fictional popes discuss the relation between power and the common good. After the novel by Morris West, In the Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) offers a highly political narrative of the papacy: A Ukrainian Cardinal released from Siberia is elected as pope in the midst of the Cold War in order to prevent World War III, which lurks due the desperate situation of a starving communist China. Pope Kiril (starring Anthony Quinn) solves the situation by giving all the Church’s wealth to the poor.

Papal Power Along the Progressive/Conservative Cleavage It may not surprise that the pope is a popular figure in film: He is tied to much of Western history and culture, offers through his distinctive white dress a high recognition value and is a symbol of public authority and power, still featuring regularly on the Forbes lists of most powerful people. However, the power of the pope is not as straightforward. Directors who use the pope as a man of power have to decide what kind of power and agency they ascribe to him. As diverse as the films presented above are, most films situate the pope on one side of the progressive/conservative cleavage, which tends to run as a red thread through the story line. The pope is then presented either as a progressive fighting for change or a conservative struggling against change, and usually the normative evaluation in favor or against the pope’s course is obvious

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throughout the film. In the Shoes of the Fisherman is an impressive example of how an unconventional progressive pope who breaks with tradition and wealth could change the fate of the world. While such a pathetic gesture is not according to current taste, the documentary dramas that are released in the current pontificate of Pope Francis still reiterate the narrow corridor of the progressive/conservative cleavage. A Man of His Word (2018) was directed by Wim Wenders on the invitation of Dario Viganò, at the time Director of the Vatican Television Center. The director was assured that there would be no interference from the Vatican, yet there is nothing in the movie that would possibly displease the Vatican. When Wenders was asked why he did in the film not include any more controversial aspects about the quarrels in the Vatican, he replied: “This is not my thing. There are many investigative TV films about the Vatican. I have decided to make a different film.”7 According to Wenders, the film is meant as a “homage” to the pope, and its aim is to enable the pope to deliver his message. For large parts of the film, Francis talks directly into the camera, thus creating the effect of addressing every viewer individually with his message that is directed to all humanity, regardless of religious affiliation. Wenders’ view of the pope that underlies the film is that of a progressive, left-leaning reformer in the likeness of St. Francis.8 Drawing on the unique historical situation in the Catholic leadership of having a Papa emeritus, the latest pope-themed movie, the Oscar-nominated The Two Popes, features both Francis (Jonathan Pryce) and Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins). This film sets the progressive/conservative cleavage at the center of its plot: Francis is characterized as a former conservative turned progressive; Benedict XVI is presented as the conservative who comes to understand that it is time to step aside to make room for the progressive Francis. This film suggests that the two positions can be reconciled amicably, but the solution lacks subtlety–it is only by accepting the superiority of the progressive side.9 The constant drawing on the progressive/conservative dichotomy shows how much the popes are stuck in a public role that is less determined by their choosing or agency than by the public perspective on the papacy. The public interest in the popes seems to melt down to the question if they are in line with modern secular values or not. The dichotomy reflects the public perception of the popes as the surprisingly powerful relicts of a bygone religious area that have to change their institution in order to meet up with the demands of the present

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or have to fail in trying to defend their outdated religious point of view. The point here is not to deny that in many aspects Francis has a more progressive agenda than Benedict XVI. Most important in the context of pope and public is, however, that the constant recourse on the progressive/conservative cleavage to narrate papal lives shows the difficulty of envisaging papal agency independently of the reiteration of a stereotype that reduces the pope to an adversary or appeaser of modernity instead of reflecting the papal positions that often go against the grain of the progressive/conservative cleavage of public opinion and politics.

The Young Pope: Rethinking Papal Power The Young Pope is a ten-episode TV-series about a fictional American pope by the internationally acclaimed director Paolo Sorrentino, whose La Grande Bellezza, about the luxurious and decadent life of Rome’s rich and famous had won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe. The Young Pope, too, impresses with opulent images and famous actors like Jude Law and Diane Keaton. At the center of the plot stand the attempts of the newly elected Pope Lenny Belardo, a young and attractive American, to assert himself in his new role both towards the Vatican officials and the global public but also his struggles with coming to terms with his own biography as an abandoned child of a hippie couple. In her discussion of the series, the theologian Theresia Heimerl asks: “The Catholic Church after its claim to power? Nice, harmless, a charity with feel-good factor?”10 That is by no means how things have to remain, seems to be the reply the series The Young Pope gives. According to Heimerl “The Young Pope elaborates in various experimental set-ups on papal power under the conditions of globalization and postmodernity, and proves in each of these set-ups deeply disturbing.”11 Lenny Belardo, protégé of an elderly star theologian, was considered a compromise at the conclave, but it soon turns out that he is far from willing to play the pupped for the Roman curia. He clearly has his own agenda: He wants to lead the Catholic Church back to its former glory, which it has in his view lost due to the laxity and weak faith of the Church leadership. Among his first official acts is ordering for the papal tiara to be brought back to the Vatican. This is a highly symbolic act, considering that this three-tiered papal crown was auctioned for a good cause in the US, to symbolize that the pope no longer sought to present himself as claiming supreme power over public and politics. Bringing the tiara back

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thus hints at new papal claims to worldly power and opens up questions about the public role that the new pope is aiming at. The name that Belardo has chosen for himself is equally telling. As Pius XIII he appears to draw on the legacy of Pius XII, suggesting from an inner-Catholic perspective a conservative orientation of the new pope. By choosing to place himself into this controversial line of succession, Lenny Belardo shows that he is willing to enter a robust confrontation with the public and that he is putting his theological convictions before harmonious public relation. And, as it turns out, Pius XIII is indeed unperturbed by critic and intrigues. In episode five he explains: “You haven’t figured out that your old methods only work on the old popes who are afraid of losing consensus. They don’t work with me. I’m the young pope. I put no stock in consensus.”12 This radical attitude is met with resistance by curia and laity, media and politicians all over the world. Sorrentino began working on the project during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, who was widely perceived as conservative and traditional, and the young pope in the series was originally planned as a liberal contrast to Benedict XVI. Sorrentino had thus initially planned to move the pope to the other side of the progressive/conservative dichotomy. However, when Benedict XVI abdicated and Francis became pope, it was necessary to revise the characterization of the fictional pope, as Francis himself is considered as progressive and pragmatic, and the originally planned character would have lacked originality in the new setting. Sorrentino therefore reflected on the question what turn the papacy could take after Benedict XVI and Francis, which led him to playing with the progressive/conservative dichotomy. The result is a pope who smokes, drinks Coke Zero and has a certain affinity to (his own) physical attractiveness, but who is also radical in his loyalty to Catholic tradition on issues of homosexuality or papal authority. Beyond the originality of the lead character, The Young Pope goes beyond the achievements of the other recent films about popes in the sense that it engages critically with the question of papal power beyond the dichotomy of being either in favor of modernity or against it, and succeeds in showing that the papacy may not necessarily be stuck with the choice of being either “conservative” or “progressive” but that the papacy seeks to bring about an alternative modernity. Sorrentino’s way to reflect on this theme is not in envisaging a fullfledged version of what an alternative papal view of modernity could be like. It rather plays with the established dichotomy by taking the

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options to the extreme. The expressionistic form of filmic narration and the stylistic variance of the papal speeches suggest that the film does not seek a linear progression or wants to present a realistic character development, but that the audience is confronted with different constellations of institutional and human conflicts, attempts to solve these problems, and strategies for self-presentation to show what a (post)modern papacy can mean, also in relation to its positioning towards the public. It leaves, also with regards to the person Pius XIII, much room for interpretation. A definite strength of the series lies in the fact that the question where irony begins and ends is left open. The series allows thereby for different interpretations of its fundamental message and spares the viewer a trite theological or moral lesson. The dichotomy between presence and absence, visibility and invisibility lies at the bottom of all these discourses. Most importantly, Pius XIII refuses to show his face to the public or have his portrait used on merchandise. This critical attitude towards discourses about public and media forms the backdrop before which the different models of papal communication and public staging are enacted by the at times contradictory (and therefore multivalent) Pius XIII. In masterly condensed form, four public speeches by the pope play through and reduce ad absurdum the options of the established dichotomy but also show the difficulties the pope faces to escape the expectation of the public when presenting himself: the conventional pope, who seeks to find a common ground, the ultra-progressive pope, the ultra-conservative pope, and the authentic pope, who gives himself fully. The prominent role of papal speeches in the plot of the series shows how serious Sorrentino took the question of how popes can address the public.13

Voiello’s Speech: The Conventional Pope The papal speeches in the series set out from the expectations of the audience. While the members of the audience may not remember any real papal speeches, they will for the largest part have a general idea what happens at a papal speech: an older, white man dressed in white appears on the balcony of St. Peter (or on another elevated position) before a mass that consists of young and old, laity and religious, journalists and camera teams from all over the world. The expectation of the genre “papal speech” as spoken text will be that it encourages the believers in their faith and hope while also pointing out the problems in the world that should be turned for the better through prayer and

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action. For Christians this also includes the admission that they have at times fallen behind the standards expected by the Church. The expectations for a papal speech include therefore a cheerful and colorful, but also ceremonious setting and a speech that involves religious language that encourages but also teaches and admonishes. Sorrentino caters to all these expectations in order to deconstruct them. To achieve this effect, the speeches by Pius XIII are set into contrast to Cardinal Voiello’s draft for the first papal speech-the Cardinal represents as Secretary of State the establishment of the Curia and is the pope’s main opponent in the series. Voiello’s speech draft in episode two meets all the expectations of a good conventional papal speech. Sister Mary, who raised Lenny in her Catholic orphanage and who has been called by him into the Vatican to serve as a kind of motherly advisor, chooses the word “diplomatic”. Voiello agrees, as according to him the only thing that the Vatican has is diplomacy. Voiello’s speech, too, plays with the dichotomy of looking at/not looking at, but places it actively into the hands of the believers, in the sense of calling for an orientation towards God that manifests itself in the love of one’s neighbor.14 The problem of the invisibility of God, who cannot be seen by looking up into the sky, is resolved by directing one’s attention to the face of another person: God, who is love and who made man in his image, can be found by looking at another person with love. The reaction by Pius XIII to Voiello’s draft is, however, strikingly negative. When Sister Mary asks whether he would use part of it, he answers in the negative because he considers it as “rather weak”. When Mary conveys her disappointment, Pius XIII ends all familiarity and commands her to address him in the future as “His Holiness”. In his decisions of how to present himself, he does not want to be patronized by anyone, and he does not hesitate to break the rules of diplomatic conversation and conventional papal communication to bring this point across.

The Dream Speech: The Ultra-Progressive Pope As the viewer will discover later, the speech in the first episode is only imaginary. The series starts with a dream by Lenny about his inaugural speech, which develops, at least in the second part, into a nightmare. One of the recurrent topics of the first episodes is indeed the pope’s inability to compose his first speech, in which he seeks to present himself and his vision to the world. He is haunted by doubts and fears, some of which are reflected in the dream.

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At the beginning of the first episode, the newly elected pope awakes from a surreal dream (one learns only later that this has been a dream within a dream). Thereby he crawls from a mountain of dolls and sleeping babies. He dresses and walks, still like in slow motion, through the corridors of the papal palace. Small groups of priests and members of the Swiss guard greet the pope, but seem themselves strangely quiet and motionless. The whole scene is rather surreal. Despite heavy rain, a large crowd has gathered on St. Peter’s Square. When the pope appears on the balcony of St. Peter’s and looks up to the sky as if in prayer, the rain suddenly stops, the sky clears up and the sun appears. The faithful applaud and the pope begins his inaugural speech before the Catholic masses and the cameras of the global public with a casual “Ciao Rome, ciao world”. After a thunderous applause, the pope asks a rhetorical question: “What have we forgotten?” His reply is: “We have forgotten you!” The reply is followed by renewed applause by the masses. The new pope lays out how important it is to live in harmony with God. He emphasizes in particular the contribution of women and children “with their marvelous, divine disposition to play.” The message of the dream speech is liberal, simple and friendly and is met with enthusiasm by the masses. Even the relationship between God, the pope and all human beings appears simple and direct. The pope says: “God does not leave anyone behind. That is what He told me when I decided to serve Him. And it is what I say to you now.” The fundamental metaphysical assumption of the dream speech seems to be that there is a direct and indestructible connection between God, the pope and all believers. As the pope says: “I serve God. I serve you”. The answer to the rhetorical question “What have we forgotten?” therefore seems to be: to live as children of God a simple and happy faith, in harmony with God, humans and one’s own inclinations. Maybe it is no coincidence that a man with down-syndrome is shown in one of the first frames of the scene. The dream speech can be taken to represent the frequently invoked communication strategy of engaging with people on their own level. This strategy does not want to ask too much of people either morally or intellectually. Much emphasis is placed on good relationships and pointing out common points (“Ciao, Rome”). The point is to confirm people in their fundamental assumptions and commitments and to strengthen their confidence and sense of community and self-worth. The second part of the dream speech shows, however, where this strategy can lead to when it is thought out fully, namely from the dream into the nightmare.

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The same rhetorical question that Pius XIII had used at the beginning of his speech, marks also the beginning of the speech’s second part: “And what else have we forgotten?” The camera focuses in on the face of the pope and creates thereby a more intensive atmosphere. But this time the reply to his question reads like a list of all the things that so far have been forbidden by the Catholic Church, including the use of contraception, abortion and same sex marriage. As soon as the people on the square have grasped the meaning of the pope’s words, the cheering of the masses dies down. Laity and clergy are shocked, nuns in the audience make the sign of the cross, some cardinals faint. The pope, however, carries on unflinchingly: “In short, my dear, dear children, not only have we forgotten to play, we have forgotten to be happy. And there is only one road that leads to happiness. And that road is called freedom.” Before the masses on St. Peter’s Square were exalted to hear a young and modern pope who places playfulness and personal relationships before rigid rules and hierarchy, but now they appear to feel themselves abandoned by a pope who carries this progressive attitude to the extreme and who has thereby lost his function as a moral compass within Catholic doctrine. Lenny’s opponent, Cardinal Voiello, turns to the pope and says: “What are you saying, Lenny? What’s all this nonsense? You’re not the pope, Lenny! I am the pope! I’m the pope, and you, Lenny, are no longer a member of the Church. You are done with God, Lenny.” When Lenny turns around, St. Peter’s Square is completely empty. The crowds have disappeared. He awakes beneath the cross in his room. The stage for the dream is the balcony of St. Peter that overlooks the crowded St. Peter’s square. Visually the dream uses three levels: the masses below, the pope and the curia above them, and as the third level the sky. The weather does not only serve to enrich the atmosphere of the scene but signals also the approval or disapproval of the heavenly father. The sun, that almost miraculously breaks through the grey clouds appears as a symbol of God’s affirmation of the newly elected pope. This alludes to biblical passages about the voice of God that speaks from the sky during the baptism of Jesus. But at the end, all that is left “under the sun” is the yawning void of the empty square. This second part of the dream speech can be interpreted as the concern, that a Church that sets aside Catholic doctrine in favor of personal choice does not liberate but destroy the community of faithful, so that in the end there will no longer be an audience that listens to the pope, as the pope no longer presents an

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authority that is accepted by the faithful, and therefore no longer holds a position of power.

The Inaugural Speech: The Ultra-Conservative Pope The imagery of light and darkness is continued in the second episode that contains the first “real” speech by the pope. To guarantee the invisibility of the pope, the speech is set for 9 pm. While there is some illumination at the side of St. Peter, the balcony, from which the speech is delivered, remains dark, so that the pope is only seen as a silhouette and his face remains invisible. Nevertheless, a cardboard sign that is held up by a man in the crowd calls the pope “our light”. The faithful eagerly await the appearance of this mysterious new pope and his message. Again, the pope asks at the beginning of his speech “What have we forgotten?” And this time the reply is: God. The pope gives an angry sermon and claims that nobody can approach God as long as he or she has other goals and desires. Here, too, the believers react to the speech with shock and silence. A man from the crowd finally points with a laser pointer at the pope. This action reverses the hierarchy. Not only reaches a person from below up, where the expectation for the direction of all action is to be from the top (pope) down to the crowd, and the masses are conceded only expressions of gratitude and loyalty through cheering, applause or cardboard signs. This light also belongs to an ordinary believer and not to the pope, who seeks to control with his elaborate staging the realms of light and darkness and of what is visible and what invisible. The pope angrily withdraws from the balcony and says, visibly upset: “I don’t know if you are worthy of me”. Like in the dream speech, the dark sky serves not only to increase the desired atmosphere. The darkness that surrounds St. Peter can also be interpreted as the absence of God or at least as the visual representation of doubt, fear and insecurity. But the question remains open: Is God absent in the lives of the faithful or is he missing from the message of the papal speech? The rhetorical question that precedes the speech also draws on the theme of absence. For what we have forgotten is that, which is no longer accessible to the mind, where it was once present. The last words of the pope before he breaks off his inaugural speech also point towards the personal level: why should the faithful be worthy of their pope? One of the basic tenets of Christianity is that God loves those

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who are not worthy but put in their weakness all their trust in him. The job of the pope is to lead also those believers who “deserve” nothing. The power of the father to abandon his children is one of the most archaic but also most un-Christian expressions of patriarchic power. As a communication strategy this speech stands for the retreat into the arcane. Like in the Greco-Roman mysteries the deeper knowledge is revealed only step by step and only to those who are considered worthy. Not a universal network or egalitarian communication accessible to all is the ideal, but the initiation of suitable and willing candidates by the spiritually advanced in a clear hierarchy. This communication strategy signals a turn away from popular religion towards a notion of the chosen few. The interpretation of the world is largely negative, and the power position of the church is more that of a small combat unit in hostile territory than that of a globally visible and politically active religious actor.

The Final Speech: The Authentic Pope Although Pius XIII maintains many of his positions throughout the series, he is presented as increasingly softer and more self-reflective. In his final speech, which also constitutes the final scene of the final episode, he talks about love for all, almost as if he had taken on at least parts of the flower power ideology of his parents’ generation, from which he had tried so hard to distance himself: in the end, it is not the differences like rich or poor, good or evil, man or woman that matter but alone that “God smiles”. The stage for this last scene is the balcony of San Marco in Venice. It is a beautiful sunny day and the masses reach far beyond the square. At last Lenny shows his face to the masses. He sees his parents in the crowd, or believes at least that he has discovered them among the many unknown faces. Here, too, the status of this perception is left open. But while most people on the square follow the pope’s request and start smiling, the face of the elderly hippies remains hard and unmoved. The message of the unconditional smile does not soften them. Finally, they turn and leave the square. Lenny suffers a break down and possibly dies (as far as the audience knows at this point).15 Shortly before passing out, he sees in the clouds the beautiful image of the mother of God.16 How should this be interpreted? Maybe psychologically as the fulfilment of Lenny’s deep desire for motherly love and attention and a comforting projection of his inner self, but therefore also ultimately as an illusion. But maybe the final scene

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also shows the moment in which the divine sphere becomes finally visible in personalized form. The heavenly mediator Mary, whose apparition and communication with selected faithful very much conforms to Catholic orthodoxy,17 would confirm probably not the theological positions of Pius XIII but his status as a chosen man of deep faith and of the Church. In this direction points also Lenny’s gift of moving God through intense prayer that is revealed step by step in the series and through which he can both give life (illustrated by the case of the spontaneous healing of a dying woman and the conception of a child by an infertile couple) and take life (when he “prays to death” a greedy and unjust nun). The strategy of the last speech consists in the attempt to bridge differences and conflicts. For the first time Pius XIII appears to feel real affection for the people he is meant to guide and to see the masses not only as masses but as people with many faces, his parents among them. The strategy of love that bridges differences appears to be the most attractive offer of religious communication. The final scene in Venice shows, however, that it does not lead automatically to a happy end. Ultimately, the merit of all presented strategies remains open. Due to the set up at the end of the series, the complete failure of the last strategy hits the viewer the hardest. Not only turn the people whom Lenny wanted to reach the most with his message away, but maybe this constellation of disappointment results even in the death of the pope who has become merely human and thus vulnerable. But maybe it is in this authentic role that the pope also comes closest to the one he is meant to represent as Vicar of Christ.

Conclusion If films can serve as an indication of public perceptions and expectations, recent films about the papacy show how closely papal power, or even papal identity, seems to be tied to the dichotomy of “progessiveness” versus “conservatism”. The series The Young Pope is remarkable in that it goes beyond the established stereotypes of what papal power means. The Young Pope provides starting points for rethinking the pope as an actor who is not simply for or against secular modernity but who seeks to establish an alternative modernity that does no longer fall neatly on one of the sides of the progressive/conservative cleavage. Without settling on one option as satisfactory or natural, the series presents in different scenarios examples of conventional, ultra-progressive, ultra-conservative or authentic papal rhetoric and staging. It is not clear yet what the forthcoming follow-up

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season The New Pope can add to this. The trailer reveals that Pius XIII has survived his collapse in the final episode of The Young Pope and now lies in a coma, which means that a new pope has been elected. It remains to be seen if there are really two popes in the new series, and if and how The New Pope avoids conforming to the established progressive/conservative cleavage.

Notes 1. Lyn Gorman and David McLean, Media and Society into the 21st Century: A Historical Introduction (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 47f. 2. Pope Pius IX finalized his Syllabus of Modern Errors, an annex to the encyclical Quanta Cura of 1864, with rejecting the following statement: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” 3. Patrick Loughny, “1898–1899: Movies and Entrepreneurs,” in André Gaudreault (ed.), American Cinema, 1890–1909: Themes and Variations (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 66–90, here 78. 4. Federico Ruozzi, “Pius XII as Actor and Subject: On the Representation of the Pope in Cinema During the 1940s and 1950s,” in Daniel Biltereyst and Daniela Treveri Gennari (eds.), Moralizing Cinema: Film, Catholicism, and Power (New York: Routledge, 2015), 158–172, here 167. 5. To offer some variety for the scenes that show Michelangelo painting in the Sistine Chapple, the filmmakers inserted battle scenes of the pope’s wars, creating a much younger and more “virile” image of the Pope. See Robert Niemi, History in the Media: Film and Television (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), 296. 6. See Axel Heck, “Der Vatikan, die Stadt und der Tod: Motive von Sex, Macht und Verbrechen in der Netflixserie ‘Suburra’,” in Mariano Barbato, Melanie Barbato and Johannes Löffler (eds.), Wege zum digitalen Papsttum. Perspektiven auf den politischen Papst im Wandel medialer Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt: Campus, 2018), 227–255. 7. Own translation: “Das ist nicht mein Ding. Investigative TV-Filme über den Vatikan gibt es viele. Ich habe mich für einen anderen Film entschieden.” See Evelyn Finger, “Das Kino darf alles. Sogar predigen. Interview,” Zeit Online, May 29, 2018. 8. Ibid. 9. The film is based on Anthony McCarten’s book The Two Popes (New York: Flatiron Books, 2019). 10. Own translation. Theresia Heimerl, “Nach der Macht ist vor der Macht. THE YOUNG POPE als spielerisch–kritische Reflexion zu kirchlicher

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11. 12. 13.

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Macht heute,” Disputatio philosophica: International Journal on Philosophy and Religion, 18, 1 (2016): 101–114, here 101. Owns translation. Ibid. Paolo Sorrentino, The Young Pope (Sky/HBO/Canal+ 2016), episode 5. I have discussed these speeches in more detail in Melanie Barbato, “The Young Pope. Fiktionales Spiel mit päpstlicher Rede,” in Mariano Barbato, Melanie Barbato and Johannes Löffler (eds.), Wege zum digitalin Papsttum. Perspektiven auf den politischen Papst im Wandel medialer Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt: Campus, 2018), 173–196. Paolo Sorrentino, The Young Pope (Sky/HBO/Canal+ 2016), episode 2. It is only revealed in the follow-up season called The New Pope that Pius XIII has survived but lies in a coma. Less likely but also possible is an interpretation of the figure as Christ as suggested by Nicole Cliffe, “Who Is God?” Vulture, February 13, 2017. For the Catholic tradition of Marian apparitions, see for example Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Chris Maundner, Our Lady of the Nations: Apparitions of Mary in 20th-Century Catholic Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

PART II

Geopolitical Stages

CHAPTER 5

The Holy See’s Vision of an Abrahamic Middle East: Islam, Israel, and Oriental Churches Mariano P. Barbato

The Middle East constitutes a critical landscape for the papacy. The area is the cradle of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is thus an important but also contested factor in Catholic identity and papal self-understanding. However, in terms of power politics, the pope is in an outsider position. While Israel governs the Holy Land and Islam dominates most of the rest of the Middle East, Christians constitute a fragmented minority in the area, and not all of them are on good terms with the Roman pontiff. While all three monotheistic religions claim Abraham as their father of faith, their mutual relations have been marked throughout history by tensions and conflicts. Nevertheless, modern popes have taken up the task of playing a more active role in shaping these difficult relations. And, despite setbacks, they have been surprisingly successful in building stable relationships within the highly fragmented triangle of the three monotheistic traditions, with the papacy thereby becoming to a certain extent both a visible public and

M. P. Barbato (B) Center for Religion and Modernity, University of Münster, Münster, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_5

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an influential diplomatic actor in the area. The pope’s presence in the region is intertwined with a vision for the Middle East beyond Islamic exclusivism and secular nationalism. In a way, the papal vision of an Abrahamic Middle East is a postsecular endeavor.1 The situation can be illustrated with the successes and disappointments of John Paul II, who managed to establish the popes as public players in the Middle East. Instructive are the jubilee of the Holy Year 2000, which was planned right from the beginning as a milestone in John Paul II’s pontificate. John Paul II is well known as the pope who turned traveling into an essential tool of pastoral, public, and political ends, and it is therefore not surprising that the jubilee journeys constituted a major part in the Holy Year’s festive schedule. As the Holy Year celebrated the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, a visit to Bethlehem and the Holy Land was obviously part of the planning. However, John Paul II aimed at a larger picture and to create that picture he chose to expand the focus of his Jubilee activities to include the wider Middle East. His initial travel plans included three jubilee journeys to the Middle East. In addition to his journey to the Holy Land, which took place as the great finale in March, John Paul II visited Mount Sinai in February, where Moses had received the Covenant for Israel. The third journey, however, did not materialize. The pope had hoped to visit Ur in Chaldea as his first destination, where, according to the three Abrahamic traditions, Abraham had started his journey of faith. Negotiations had begun with the Ba’ath regime of Saddam Hussein, whose politics included the Christian minority to a certain extent—most famously in the person of his foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, a Chaldean Catholic. But the dictator stopped the negotiations, and Abraham could not be integrated into the papal jubilee.2 The story of the Ba’ath regime can also shed light on what is fundamentally at stake for the Holy See in the Middle East, not least because the end of the regime caused an earthquake in the region, which led to terror and massive persecutions of Christians. Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz became comrades as secular Arab nationalists, although Aziz was ethnically not Arabic but Assyrian. Secular pan-Arabism was partly invented and organized by Christians like Constantine Zurayk and Michel Aflaq. It seemed to offer an alternative to European colonialism and the Ottoman Empire’s millet system. Secular nationalism seemed to be the instrument to end the marginalized position that Christians had had in the Middle East since the Muslim conquest without relying on foreign

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powers, as it would allow them to become full citizens in Arabic nation states. The secularization of politics and publics played a pivotal part in this project.3 That secular strategy may or may not be attractive for Christians in the region, but it certainly would not work particularly well for the papacy. First of all, the pope has the task of strengthening the faith of his brethren, and, from a papal perspective, it is very doubtful that this can go hand in hand with a successful secularization process that relegates religion to the private chamber of the heart. In any case, the shrinking role of religion in politics and publics would reduce the public and political impact of the Holy See. It is therefore understandable that the strategy of the Holy See aimed both to support Christians in the region in their struggle for full citizenship and religious freedom, and to cultivate a political and public landscape shaped by interreligious dialogue and entanglement rather than by a full-fledged separation of religion and state. The alleged incapacity of Islam to separate religion from politics is thus not a major issue for the papacy. The issue is rather one of finding an interreligious modus vivendi in which Christianity can survive (and, ideally, flourish) in the Middle East, with the pope being able to play a part in the public and political debates. The papacy envisages a postsecular public for the Middle East that is pluralistic and interreligious, and that marks a contrast to the secular model of Western nationalism and liberalism, but also to any kind of religious—in this case, mainly Muslim—dominance.

Oriental Churches and Papal Visions of “Abrahamic Christians” The papacy faces in the Middle East a Christian landscape that is historically highly fragmented. Besides the Catholics of the Latin Rite and the large and powerful Maronite Church in Lebanon, many churches are in full communion with the bishop of Rome: the Melkite Greek Catholic Church (seat in Damascus), the Chaldean Catholic Church (seat in Baghdad), the Coptic Catholic Church (seat in Cairo), the Syriac Catholic Church (seat in Damascus), and the Armenian Catholic Church (seat in Beirut). Part of this diversity are also two Indian churches, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, which have close historical ties to the Oriental churches of the Middle East and whose current presence in the region is made up of Indian

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migrants who constitute an important part of the labor force of the Arab peninsula.4 The Roman acceptance of plurality in liturgy, traditions, and regional structures enabled an early modern, but slow and complicated, unification process, which resulted in a fragmented rather than uniform landscape. Leaning on regional Muslim rulers was for many a more obvious option than accepting the supremacy of the papacy. When the collapse of the Ottoman Empire paved the way for Arab nationalism and the establishment of nation states, the papacy already had, however, a foot on the ground that was not backed by colonial powers but by established old communities.5 Nevertheless, the papal option was again not the obvious choice. Political powers and ideologies, most prominently a secular panArabic project, promised much better prospects, and Christians became involved in the variations of secular Arab nationalism. Radical biographies, like Tariq Aziz’s or George Habash’s, became part of that development. The declaration of the State of Israel and the ensuing War of Independence resulted in a wave of Palestinian refugees. This included Christians like George Habash, an Eastern Orthodox Christian who was at the time a medical undergraduate at the American University of Beirut. Habash became one of the most radical leaders of Palestinian resistance and a pioneer of terrorist attacks on civil aviation.6 His communist-inspired aim was to eradicate the State of Israel and to establish a secular and egalitarian state without religious belonging playing any public role. The example of Habash certainly constitutes an extreme version of what George Sabra7 calls the “Arab Christian”—a Christian who seeks a close alliance with Muslim Arabs and blames the West for being at the root of the problem. As the pope is considered a fundamental part of the West from both a Muslim and an Oriental Christian perspective, the natural allies of the Roman pontiff are those whom Sabra calls “Eastern Christian”: they count on the support of the West in order to preserve their Christian identity against the Muslim majority. However, due to its weak position in the region, the papacy cannot deliver substantive external support for the “Eastern Christians”. It is, therefore, in the interest of the papacy to go beyond the dichotomy of “Arab” versus “Eastern Christians” and to find constructive solutions to the various pressures that Christians in the Middle East face. The vision that the papacy seems to aim at is an interreligious postsecularism in which the Abrahamic religions find a modus vivendi that leaves their faith untouched while creating a public sphere in which all denominations can participate on an equal footing.

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Lebanon is the (admittedly idealized) role model for that. In contrast to the “Arab” and the “Eastern” Christian, one could label the papal ideal as the “Abrahamic” Christian. The first step in this direction was ecumenical. When, in 1964, Paul VI became the first pope to visit the Holy Land, international traveling started to developed into the instrument that enabled papal presence on various stages of the global public. The ecumenical encounter with the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople is remembered as the most important event and gesture in that journey.8 The encounter also supported the Second Vatican Decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum, which strengthened the autonomy of those Eastern churches in full communion with the Holy See. The decree also helped Eastern churches to come under the papal umbrella of the Catholic Church but stay free of any Westernization in liturgy and traditions. All the following papal journeys in the area not only included visits to these communities but were also usually the entry point to undertake a pastoral visit in the first place. The Congregation for the Oriental Churches had already been established in 1917, and has been led since 2007 by Cardinal Prefect Leonardo Sandri. It manages the relations of the papacy to the representatives of these churches, but also moderates between them and provides a Roman meeting and reference point beyond the regional tensions. This task of bridging very diverse factions is demanding at any time, and mastering it in very difficult times gave Cardinal Prefect Sandri the status of a papabile when Benedict XVI resigned.9 Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate invested substantially in the Oriental churches, which came under intense pressure in the turmoil of the Iraq wars. The exodus of Christians from the region alarmed many who had come to fear the end of all Christian presence in the Middle East. While these fears turned out to be exaggerated, Christians indeed faced massive threats to their life and their religious freedom from various factions of political Islam and terrorism. In October 2010, a Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East was held at the Vatican. When the Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia a few months later, reached Egypt, it also became a Christian issue. Christians and Muslims protested together against a secular regime whose power also rested on the ability to play Muslims off against Copts.10 Nevertheless, the leading Christian clergy were late to break off its alliance with the Mubarak administration. After all, the old regime granted religious freedom at least in principle. When Benedict XVI gave his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia

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in Medio Oriente in Lebanon in September 2012, the Arab Spring already bore some bitter fruit for the Christian communities. Benedict XVI nevertheless supported whole-heartedly the democratization process that he hoped would be linked to these social uprisings. At the press conference on his way to Beirut, he expressed support but also admonition: I would say that in itself, the Arab spring is a positive thing: it is a desire for greater democracy, greater freedom, greater cooperation and a revived Arab identity. This cry for freedom, which comes from a young generation with more cultural and professional formation, who seek greater participation in political and social life, is a mark of progress, a truly positive development that has been hailed by Christians too. […] We must do all we can to ensure that the concept of freedom, the desire for freedom, goes in the right direction and does not overlook tolerance, the overall social fabric, and reconciliation, which are essential elements of freedom. […] I therefore think it is important to recognize the positive elements in these movements and to do all we can to ensure that freedom is correctly conceived and corresponds to growth in dialogue rather than domination of one group over others.11

During his visit, Benedict XVI presented Lebanon as a role model. Its democratic system, based mainly on a tense system of power sharing between Maronite, Shia and Sunni communities, had survived in a modified form a long civil war (1975–1990) with atrocities on all sides.12 Despite the current tensions and the past hardships and crimes, Lebanon appears as a role model for an interreligious arrangement with a strong Christian community and a democratically backed rule of law. Or, in the words of Benedict XVI’s appeal during an interreligious encounter with the Muslim youth of Lebanon: And when you are older, continue to live in unity and harmony with Christians. For the beauty of Lebanon is found in this fine symbiosis. It is vital that the Middle East in general, looking at you, should understand that Muslims and Christians, Islam and Christianity, can live side by side without hatred, with respect for the beliefs of each person, so as to build together a free and humane society.13

From a papal perspective, the postsecular, interreligious society has only unpleasant alternatives: Christians can rely on a strong man whose dictatorship does not rest primarily on Christian consent (Syria under Assad),

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or they have to face an Islamic regime that is at best democratically elected (Egypt under Morsi), if not the blank terror of the Islamic State. Against this background, Benedict XVI tried to paint a promising picture, although he was certainly not naïve regarding the threats of political Islam, as will be discussed later. Francis came to office when the political situation was worsening. In Syria, resistance to President Assad’s regime turned into a civil war in which mainly Sunni forces fought against Alawite dominance but also threatened Christian, Shia, and other communities. In their all-out campaign, the Syrian governmental forces also used chemical weapons. In response to the chemical attack on Ghouta, the US government announced an air campaign against governmental forces. Pope Francis was quick to call for peace prayers to stop this intervention.14 While a call for peace prayers certainly stood in the tradition of his predecessors, who opposed all Western interventions in the region, it was obvious that the pope had a specific interest on the ground: the Christians whose majority, including the bishops in communion with the pope, sided with President Assad’s regime and who would be vulnerable to Islamic attacks profiting from air strikes. The announced air strikes never happened; instead, Russia, the protector and ally of Assad and (as it itself declared) of the Christian communities, intervened, promising to oversee the dismantling of chemical weapons. In the following years, the Islamic State conquered a vast territory of Syrian and Iraqi land, cleansing ancient Christian strongholds like the Nineveh Plains of Christian life. Under this massive onslaught on the bare lives of Christians and the existence of their communities, the papacy shifted from a focus on social transformation to realpolitik and diplomacy. Putin was welcomed in the Vatican three times, and the worldviews of pope and president did not necessarily clash, as a newspaper headline claimed.15 Instead, Pope Francis applied his Jesuit training in flexibility. Returning from his trip to Egypt in April 2017, only four months after the Russian-backed Battle of Aleppo had been victoriously completed by Assad’s troops, the pontiff found favorable words for the Russian role as protector of the Christians in the Middle East. For the time being, the pope had to choose, like anyone who wants to participate in the authoritarian climate of Middle East politics,16 between unpleasant alternatives while waiting for new opportunities to foster the papal vision of a postsecular, interreligious, Abrahamic Middle East.

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Islam and the Declaration of Human Fraternity The recent hallmark in the relation of the papacy to the Muslims of the Middle East was set by the Abu Dhabi declaration of February 2019. Sheik Ahmad al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of al-Azhar and a leading authority in Sunni Islam, and Pope Francis signed the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together”.17 This document listed an ambitious catalogue of objectives and demands ranging from religious freedom based on religious pluralism to equal rights for women. During the visit, the pope also celebrated a mass that was attended by around 135,000 people, making the Christian presence on the Arab peninsula visible. Migrant laborers, including many Christians, constitute the overall majority of the population of the Gulf emirates.18 Since the first trip to the Holy Land in 1964, the Middle East has been a key destination for papal travels. However, only a few countries are open to the papal pilgrim. The Holy Land (Israel, Palestine, and Jordan) is certainly the most important destination. It was, however, visited only once by each pope: Paul VI came in 1964, John Paul II in 2000, Benedict XVI in 2009, and Francis in 2014. All popes also visited Turkey as an ecumenical gesture to the Patriarch of Constantinople: Paul VI in 1967, John Paul II in 1979, Benedict XVI in 2006, and Francis in 2014. Lebanon was a stop-over for Paul VI in 1964 on his way to India, but John Paul II visited the country in 1997 and Benedict XVI in 2012. John Paul II visited Egypt in 2000, Francis in 2017. Morocco was also visited twice, by John Paul II in 1985 and by Francis in 2019. Iran (Paul VI in 1970), Tunisia (John Paul II in 1996), Syria (John Paul II in 2001), and Abu Dhabi (Francis in 2019) were visited once. This list shows that only a few countries welcome the pope on their soil on a regular basis. With the exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Oman, all states in the region have full diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The latest to establish relations with the Holy See was the Palestine National Authority in 2016. However, cultivating relationships on the diplomatic level only, as Iran, for instance, does quite intensively,19 is different from granting access to the public domain. The success of Francis’ journey to Abu Dhabi has to be measured against this background. The Abu Dhabi partners seem determined to develop their agenda. Within half a year of the declaration, a Higher Committee of Human Fraternity was established. The Catholic members are Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot and Pope Francis’ second personal secretary, the

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Coptic priest Yoannis Lahzi Gaid. Cardinal Ayuso Guixot is the “mastermind” behind the project on the Catholic side. After the successful Abu Dhabi meeting, he was raised by Pope Francis to the rank of a cardinal and appointed director of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The committee’s first major project is the erection of an interfaith complex in Abu Dhabi. Assembled around a square and connected below the ground, the complex, designed by star architect David Adjaye, consists of a mosque, a church, and a synagogue, and is called the Abrahamic Family House. The Committee proposed to UN Secretary General António Guterres that the day of the Abu Dhabi declaration should become a UN World Day for human fraternity.20 These developments echo the success of John Paul II. When he traveled to Morocco in 1985, the pontiff was able to fill the sports stadium of Casablanca, where he addressed Muslim youth and called on them to create a peaceful future for all.21 A year later, John Paul II invited religious representatives of various communities to Assisi and established the “World Day of Prayer for Peace of Assisi”, which has taken place regularly since 1986.22 While these initiatives were part of the Cold War alliance of religion against communism, they also included from early on a prevention of what would later emerge as a clash of civilizations.23 The Middle East was the prime region to spread these interreligious initiatives. In May 2001, and thus before 9/11, John Paul II was the first pope to enter a mosque, the Great Mosque of Damascus, during his visit to Syria. The mosque, a reconstructed early Christian basilica, contains the tomb of John the Baptist, who is also venerated by Muslims. The visit was intended to foster interreligious peace among the Abrahamic religions of the Middle East.24 Having called constantly for peace since the US-led intervention in Kuwait in 1991, John Paul II used the journey as part of his deliberate attempts to escape all equations of the papacy with the West, in order to prevent anything that could evoke the image of returning crusaders. He condemned all US-led military interventions also in order to try to protect Eastern Christians against any backlash. These struggles mark the background against which these papal initiatives and their diplomatic nature, in contrast to a theologically orientated dialogue between religions, have to be seen. The alleged kiss that the pope gave to the Quran during his visit to Syria, which still resurfaces in social media conversations,25 has to be understood within this context of building interfaith peace in a difficult and dangerous environment, one that would witness just a decade later the onslaught of the Islamic State

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and the Syrian Civil War. On the other hand, an American book titled “Ecumenical Jihad” was possible before these attempts failed due to the rise of Islamic extremism and Western intervention, particularly in Iraq.26 In the light of the fallout of the Regensburg Speech,27 the pontificate of Benedict XVI seems to present the questionable alternative to those endeavors. However, that verdict would be too superficial. While some have criticized Benedict XVI for being overly careful and sometimes timid, the style of the Bavarian pope was clearly orientated towards an open public debate. His goal was to shift the dominant discourse more into the Abrahamic direction of a postsecular society, as he had discussed famously with the philosopher Jürgen Habermas shortly before he was elected pope.28 Only months after the Regensburg Speech, Benedict XVI visited Turkey and gave a speech at the meeting with the President of the Religious Affairs Directorate. Again, he quoted a historical Muslim-Christian encounter in order to stress the need for religious freedom: As an illustration of the fraternal respect with which Christians and Muslims can work together, I would like to quote some words addressed by Pope Gregory VII in 1076 to a Muslim prince in North Africa who had acted with great benevolence towards the Christians under his jurisdiction. Pope Gregory spoke of the particular charity that Christians and Muslims owe to one another ‘because we believe in one God, albeit in a different manner, and because we praise him and worship him every day as the Creator and Ruler of the world’. Freedom of religion, institutionally guaranteed and effectively respected in practice, both for individuals and communities, constitutes for all believers the necessary condition for their loyal contribution to the building up of society, in an attitude of authentic service, especially towards the most vulnerable and the very poor.29

Benedict XVI also reacted positively to a letter from Islamic authorities.30 A few years later, however, he had to accept the breakdown of his dialogue with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmad al-Tayeb, as a reaction to his critical remarks concerning the pressure on Egypt’s Christians.31 As Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger was still a disputatious intellectual who initiated controversies as part of an open public sphere in a postsecular society. After the dialogue was reestablished, Francis’ speech at al-Azhar in 2017 echoed the Regensburg Speech in a way.32 Of course, any provocation was left out and the aim was no longer a public dispute but a

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diplomatic alliance. But the arguments voiced in Regensburg and Egypt were the same: religious communities have to seize the middle ground between violent extremism and this-worldly materialism, or in the words of Francis in Egypt: This is a timely reminder in the face of a dangerous paradox of the present moment. On the one hand, religion tends to be relegated to the private sphere, as if it were not an essential dimension of the human person and society. At the same time, the religious and political spheres are confused and not properly distinguished. […] For all these reasons, especially today, religion is not a problem but a part of the solution: against the temptation to settle into a banal and uninspired life, where everything begins and ends here below, religion reminds us of the need to lift our hearts to the Most High in order to learn how to build the city of man.33

Israel: Elder Brother in the Holy Land In March 2019, only a month after the Abu Dhabi declaration, Francis was back in the Middle East, visiting Morocco. Again, a declaration was issued. This time, Pope Francis and the King of Morocco, who traces his family lineage back to the Prophet Mohamed, signed a document that calls for “full freedom of access” to Jerusalem as “the common patrimony of humanity”.34 This came in the context of Donald Trump’s decision to support Israel’s practice of using Jerusalem as its capital. At first glance, Pope Francis took the Arab side, which united most Christians and Muslims in the Middle East, but not necessarily elsewhere. However, the declaration only voices the Holy See’s longstanding position. The Holy See had originally favored an international administration of the Holy Places beyond Israel or Arab control and had major problems to come to terms with the State of Israel.35 When Pope Francis visited the Holy Land in May 2014, the year after he took office, he stopped near Bethlehem at the Israeli West Bank barrier.36 Standing in silence at the wall in a gesture of prayer and protest, he obviously took sides even though he also uttered during the visits words of support for Israeli security concerns. The Christian Arabs of Bethlehem suffer without doubt due to the wall. In a similar gesture of silence, Francis walked two years later through the Stammlager of Auschwitz to demonstrate his mourning beyond words.37 The communication strategy used by Francis does not rely on words only; he also

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knows how to handle gestures and images in order to communicate in a way that opens up a spectrum of positive interpretations and that leaves room for the receiver to choose. The most powerful image of a pope looking at a wall in prayer was created by John Paul II, and repeated by his successors, when he visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. It was also John Paul II who made the term “elder brothers” popular.38 John Paul II was also the first pope to visit a synagogue and to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.39 The achievements of his pontificate enabled a deeper and sometimes more controversial dialogue during the Ratzinger pontificate, as well as the more diplomatic and politically oriented balancing of Pope Francis, whose invitation to the Vatican to the presidents Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres in 2014 for a prayer meeting produced powerful images of the two presidents planting together with the pope a tree in the Vatican garden. The pope might become the public icon as a constant gardener of peace in the Middle East. The groundbreaking Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on interreligious relations, Nostra Aetate, already showed that the Holy See had to balance the willingness of the Catholic Church to achieve friendly terms with Judaism and the papal interest in the Middle East concerning the tensions between the State of Israel and the Muslim world. While the Council was originally focused on Jewish-Christian relations alone, the resistance of Arab Christians, but also pressure from Arab states, forced an interreligious broadening of the agenda.40 Due to his German background, Benedict XVI had an additional task to master. Despite the groundbreaking efforts of John Paul II, the role of the Catholic Church, as well as of the papacy under Pius XII, are still highly controversial. For Benedict XVI, who in his youth had been drafted into Hitler’s army, it was difficult to balance expectations of what a pope from Germany has to say when visiting Auschwitz or Yad Vashem. But, despite many critical voices, his positive impact has been acknowledged.41

Conclusion: Powerplay and Postsecularism Most countries in the region have full diplomatic relations with the Holy See. However, public and political circumstances only allow the pope to play a very limited, prudent, and cautious role on the Middle East stage. The stakes are particularly high for the Holy See’s relationship with Israel: there is the issue of access to the Holy Land and the Christian presence

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there, but also the relationship of Catholics and Jews in general. Sometimes, however, geopolitical interest in the Arab and Muslim dominated Middle East, including the Arab Christians, ranks even higher, if the ideal of a balanced Abrahamic consensus in a postsecular Middle East cannot be reached. Drawing on the initial visit of Paul VI to the Holy Land and the interreligious perspectives that have been opened up by the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II laid the ground for an active papal role in the Middle East. His vision of an Abrahamic Middle East was meant to bring peace to the region, but could also be conceived as an Abrahamic coalition in world politics. The UN Conference in Cairo, for example, was a success along these lines. However, the rise of political Islam, Western interventions, and the breakdown of the Oslo peace process blocked any substantial progress towards this papal vision. John Paul II’s successors continued the papal pilgrimage for peace. While Benedict XVI was optimistic enough to push for change and welcome the Arab Spring as a move towards a postsecular public, Francis, witnessing the civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State, chose a more political and diplomatic path, which resulted in the current breakthrough of the Abu Dhabi declaration. The Abrahamic vision has not yet been fulfilled, but the papacy and its allies have managed to open a new chapter.42

Notes 1. For a discussion of the postsecular approach, see the introduction in this volume. See also Mariano Barbato and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-secular Political Order?” European Political Science Review, 1, 3 (2009): 317–340; Luca Mavelli and Fabio Petito, “The Postsecular in International Relations: An Overview,” Review of International Studies, 38, 5 (2012): 931–942. 2. George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. 1920– 2005 (New York: Harper, 2005), 866–875. 3. Fiona McCallum, “Christian Political Participation in the Arab World,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 23, 1 (2012): 3–18. For a current discussion, see: Stephan Stetter and Mitra Moussa Nabo (eds.), Middle East Christianity: Local Practices, World Societal Entanglements (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). 4. Anthony O’Mahony and Emma Loosley (eds.), Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 2019); on Christian migration to the Middle East, see the biographical report of the Catholic Bishop of

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5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

Abu Dhabi: Paul Hinder and Simon Biallowons, Als Bischof in Arabien. Erfahrungen mit dem Islam (Freiburg/Brs.: Herder, 2016). See, for example: John Joseph, Muslim-Christian Relations and InterChristian Rivalries in the Middle East: The Case of the Jacobites in an Age of Transition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984). The Dawson field hijacking in which four hijacked but disembarked Western planes were blown up simultaneously on an airfield in Jordan on September 12, 1970 turned the hijacking of airplanes into a tool among terrorists, resulting in 9/11 almost exactly 31 years later. George Sabra, “Two Ways of Being a Christian in the Muslim Context of the Middle East,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 17, 1 (2006): 43–53. Thomas Brechenmacher and Hardy Ostry, Paul VI—Rom und Jerusalem. Konzil, Pilgerfahrt, Dialog der Religionen (Trier: Paulinus, 2000). John L. Allan, “Papabile of the Day: The Men Who Could Be Pope,” National Catholic Reporter, February 20, 2013. Mariano Barbato, “Postsecular Revolution: Religion After the End of History,” Review of International Studies, 38, 5 (2012): 1079–1097. Benedict XVI, Interview of the Holy Father Benedict XVI with journalists during the flight to Lebanon, Papal Flight, Friday, September 14, 2012. Christians were also the perpetrators. The Karantina massacre of 1976 and the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 were committed by predominantly Christian forces. Benedict XVI, Meeting with young people, address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Square across the Maronite Patriarchate of Bkerké, Saturday, September 15, 2012. Francis, Angelus, Saint Peter’s Square, Saturday, September 1, 2013; Francis, Vigil of Prayer for Peace, Words of the Holy Father Francis, Saint Peter’s Square, Saturday, September 7, 2013. Jason Horowitz, “A Clash of Worldviews as Pope Francis and Putin Meet Again,” New York Times, July 4, 2019. McCallum, “Christian Political Participation in the Arab World.” Francis and Ahmad Al-Tayeb, A Document of Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together [Declaration of Human Fraternity], February 4, 2019. The Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia has established a website dedicated to the papal visit: https://uaepapalvisit.org/. See the contribution of Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl in this volume. The project is presented at the website of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity: https://www.forhumanfraternity.org/. John Paul II, Address of his Holiness John Paul II to Young Muslims, Morocco, Monday, August 19, 1985.

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22. Mario Collarini et al., Assisi Profezia di Pace. 27 ottobre 1986 (Assisi: Casa Editrice Francescana, 1987). 23. See: Jeffrey Haynes, From Huntington to Trump: Thirty Years of the Clash of Civilizations (Lanham: Lexington, 2019). 24. Alessandra Stanley, “Pope, in Damascus, Goes to a Mosque in Move for Unity,” New York Times, May 7, 2001. 25. David Schmiedel, “Die vielen Leben von Papst Johannes Paul II.: Wie digitale Narrationen unseren Blick auf Päpste verändern können,” in Mariano Barbato, Melanie Barbato, and Johannes Löffler (eds.), Wege zum digitalen Papsttum. Der Vatikan im Wandel medialer Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 2018), 255–280. 26. Peter Kreeft, Ecumenical Jihad (San Francisco: St. Ignatius Press, 1996). For the relation of the West to Islam, see: Jocelyne Cesari, Why the West Fears Islam: An Exploration of Islam in Western Liberal Democracies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 27. Benedict XVI, Meeting with the Representatives of Science. Lecture of the Holy Father [Regensburg Lecture], Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg, Tuesday, September 12, 2006. 28. Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, On the Dialectics of Secularization (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006). 29. Benedict XVI, Meeting with the President of the Religious Affairs Directorate, Conference Room of the “Diyanet”, Ankara, Tuesday, November 28, 2006. 30. See https://www.acommonword.com. The Jordanian initiative was also answered by Benedict XVI during his visit there. See, in particular: Benedict XVI, Meeting with Muslim Religious Leaders. Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Rectors of University in Jordan, Address of his Holiness in Jordan, Mosque al-Hussein bin Talal—Amman, Saturday, May 9, 2009. 31. Yasmine Fathi, Al-Azhar suspends dialogue with Vatican, Holy See wants to maintain ties, ahramonline, January 20, 2011. 32. Mariano Barbato, “Papal Dialogue with Islam. A Long Way to Abu Dhabi, a Long Way to Peace,” E-International Relations, June 2, 2019; Sohrab Ahmari, “The Pope’s Abu Dhabi Trip Has Vindicated Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture,” Catholic Herald, February 5, 2019. 33. Francis, Address of his Holiness Pope Francis to the Participants in the International Peace Conference, Al-Azhar Conference Centre, Cairo, Friday, April 28, 2017. 34. Pope Francis and King Mohammed VI, Appeal by His Majesty King Mohamed VI and his Holiness Pope Francis Regarding Jerusalem /AlQuds the Holy City and a Place of Encounter, Rabat, March 30, 2019.

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35. For an analysis of the first decades of the relationship between the State of Israel and the Holy See, see: Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948–1967 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 3–90. 36. Nick Squires and Robert Tait, “Pope Prays at Israeli Wall in Unprecedented Gesture,” The Telegraph, May 25, 2014. 37. Joanna Berendt, “Pope Francis, Visiting Auschwitz, Asks God for the ‘Grace to Cry’,” New York Times, July 29, 2016. 38. Benedict XVI, who preferred to speak about “fathers in faith” to avoid misleading connotations, tried as emeritus to deepen the dialogue by criticizing the metaphor. However, the political ambivalence of the relationship is well expressed with “elder brother”, although the metaphor is insufficient theologically, as well as in terms of a deeper public debate. 39. Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Klenicki (eds.), John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage: Texts on Jews and Judaism, 1979–1995 (New York: Crossroad, 1995). 40. Neville Lamdan and Alberto Melloni (eds.), Nostra aetate. Origins, Promulgation, Impact on Jewish-Christian Relations. Proceedings of the International Conference Jerusalem 30 October–1 November 2005 (Berlin: LIT, 2007). 41. Mordechay Lewy, “Pope Benedict XVI within the Context of Israel and Holy See Relations,” Israel Affairs, 16, 4 (2010): 562–578; Rabbi David Rosen, “Benedict XVI, the Jewish People and the State of Israel,” Israel Affairs, 16, 4 (2010): 599–605. 42. Mariano Barbato, “Postsecular Plurality in the Middle East: Expanding the Postsecular Approach to a Power Politics of Becoming,” Religions, 11, 4 (2020): 162.

CHAPTER 6

Papal Presence in East and South Asia: China, India and Beyond Jörg Friedrichs

Catholics and adherents of other Christian churches constitute relatively small minorities in East and South Asia. There are exceptions confirming the rule: countries like Vietnam and Korea, regions in India like Kerala and Nagaland, and Chinese territories like Macao and Hong Kong; but generally, and particularly in large countries such as China and India, few look to the pope or the leaders of other Christian churches.1 Unsurprisingly, therefore, public awareness of the papacy is limited and the diplomatic presence of the Holy See weaker than elsewhere. Whilst almost all countries of the world have full diplomatic relations with the Holy See, Asia harbors some of the few remaining outliers who refuse to accept papal diplomats, with China being the paramount case. Where papal nuncios have an established presence, as in India, social hostilities nevertheless erode the options for a public presence of the pope. Previous research on Sino-Muslim and Hindu-Muslim relations suggests that, to the present day, ancient civilizational legacies structure

J. Friedrichs (B) Department of International Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_6

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the ways cultural majorities relate to religious and ethnic minorities.2 In China, Han-Muslim relations rest on an informal socio-spatial hierarchy according to which the pivotal Han view some groups, such as the Sinicized Hui Muslims, as more of an asset, and others, such as the Turkic Uyghur Muslims, as more of a liability. In India, Muslims have been inserted into a hegemonic structure that has allowed Hindu elites to determine sociocultural order despite centuries of non-Hindu rule. For most of Indian history, a core of upper castes has presided over a fragmented society of progressively lower (or lesser) castes, as well as outcastes. These legacies are highly relevant for Sino-Christian and HinduChristian relations. In the Chinese case, the (post-)communist state continues to replicate the Sinocentric socio-spatial hierarchy left by the imperial tradition of rule. Given the character of that state, Beijing does not accept any alternate source of authority, frustrating the desire of Chinese Catholics to commune with Rome. In India, Hindu hegemony comes with an idealized self-perception of inclusiveness that has paradoxical effects on encounters with non-Hindus. Hindus are inclusive towards those willing to accept their allocated place, but they can be rather intolerant towards those who refuse to do so. These deep-rooted civilizational factors, which are explicated in the case studies below, are more important in determining the papal room of maneuver than constitutional parameters, varying from India’s religionfriendly secularism to China’s atheist orientation. As helpful as diplomatic relations might be to reduce political tensions and religious persecution, the Chinese and Indian cases both show that even the most tactful and sensitive approach to diplomatic relations cannot alter the fact that Catholicism and the papacy encounter an inhospitable environment in East and South Asia.

Papacy and Postsecular Public Spheres Before turning to the case studies, it is worth taking a look at emerging opportunities and constraints for the papacy in the broader context of East and South Asia, where decreasingly secularist states are confronted with increasingly postsecular public spheres. The concept of postsecularism, which entails recognition that religion will not fade away as a public force, was originally introduced with view to Western societies.3 Since then, the cultural reach of the concept has expanded.4

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In East Asia, expectations regarding the decline of religion continue to inform the official ideology of communist single-party states. Apart from North Korea, however, the suppression of religion in general, and of Christianity and Catholicism in particular, is at a historical low. After extended periods of forced secularization, countries like China and Vietnam have been experiencing the reassertion of public religion and the emergence of a postsecular public sphere. Even Japan has seen a number of governments relying on support from the Buddhist New Komeito Party.5 In South Asia, the religion-friendly secularism of the independence leaders has proven insufficient to accommodate religious nationalist aspirations, paving the way to renewed victimization of religious minorities by Hindus (India) and Buddhists (Sri Lanka). While Pakistan was an Islamic republic right from the start, Bangladesh has been struggling to uphold its post-independence secularism. What role does the Catholic Church play in this postsecular landscape? In East Asia, the Church has footholds in China’s special administrative regions of Macao and Hong Kong, as well as Vietnam and South Korea. Broadly speaking, the Church benefits from postsecularism in Vietnam and mainland China, while its position in Macao and Hong Kong is eroding. In South Asia, the Church has strongholds in Sri Lanka, South India and India’s “tribal” northeast. Here, postsecularism comes in the guise of Hindu and Buddhist nationalism and poses severe challenges to the Church. Papal visits and diplomatic encounters are a key instrument for the Curia to gain public attention, and they are a good indicator for the opportunities and constraints faced by the Holy See. Overall, South and East Asia have occupied limited space on the papal diplomatic calendar. Modern papal international journeys started during the pontificate of Paul VI, who visited countries in South and East Asia twice: India in 1964; and Hong Kong and Sri Lanka in 1970. John Paul II travelled to Japan in 1981, South Korea in 1984, India in 1986, and Bangladesh also in 1986; he revisited South Korea in 1989, Sri Lanka in 1995, and India in 1999. Seven trips by just one pope sounds impressive, but is not too much when set in comparison to the 104 trips undertaken by frequent traveler John Paul II. Benedict XVI did not travel to the region at all, not even for a stopover when visiting Australia. Francis has made some journeys: South Korea in 2014; Sri Lanka in 2015; Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2017; and Japan and Thailand in

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2019. This might indicate that, during the current pontificate, the Holy See is cautiously pivoting towards Asia. Indeed, one key achievement of Benedict XVI has been the normalization of relations with Vietnam. The sequence of high-level meetings at the Vatican, with the Vietnamese Prime Minister in 2007 and the Vietnamese President in 2009, culminated in the acceptance of a “non-resident representative of the Holy See to Vietnam” in 2011. In addition to that, Benedict XVI has reached an agreement on the appointment of bishops that allows the Vietnamese government to select one out of three candidates. While full diplomatic relations have not been established, the normalization process has gained positive momentum, fostered by a recent meeting of the pope with the leader of the ruling Communist party.6 This is no minor accomplishment. Previously, Vietnam’s government saw Catholicism not only as a colonial religion that will fade away but associated it with the South Vietnamese regime that had been led by Catholics and brought the papacy into a difficult situation during the Vietnam War.7 According to the vision of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Undersecretary of State for Relations with States during the talks with Vietnam and now Secretary of State, the normalization process with Vietnam is to be continued and serves as a model for relations with China (see below).

The Church in China and India Due to distortions in the way the Chinese state collects data about religious affiliation, it is difficult to estimate the number of Christians in China. The Pew Research Center estimates them at 67 million, or 5% of the population. Within that, about 9 million (0.7%) are Catholic, including 5.7 million affiliated with the state-approved Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA) and—conservatively estimated–3.3 million affiliated with the so-called underground Church.8 Others estimate the number of Chinese Protestants at 20–40 and Catholics at 6–10.5 million.9 Hong Kong and Macao have vibrant and influential Catholic communities and state-recognized dioceses in full union with the pope. Hong Kong’s Holy Spirit Study Centre plays an important role in the education of the clergy in mainland China. Around 300,000 Catholics live in Taiwan, where the “world’s only Mandarin speaking pontifical faculty” at Fu Jen University has educated more than “100 Mainland priests, nuns,

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seminarians, and laity.”10 Macao and Hong Kong are important hubs, but this does not alter the fact that Catholics are a small religious diaspora in mainland China. India has 2.3% Christians. Given India’s enormous population, this means 27.8 million people. There are concentrations of Christians in Goa, the South (Kerala and Tamil Nadu), and the Northeast (“tribal” states surrounding Assam). Estimates vary, but it is safe to assume that up to 20 million of India’s Christians are in union with the Roman pontiff. They belong to three sui juris Churches following their own rites. The most important one is the Latin Church (132 dioceses), which has a colonial origin and to which the majority of Indian Christians belongs today. Formerly Portuguese Goa remains an important hub for the Latin Church, but the Latin rite is present all over the country. The SyroMalabar (31 dioceses) and Syro-Malankara Church (11 dioceses) belong to the ancient traditions of the Thomas Christians. The South Indian state of Kerala is the most important area for them. In 1987, John Paul II established independent hierarchies for the three rites. They are organized in the Syro-Malabar Bishops’ Synod, the Holy Episcopal Synod for the Syro-Malankara Church, and the Conference of the Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) for the Latin Church. The CCBI serves as the apex body for the entire Catholic community of India, which has 174 dioceses altogether.11

Foreign in the Middle Kingdom According to conventional wisdom, the Catholic Church faces challenges in China due to its association with imperialism during the colonial era and subsequent rocky relations with the communist regime. If this can be overcome by constructive papal diplomacy and correcting the negative image of the Church, conventional wisdom suggests, there is a bright future ahead. Unfortunately, the conventional view lacks cultural perspective and historical depth. As we will see, a broader and deeper view suggests that Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular may have to content themselves with a marginal position in China for the foreseeable future. In this section, I cover both perspectives starting with the broader and deeper one. China is called, and calls itself, the “Middle Kingdom.” Despite fluctuations in use, the term goes back to the early stages of Chinese history.12

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Classical Chinese cosmography represented the world as five “concentric geographical zones emanating outward from the capital: royal domains, princely domains, a pacification zone, the zone of allied barbarians, and the zone of savagery.”13 This is the imperial worldview found in the Book of Documents, a classic of ancient Chinese literature.14 The tributary system of later dynasties, such as the Ming and early Qing (ca. 1368–1841), amounted to a similar attempt to maintain a “social hierarchy defined in cultural and civilizational terms.”15 Modern China, while officially subscribing to western ideologies like communism or capitalism, has retained the Sinocentric perspective. The vernacular name for China, zhongguo, contains the notion of “middle” (zhong, 中; note the shape of the character).16 Religion has always played a role in this socio-spatial hierarchy. The Chinese Empire had ritual roles, but was not religious as such. Traditionally, the high-cultured Confucianism of the imperial court represented the worldview of the center, while other indigenous Chinese traditions like Taoism enjoyed official approval. Asian forms of religiosity like Buddhism were tolerated mostly, but not always. Western forms of monotheism were more suspicious from the Sino-centric perspective. Even today, we see a continuation of this pattern. The self-declared atheist and national Communist Chinese state aims to harness religion in order to promote a “harmonious society,” but Christianity, Islam and Tibetan Buddhism are seen as culturally foreign and therefore suspicious. In the specific case of Catholicism, the foreignness of Christianity is aggravated by the fact that the Church looks to an identifiable head (the pope) and headquarters (the Vatican) located in distant Europe. This affects relations between Catholicism and the papacy on one hand, and Chinese state authorities on the other—harking back to a much older Chinese tradition: Whenever the Emperor and his officials had the capacity to control religion, they would do so.17 As a result of its marginal position in the Sinocentric hierarchy, Christianity’s place in China has always been precarious. Indeed, Christianity has been in and out of China for almost 1400 years.18 Except for a rather short interlude (ca. 1840–1925), Christians have relied on what is now called inculturation. Nevertheless, Christianity was repeatedly on the way of extinction. This is an important reminder that contemporary challenges may be structural rather than accidental.

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The first wave of Christianity started in 635, at the beginning of the Tang dynasty, when Nestorian Christians reached the Middle Kingdom from the west. In the mid-ninth century, however, all foreign religions fell from imperial grace under Emperor Wuzong. This also hit Christianity, which Wuzong’s predecessors had cautiously patronized. The second wave started in 1245, when Pope Innocent IV sent a delegate to the court of the Great Khan to see if an alliance against the advance of Islam might be possible. When Kublai Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, had conquered China, Christianity saw a revival. A few years after Marco Polo had visited the Mongol court, Pope Nicholas IV sent another delegate, who reached China in 1294. After the collapse of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the mid-fourteenth century, the Church suffered a fatal blow under the notoriously xenophobic rule of the early Ming dynasty. The third wave began with the Jesuit Mission. Francis Xavier died in 1552 before reaching Mainland China, but his successor Matteo Ricci relaunched the attempt, reaching China in 1582. By then, Christianity had all but disappeared from the Empire.19 The Jesuit strategy was to make Catholicism acceptable to Chinese patrons by constructing Christian teachings as compatible with Confucianism and ancestor worship. Initially, the Jesuits were rewarded with the favor of the Imperial court and could evangelize rather freely. In the early eighteenth century, however, Franciscan missionaries criticized the toleration of ancestor worship and urged the papacy to reprimand the Jesuits. Initially, the Emperor confirmed that missionaries were welcome in China, but only if they followed the “rites of Ricci.” When Pope Clement XI reiterated his opposition to these rites, the Emperor banned Catholicism. The Church was then persecuted under the Yong Zheng and Qianlong emperors (1724–1796). Catholic communities survived in rural areas, but the public role of the Church ended. The fourth wave started after the “opening” of China through the Opium War (1839–1842). Missionary activities became inseparable from Western cultural imperialism, and this made Christian missionaries, and by association Christianity tout court, unwelcome at a time of millenarian upheaval (Taiping rebellion, 1850–1864) and proto-nationalist ferment (Boxer uprising, 1899–1901). This is where the historiography of Catholicism in China often starts. It contemplates only the period since the anti-colonial mobilization, and it looks at Christianity in isolation from other faith traditions present in

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China. It typically implies that Catholicism faces problems due to nationalist resentment against western imperialism and the entanglement of Catholic missionaries with colonial power. Sometimes, historians take an even shorter view, starting after the end of the Civil War (1949) or even after the onset of Deng Xiaoping’s reform era (1978). The earlier history of Christianity and Catholicism in China is either omitted or shrinks to short remarks in the introduction.20 According to this narrative, Chinese patriots saw Christians with suspicion, especially after the Christian-inspired Taiping rebellion. During the subsequent Boxer rebellion, Christians were likewise targeted because of their association with Western imperialism. Despite widespread resentment against the foreign character of Christianity, the missionary establishment did not surrender control. Acting under French patronage, it took the Catholic Church until 1926 to consecrate native Chinese bishops. Unsurprisingly, therefore, by the mid-1920s missionaries were denounced as agents of foreign imperialism and, with the outbreak of Civil War in 1927, became nationalist targets. To improve the Church’s standing in China, Pius XII fostered inculturation and revoked the papal interdict on ancestor worship. In 1942, Pius established full diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist Republic of China. In 1946, he delegated a nuncio and appointed the archbishop of Beijing as the first Chinese cardinal. Pius XII also gave the Catholic Church in China a coherent administrative structure.21 But all of this came to naught in 1949, with the Communist victory in the Civil War. Irked by the loyalty of Catholics to their faith and the pope, the Communists expelled the nuncio and many missionaries, while incarcerating or executing thousands of Catholics. In 1951, mainland China ended diplomatic relations with the Vatican. In 1957, the CPCA was established to run the Church independently from Rome, “self-selecting” and “self-ordaining” its bishops under Beijing’s control.22 In response, Pius XII denied the CPCA any right to install bishops and gave way to clandestine structures that formed the so-called underground Church.23 At the onset of the reform era (1978) and after the deep freeze of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when all religion was suppressed, the patriotic and underground Church both reemerged. Relations between the patriotic and underground Church remain complicated, with most believers belonging to both entities but clergy sometimes forced to choose either side.

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In the 1980s and 1990s, John Paul II launched a first attempt to normalize relations.24 Since then, a tacit custom has evolved whereby new bishops are selected from a set of priests approved by both the Vatican and the Chinese regime. Even when an “illicit” ordination takes place, Rome hardly ever openly excommunicates anyone.25 Yet, there is room for ambiguity because, according to canon law, illicit bishops excommunicate themselves (latae sententiae). Many illicit bishops have therefore sought to be “reconciled” or “received into communion” with the Vatican. At the same time, John Paul II supported the underground Church with newly ordained bishops. This has placed all parties involved, including Church officials and common believers, into an awkward and difficult situation.26 Nevertheless, the pragmatic handling of the situation by the Vatican as well as by the Chinese authorities has allowed Chinese Catholicism to survive, and sometimes even flourish. In 1996, new negotiations started between papal diplomats and Chinese authorities. By 1999, they had progressed to the point where John Paul II was hoping for a visit to China in the following year, which would have been a highlight of the Jubilee 2000. Tragically, however, 1999 was also the year of the Chinese crackdown on Falun Gong, leading to greater hostility against religion in general. Instead of the hoped-for invitation to China, John Paul II was denied a visit to Hong Kong and had to face up to the illegal ordination of five bishops. The pope, in turn, chose the Chinese national holiday on October 1, 2000, to canonize 120 Chinese Catholics on St Peter’s Square, including missionaries and other martyrs killed for their Catholic faith (Beijing sees many of them as imperialist stooges).27 In 2007, a pastoral letter from Benedict XVI to the Church in China was seen as a strong signal that the Vatican was interested in a rapprochement with Beijing.28 While Chinese authorities did not appreciate the oblique way Benedict XVI sent his message by addressing the faithful rather than approaching state authorities through discreet communication channels, there seemed to be positive momentum for a few years. Chinese musicians performed Mozart’s Requiem in the Vatican in 2008, to the great delight of Benedict XVI. In his address at the concert, Benedict XVI gave the event a far-reaching interpretation: I note with pleasure the interest shown by your orchestra and choir in European religious music. This shows that it is possible, in different cultural settings, to enjoy and appreciate sublime manifestations of the

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spirit such as Mozart’s Requiem which we have just heard, precisely because music expresses universal human sentiments, including the religious sentiment, which transcends the boundaries of every individual culture.29

Despite the apparent thaw in the first few years after Benedict’s letter, 2010–2013 saw renewed hostilities. The official Church ostentatiously appointed various “illicit” bishops, and Rome took the extraordinary step of openly excommunicating such bishops in three cases.30 Despite his efforts, Benedict XVI had failed to reach a breakthrough; the stalemate continued. Then a new guard entered the scene. Francis was elected pope on 13 March 2013; Xi Jinping became president one day later. The ascension of the new leaders provided an opportunity for resetting China-Vatican relations. Unlike his predecessor, Francis chose the path of quiet diplomacy. Starting in June 2014, he held several rounds of semisecret backchannel talks.31 In August 2014, on Francis’ journey to South Korea, Chinese authorities granted for the first time permission for the papal plane to use Chinese airspace. Francis greeted China from the air with a short message.32 After more than three years of secret talks, in late 2017 or early 2018, the Holy See and the Chinese authorities unofficially reached agreement on the ordination of bishops.33 On 22 September 2018, the two parties signed the so-called Provisional Agreement. The exact wording and content remain secret, but the Vatican’s press office has issued a brief communique to confirm the agreement.34 Subsequently, the Vatican indicated that the Holy See had accepted all illicitly ordained bishops in return for a veto against the future ordination of candidates deemed inappropriate. To make this work, the Vatican has asked the underground Church to be loyal to the party-state.35 The mastermind behind the agreement was Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis’ Secretary of State. Parolin had already been appointed in November 2002 by John Paul II as Undersecretary of State with the task of reconciling the Church with the communist governments of China and Vietnam. While he was successful in Vietnam, an allegedly almost settled deal with China did not find the approval of Benedict XVI in 2009.36 Instead, Benedict XVI sent Parolin to another difficult task as nuncio to Venezuela and consecrated him as bishop. After his election, Pope Francis

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brought Parolin back to the Roman center of papal power, and the fresh talks with China were ready to start. If one takes all of this at face value, relations between the Catholic Church and China are a matter of negations between papal diplomats and the Chinese party-state. If this were so, a breakthrough in negotiations could solve any issues once and for all. Unfortunately, such a narrow view overlooks not only Christianity’s cultural foreignness in China but also the age-old Chinese quest for political control over religion. According to a historian, the Chinese Communists were “the first in over a century to be able to implement the measures of control that the Qing and Republican-era governments undoubtedly would have liked to have extended.”37 Indeed, at the very time the Provisional Agreement was being negotiated, a mounting Sinicization campaign started to pose severe challenges to the Catholic Church and common believers alike. By Sinicization, Chinese authorities hardly mean inculturation the way the Catholic Church understands the term. They mean subordination under the supremacy of the Chinese state and Communist Party, as well as “the construction of Christianity with Chinese characteristics.”38 The idea is that Christianity must reform itself to deserve a respected position alongside other, more Sinicized, religious groups—or, in other words, move closer to the civilizational core of the Sinocentric sociospatial hierarchy. The campaign was launched in 2014, initially targeting the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM).39 Over the next two years, it gained full steam with numerous events organized to promote Sinicization.40 Initially, Protestantism remained the key target. In recent years, however, Catholicism has been far from immune.41 The state-led Sinicization campaign continues regardless of the Provisional Agreement and has led to the demolition of shrines and churches, and to the persecution of recalcitrant Catholics. Beijing is eager to harness churches for “United Front work” to promote social stability and subordinate society to the strict command of state authorities and, ultimately, the Communist Party. Precisely because Beijing is interested in the Church as a sociocultural organization, papal authority over the Church independent of Chinese supremacy is unacceptable to Chinese authorities.42 Make no mistake. Papal supremacy over the Church is essential to Catholicism. This conflict of loyalty, or what Beatrice Leung calls “conflicting authority” between China and the Vatican,43 is not resolvable in

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principle. However, as long as both sides are pragmatic, cooperation and progress seem possible. At present, Catholics are not key targets of state persecution because, (a) unlike the Dalai Lama, the pope is not seen as a public enemy but as respectful of China; (b) unlike Muslims, Catholics are not associated with terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism; and (c) Catholics appear less threatening to social order than Protestants. They are less numerous and less “urban,” and they are associated not so much with social emancipation but rather with a conservative vision of order that is not too distant from the Confucian worldview favored by Chinese authorities.44 On this basis, the Communist Party appears willing to tolerate a modicum of papal influence for the time being. Nevertheless, over the entire duration of the negotiations between China and the Holy See, hardline critics such as Cardinal Joseph Zen, former Bishop of Hong Kong, lambasted the attempt of cutting a deal with Beijing as a “betrayal of Christ” and the underground church.45 In the aftermath of the deal, he called for a resignation of Parolin and told Reuters: “I don’t think he has faith. He is just a good diplomat in a very secular, mundane meaning.”46 Critics like Cardinal Zen may have a point. A pragmatic deal on the ordination of bishops does not solve the fundamental conflict over loyalty and the disagreement over the purpose of the Church, leaving Chinese Catholics vulnerable. While it is true that the Vatican’s diplomatic recognition of Taiwan is anathema to Beijing, this is not an insurmountable problem. Indeed, it may change quickly. Already in 2005, the Holy See’s Secretary of State Cardinal Sodano declared: “If we could have ties with Beijing, then–not tomorrow but tonight–the nuncio or rather the chargé d’affaires in Taiwan, would head for Beijing.”47 For the time being, the Provisional Agreement does not foresee full diplomatic relations, but this would certainly be a major breakthrough for papal diplomats. It seems that Taiwan is only a pawn in this game.48 Once again, let us rise above the vagaries of current events and take a deep view. Ever since early history, Christianity has held a marginal position in the Middle Kingdom. Like Islam and Buddhism, it has flourished during some periods and suffered persecution during others. For understandable reasons, this has made all the difference to the Church and common believers during any given period. Yet, the perception of Christianity as foreign is deeply wired into Chinese civilization. In the case of the Catholic Church, this is aggravated by the foreignness of its leader. Any accommodation is likely to be temporary. There is every reason for

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the Holy See to be diplomatic, but no reason to compromise fundamental principles for a settlement that is bound to remain elusive.

Struggling with Hindu Hegemony Hinduism is the last polytheist world civilization standing. Not only that; it is the third largest world religion in terms of its share of the global population (15%) after Christianity (31%) and Islam (23%).49 Thus, Hinduism has shown considerable staying power in the face of historical adversity. Despite the fact that Muslims have ruled most of India for at least six centuries and Christian Europeans have ruled for another couple of centuries, India remains predominantly Hindu. 79.8% of Indians are Hindu. Only 14.2% of Indians are Muslim, 2.3% Christian, 1.7% Sikh, and 0.7% Buddhist.50 India is the cradle of Buddhism and Sikhism and powerful dynasties have been associated not only with Christianity and Islam but also with Buddhism and Sikhism, yet Hinduism has emerged from all of this unscathed. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, put it aptly: all of these (foreign and domestic) challengers “came, made a difference, and were absorbed.”51 Thus, today’s India stands in continuity with an old civilization that was fragmented into castes and dominated by Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian rulers, yet remained rooted in Hindu hegemony. The foundation of the “power dynamic underlying Indian civilization” is a hegemonic order whereby a “Hindu core” invariably dominates the country.52 The basic structure of this order is that an elitist core presides over multiple layers of subaltern groups. This structure has changed considerably over the ages (Brahmins, upper castes, secular “pundits”), yet has remained fundamentally intact. Under today’s democratic imperative, the elitist core cannot any longer rely on an explicit ideology sanctioning its authority over the rest of society. Therefore, upper castes have reframed themselves as forward castes. The outcastes are now called “scheduled castes and scheduled tribes” (SC/STs). The lower castes have been relabeled “other backward classes” (OBCs). Even so, the hegemonic structure remains. An upper crust of mostly Hindu elites continues to preside over layers and layers of supposedly lesser people. While officially there are policies of affirmative action to accommodate “backward castes” and former “untouchables,” many of the beneficiaries pursue upward social mobility

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through Sanskritization, rising in status and embracing the established order.53 The role of Hindu hegemony in the preservation of social order has important implications for other religions. For the preservation of Hindu hegemony, lower castes and former outcastes must stay within the Hindu fold rather than joining some other religion. This makes it understandable why Christianity, especially when adopted by Dalits or “Tribals,” is widely seen as a threat. The meme about Hindu tolerance is ubiquitous among Hindus and non-Hindu observers alike.54 For example, Nehru saw Hindu syncretism as the civilizational bedrock of a modern democratic India.55 And there is a kernel of truth to it. As long as Christianity is integrated in Hindu culture and not a threat to the social order, most Hindus will tolerate it. However, as soon as conversion to Christianity appears to undermine Hindu hegemony, Hindu nationalism rears its head. While being enthralled by the idea of tolerant Hinduism, Hindu nationalists show the limitations and ironies of this idea. They reason that respect is not only something one must have for others but also something one can require from them in return. Especially but not exclusively in Hindu nationalist circles, there is deep-seated resentment against the real or perceived Christian lack of respect for Hindu culture. As a result, tolerant Hinduism may easily turn into its mirror image. In reality, Hindu outrage at outcaste conversion is related not so much to any real or perceived disrespect but rather to the fear that outcastes might elude Hindu hegemony by joining another religion. Those invested in the preservation of Hindu hegemony have reason to fear that, if outcaste conversions were to happen at mass level, this might pose a serious threat to the preservation of sociocultural order. For all its professed tolerance and inclusiveness, Hinduism is structured in a way that clashes with Christianity as a monotheist, universalistic, and soteriological religion—not so much when Christianity reinforces the established order but definitely when it acts as a liberating force. Take for example the Thomas Christian in the Indian South. Since times immemorial, they have been mostly upper-caste. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Hindus hardly see them as a threat, even though in Kerala they play an influential political role.56 Initially, the same applied to the Roman Catholic Church. The successors of Francis Xavier, whose relicts are buried at Goa where he first touched Asian soil, concentrated their

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missionary efforts on Brahmins. Today, the Church celebrates this as inculturation, but originally the Brahmin-first strategy was based on the acceptance of upper-caste supremacy over the rest of Hindu society. This changed in the nineteenth Century, when Catholic missionaries made inroads into sections of Indian society that were underprivileged and hence alienated from the Hindu establishment. Missionaries made many converts among untouchables (later called Harijans; now called Dalits), as well as “tribals” living on the margins of Hindu society. For all of these people, conversion held the promise of social emancipation and better access to resources. Today, most of India’s Roman Catholics are from Dalit and Tribal communities. A policy document of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) states: “Dalits are about 12 million out of 19 million members of the Catholic Church.” The exact figure is debatable, but it hardly contentious that most Roman Catholics—unlike the Thomas Christians—are Dalits. Worryingly for the Hindu establishment, the CBCI is committed to Dalit empowerment.57 The result is a tension between Hindu inclusiveness and insecurity. While this is apparent in many areas, the contribution of Catholic schools to the educational system of India is another case in point. On the one hand, Christian missionaries are famous for affordable elite education. As long as their efforts are directed to the benefit of the middle and upper class, their schools are most welcome. On the other hand, many Hindus see Catholic service to the education of the poor and outcastes with suspicion as it might lead to conversions, which in turn might pose a threat to Hindu hegemony and thereby social order. Upper-caste and middle-class Hindus, in particular, often resent outcaste conversion. Dalit and Tribal converts are sometimes harassed by their Hindu neighbors, and the Indian state has made sure they lose access to state support such as job reservations. Christian charities offering resources to marginal groups, especially when receiving foreign support, face the accusation of coveting the conversion of needy but unwitting people by means of allurement or fraud.58 Mother Teresa, an Albanian nun famous for her service to the poor whom Pope Francis canonized in September 2016, is far from uncontroversial in India. Given these and similar tensions, the Holy See must tread carefully and has chosen to keep a low diplomatic profile towards India. Regularly, the Pontifical Council of Interreligious Dialogue issues messages

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to Hindu devotees on occasion of the Diwali festival. In 2007, the message contained an oblique admonishment about religious freedom. This, as well as a similar remark made by Benedict XVI in an address to the newly appointed Indian ambassador to the Holy See, was seen as testing the limits of an appropriate reaction to Hindu hostilities against Christians. Despite the fact that 2008 was a particularly violent year concerning civil unrest between Christians and Hindus, the Pontifical Council subsequently chose to maintain a soft voice.59 Diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Indian government are well established. As early as 1881, India received an Apostolic Delegate. On 12 June 1948, shortly before Independence Day, Pope Pius XII established full diplomatic relations by raising the rank of the Apostolic Delegate to that of an Internuncio. In 1967, Paul VI further raised his status to that of a fully-fledged nuncio. In the same year, Sri Lanka was added to the nuncio’s brief. Myanmar (1973) and Nepal (1981) followed suit.60 John Paul II visited India twice, assigning the country a pivotal status for Catholicism in Asia. In 1986, he undertook an extensive ten-day journey visiting important sites and shrines, not only to make the rich Catholic landscape of India visible but also to enable interreligious encounters. In 1999, he came for a shorter visit to New Delhi and presented the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia. However, neither of his successors has returned to India since then. In 2017, when Francis visited Myanmar and Bangladesh, Catholics expressed their disappointment that the pontiff was not coming to India because of difficulties obtaining an invitation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.61

Conclusion Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular appear as culturally foreign in South and East Asia (encompassing not only China and India but also Sri Lanka, Korea and so on). Concomitantly, the Catholic Church and the pope are compelled to keep a low profile, including a low diplomatic profile, in the context of these increasingly postsecular societies. There are a number of important commonalities and differences between the cases of India and China. The key commonalities are easy to see. India and China both have populations exceeding a billion, pride themselves of booming economies and rising political status, and can look to ancient civilizational legacies. Catholic and other Christian minorities

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are relatively small in either country and are perceived as foreign to these civilizational legacies. At closer inspection, we also see important differences. China is a single-party state, whereas India is an established democracy. Chinese authorities tend to be critical of or openly hostile against religion, whereas Indian secularism is friendly towards religion. There are also significant differences between the civilizational legacies. In China, Christianity is foreign to a Han-centric imperial tradition of rule where the state would dominate religion and harness it for its purposes whenever the opportunity arose. In India, Christianity is foreign to a previously subaltern society that was able to reproduce Hindu hegemony despite non-Hindu rule. The aforementioned difference in civilizational legacies contributes to different patterns of religious freedom and persecution. In India, Christianity faces mainly social hostilities. Even under the current Hindu nationalist administration, government restrictions are less intense by comparison. In China, Christianity faces mostly government restriction. Chinese society tends to be either friendly or indifferent towards religion. The difference in civilizational legacies also finds its expression in contemporary constitutions, political culture, and ruling structures.62 Neither India nor China offers a hospitable environment for Christianity in general and for Catholicism and papal diplomacy in particular. In India, the Holy See is forced to keep a low public profile while maintaining positive diplomatic relations with government. Indian Catholicism flourishes to the point that, rather than receiving missionaries, the country is now sending priests to the declining Churches of Western Europe. Yet, the papal presence in Indian society is limited. No pope has visited India since 1999. In China, the Holy See understands that government rather than society poses an obstacle for Catholicism and religious freedom, and has focused its efforts on reaching an agreement with the government and, eventually, establishing full diplomatic relations. Civilizational foreignness poses a formidable challenge not only to common believers but, given Asia’s pivotal role in the twenty-first century, also to papal diplomats and church strategists. Long-standing civilizational legacies can predispose a state and/or society against religion—especially against a foreign religion with a European headquarters,

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like Catholicism. Regarding government restrictions, China is comparable to other East Asian countries such as pre-1945 Japan and contemporary Vietnam. Regarding social hostilities, India is comparable to other South Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal.

Notes 1. This chapter draws on material from Jörg Friedrichs, “Outlandish Christendom: The Catholic Church in India and China,” Journal of Church and State, 60, 4 (2018): 681–704. Editorial support from Mariano Barbato is gratefully acknowledged. 2. Jörg Friedrichs, “Sino-Muslim Relations: The Han, the Hui, and the Uyghurs,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 37, 1 (2017): 55–79; Jörg Friedrichs, Hindu-Muslim Relations: What Europe Might Learn from India (New Delhi: Routledge, 2018). 3. Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” European Journal of Philosophy, 14, 1 (2006): 1–25. 4. Mariano Barbato and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-secular Political Order?” European Political Science Review, 1, 3 (2009): 317–340; Luca Mavelli and Fabio Petito, “The Postsecular in International Relations: An Overview,” Review of International Studies, 38, 5 (2012): 931–942; Gregorio Bettiza, Finding Faith in Foreign Policy: Religion and American Diplomacy in a Postsecular World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 5. Il Hyun Cho and Peter J. Katzenstein, “In the Service of State and Nation: Religion in East Asia,” in Jack Snyder (ed.), Religion and International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 168–199. 6. C. Reardon Lawrence, “The Pope and Asia: Building Bridges. Reconciliation with the People’s Republic of China,” in Alynna J. Lyon et al. (eds.), Pope Francis as a Global Actor: Where Politics and Theology Meet (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2018), 215–244, here 216; Carol Glatz, “Vietnam, Vatican Agree to Upgrade Diplomatic Relations in Near Future,” National Catholic Reporter, December 20, 2018. 7. A. Alexander Stummvoll, A Living Tradition: Catholic Social Doctrine and Holy See Diplomacy (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 43–75. 8. Pew Research Center, Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2011), 97–98. 9. Katharina Wenzel-Teuber, Private Communication, March 14, 2017; Katharina Wenzel-Teuber, “Statistics on Religions and Churches in the

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16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

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People’s Republic of China: Update for the Year 2016,” Religions and Christianity in Today’s China, 7, 2 (2017): 26–53. Lawrence, “The Pope and Asia,” 217. See https://www.cbci.in/about_us.aspx, accessed October 15, 2019. Luke S.K. Kwong, “What’s in a name: zhongguo (or ‘Middle Kingdom’) Reconsidered,” Historical Journal, 58, 3 (2015): 781–804. Richard J. Smith, Chinese Maps: Images of “All Under Heaven” (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996), 23–24. See James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 3 (Hongkong and London: Trübner & Co., 1865), 142–149. Yongjin Zhang and Barry Buzan, “The Tributary System as International Society in Theory and Practice,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, 5, 1 (2012): 3–36, at 14–15. Contemporary scholars continue to find concentric, multi-layered “ethnogeographies” of cultural affinity and distance, with the urban Han Chinese at the apex or core; see Stevan Harrell (ed.), Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995); Susan D. Blum, Portraits of “Primitives”: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Susan K. McCarthy, Communist Multiculturalism: Ethnic Revival in Southwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009). Cho and Katzenstein, “In the Service of State and Nation,” 170–171. For an authoritative overview, see Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2012); see also Daniel H. Bays, “China,” in Lamin O. Sanneh (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 393–402. Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (London: Penguin, 2010), 267–272. See for example Cindy Yik-yi Chu (ed.), Catholicism in China, 1900– Present: The Development of the Chinese Church (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Cindy Yik-yi Chu, The Catholic Church in China: 1978 to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Lawrence, “The Pope and Asia,” 227–228. Similar bodies were created to institutionalize party control over China’s other official religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Protestantism, and Islam. Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, 1958; see also Lawrence, “The Pope and Asia,” 228–229. Beatrice Leung, Sino-Vatican Relations: Problems in Conflicting Authority, 1976–1986 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Peter R. Moody, “The Catholic Church in China Today: The Limitations of Autonomy and Enculturation,” Journal of Church and State, 55, 3 (2013): 403–431, at 406, 425.

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26. Paul P. Mariani, “The Four Catholic Bishops of Shanghai: ‘Underground’ and ‘Patriotic’ Church Competition and Sino-Vatican Relations in Reform-Era China,” Journal of Church and State, 58, 1 (2016): 38–56. 27. Lawrence, “The Pope and Asia,” 227–338. 28. Jean-Paul Wiest, “Sino-Vatican Relations Under Pope Benedict XVI: From Promising Beginnings to Overt Confrontation,” in Cindy Yik-Yi Chu (ed.), Catholicism in China, 1900–Present: The Development of the Chinese Church (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 189–216. 29. Benedict XVI, Address by His Holiness Benedict XVI at the Conclusion of the Concert Given by the China Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Opera House Chorus, May 7, 2008. 30. Rachel Xiaohong Zhu, “The Division of the Roman Catholic Church in Mainland China: History and Challenges,” Religions, 8, 3 (2017): 1–14, at 3; Moody, “The Catholic Church in China Today,” 425–426. 31. Victor Gaetan, “The Pope and the Politburo: The Vatican’s Chinese Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs, March 24, 2016. 32. “Pope Sends Message to Chinese President as He Flies Over Country,” Reuters, August 14, 2014. 33. Victor Gaetan, “The Vatican and China Reach a Promising Accord,” Foreign Affairs, March 27, 2017. 34. Holy See Press Office, Communiqué Concerning the Signing of a Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the Appointment of Bishops, September 22, 2018. 35. “Pope Francis to Chinese Catholics: Faith Changes History,” Vatican News, September 26, 2018; Debora Donnini, “China, Consecration of First Bishop Following Provisional Agreement,” Vatican News, August 28, 2019. 36. Michael Sainsbury, “‘Two Step Forward, One Step Back’: Vatican Diplomacy with China,” Crux, September 30, 2018. 37. Bays, “China,” 399; Bays, A New History of Christianity in China, 169–174. 38. Benoît Vermander, “Sinicizing Religions, Sinicizing Religious Studies,” Religions, 10, 2 (2019): 1–23. 39. China Aid, 2014 Annual Report (Midland, TX: China Aid, 2015). 40. China Aid, 2016 Annual Report (Midland, TX: China Aid, 2017). 41. Magdaléna Masláková and Anežka Satorová, “The Catholic Church in Contemporary China: How Does the New Regulation on Religious Affairs Influence the Catholic Church,” Religions, 10, 7 (2019): 1–17. 42. Moody, “The Catholic Church in China Today,” 430. 43. Leung, Sino-Vatican Relations. 44. Sarah Cook, The Battle for China’s Spirit: Religious Revival, Repression, and Resistance Under Xi Jinping (New York: Freedom House, 2017).

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45. Benjamin Haas and Tom Phillips, “Pope’s Possible Deal with China Would ‘Betray Christ’, Says Hong Kong Cardinal,” The Guardian, November 28, 2016; “As Atheist China Warms to the Vatican, Religious Persecution ‘Intensifies’,” CNN , February 28, 2017. 46. James Pomfret and Anne Marie Roantree, “Leading Asian Cardinal Calls for Vatican Foreign Minister to Resign Over China Dealing,” Reuters, September 20, 2018. 47. Cited in Wiest, “Sino-Vatican Relations Under Pope Benedict XVI,” 193. 48. B.K.F. Leung, “The New Triangular Relations Among the Vatican, Taiwan and China in the Tsai Ing-wen Administration,” in F. So, B. Leung, and E. Mylod (eds.), The Catholic Church in Taiwan: Christianity in Modern China (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 233–254. 49. Pew Research Center, The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050 (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2015), 6. 50. Data from the 2011 census. 51. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (London: Meridian, 1946), 50. 52. Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, “Rethinking Indian Communalism: Culture and Counter-Culture,” Asian Survey, 33, 7 (1993): 722–737, at 723. 53. M.N. Srinivas, “A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization,” Far Eastern Quarterly, 15, 4 (1956): 481–496. 54. Paul Hacker, “Inklusivismus,” in Gerhard Oberhammer (ed.), Inklusivismus: Eine Indische Denkform (Wien: Institut für Indologie der Universität Wien, 1983), 11–28; see also the discussion in Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY Press, 1988), 403–418. 55. Nehru, The Discovery of India. 56. C.J. Fuller, “Kerala Christians and the Caste System,” Man, 11, 1 (1976): 53–70. 57. CBCI, Policy of Dalit Empowerment in the Catholic Church in India (New Delhi: CBCI, 2016), 9. 58. Chad M. Bauman, “Hindu-Christian Conflict in India: Globalization, Conversion, and the Coterminal Castes and Tribes,” Journal of Asian Studies, 72, 3 (2013): 633–653. 59. Melanie Barbato, “Diplomatic Language in the Deepavali Messages of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue,” Review of Faith and International Affairs, 15, 4 (2017): 93–104. 60. https://www.apostolicnunciatureindia.com/. 61. Christopher Joseph Kochi, “Why Did Pope Francis Drop India for Myanmar? Inviting the Pope Will Not Gel with the Pro-Hindu Government and Their Nationalist Supporters,” La Croix International, December 29, 2017. 62. Friedrichs, “Outlandish Christendom”.

CHAPTER 7

Thought and Pilgrimage: Polish Heritage of St. John Paul II Ryszard Zajaczkowski ˛

The intellectual and pastoral heritage of St. John Paul II is a unified whole that is firmly rooted in his Polish experience. Karol Wojtyła was born shortly after Poland regained independence and lived in a difficult period of rebuilding the country after 123 years of captivity. His youth coincided with World War II, after which he was a witness and participant in the struggle of the nation and the Church against communist oppression. In the 1950s he served as pastor to academic youth in Krakow, and from 1956 he also lectured at the Catholic University of Lublin. In Wojtyła’s case, pastoral work often merged with scientific work. What he wrote was an attempt to think through the problems he encountered in his priestly and episcopal ministry, which was then expressed with maturity during his pontificate. The number of issues is very large, so this chapter can focus only on the most important ones.

R. Zaj˛aczkowski (B) The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Lublin, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_7

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The Dignity of a Person In 2018, Karol Wojtyła’s book Katolicka etyka społeczna [Catholic social ethics] was published in Lublin for the first time. It is a comprehensive textbook reproduced from his notes prepared in 1952–1954 for his lectures on Catholic social teaching. He conducted them first for the students of the theology department of the Jagiellonian University and, after it was closed by the authorities, for clerics of Krakow’s seminaries. Within the almost five hundred pages of this work, the author discusses all major social issues with their explicit reference to the Magisterium of the Church. Most importantly, the work offers a glimpse into the beginnings of Wojtyła’s social thought. What connects these issues is the truth about the person. Wojtyła believes that the truth is a moral good (bonum honestum), therefore social life should be arranged in such a way that the person is not treated as a means for other purposes. Dignity as a specific value is associated with a specific understanding of the structure of the human person, namely as endowed with an “interior,” a center constituted by elements of spiritual life such as consciousness, freedom, reason, heart.1 In connection with this, Wojtyła is critical of totalitarianism and liberalism, because both of these systems are utilitarian-oriented; both substitute the moral good with the useful good (bonum utile). In Marxism, we are dealing with class utilitarianism (in its most powerful edition): “What is good for the benefit of the proletarian class is good, and what is opposed to it is bad.”2 On the other hand, in liberalism “there is only the good of the individual; the individual’s unrestricted freedom is the goal of society,”3 which only exists for the individual. Wojtyła’s early lectures present the view that erroneous social and economic concepts in both liberal and totalitarian thought stem from false, though different, anthropological assumptions; both ignore the truth about the person who is at the same time a subject, an irreducible whole (persona est sui iuris —as medieval thinkers used to say), and yet remains in relation to other people. Wojtyła’s personalistic thinking about social issues was shaped from the beginning by theoretical analysis of the experience of human dignity. Wojtyła is consistently a personalistic deontologist, for whom the truth about the person—given in revelation and also rationally recognizable— opposes the treatment of the person as a means. Where the auto-teleology of a person is crossed out, alienation occurs. Wojtyła gives this concept a thoroughly personalistic interpretation: “Alienation is nothing other than denying participation, weakening or even destroying the possibility

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of another person’s survival as another self.”4 For Wojtyła, the greatest wealth of each person is the other person.5 That is why a subject that denies the other “self” simultaneously gives up all the wealth that the other person can bring into his life, as well as the opportunity to find and understand himself in his proper fullness. Conditions for alienation care created both by a totalitarian society which subordinates the person to its collective aspirations, as well as by a liberal society which loses the system of objective values and the hierarchy between them. The path to overcoming modern forms of alienation is trodden by safeguarding the transcendent character of the human person and by finding the authentic sense of his participation. The author of “The Acting Person” emphasizes that man finds himself through participation, i.e. the ability to live and act with other people. It is primarily about the survival of another human being as the other “self,” as a neighbor, as someone with an ontological and axiological identity analogous to my own. At the end of the aforementioned study, Wojtyła outlined the theory of participation, which is a response to the treatment of man as a monadic, self-sufficient reality, or to recognizing him only as an element of a certain whole and structure (society, state, class, etc.). Wojtyła notes: “Here is a man acting together with others or participating, revealing a new dimension of himself as a person.”6 Participation is more than just the social nature of man. Acting together with others, he does not cease to be himself, and at the same time creates a good that cannot exist outside participation. Thanks to participation, there is mutual responsibility of the person towards the person (communio personarum). Community is not something that makes an individual lose his freedom or subjectivity, but something that allows him to liberate his inherent possibilities and thanks to which he can enrich himself as a person, because he builds the good through which he strengthens his own being. Participation is associated with solidarity and opposition. By adopting an attitude of solidarity, man strives for the common good of the community to which he belongs, treating it as his own good. When the direction of the quest to multiply the common good does not match his convictions, he is then forced to adopt an attitude of opposition. Solidarity must be distinguished from conformism, and opposition from avoidance. The conformist favors the current authorities, if he sees in them an advantage to himself, and adopts an attitude of avoidance, if he considers that support for the authorities is unfavorable to him. According to Wojtyła, only participation can be an immanent criterion for assessing every social system and undertaken reforms. Only solidarity and

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opposition are authentic attitudes because they express concern for both the good of the individual and the collective.

Freedom in Truth Totalitarian and liberal systems have shown that when freedom ceases to respect the constitutive relationship with transcendent truth (thanks to which man acquires his full identity) it breeds skepticism and relativism. This often leads to self-destruction and the destruction of others. For Wojtyła, freedom has a finite character, it is an auxiliary value towards other values, and its fulfilment is associated with responsibility, commitment to the service of good, beauty and truth.7 Acts of freedom are a manifestation of contact with the transcendent reality towards the subject, so they are not monadic, egocentric or narcissistic. Wojtyła especially deepens the problem of the relationship between freedom and truth. According to him, the experience of truth and the experience of freedom are connected by a “hermeneutic spiral”: one conditions the other and one is deepened by the other (in Poland this solution was also close to that of Józef Tischner). Only truth gives a foundation to all action and constitutes its ethical criterion. Freedom is the power to follow the truth, and freedom that violates the truth becomes its own caricature. In short, freedom and truth condition, complement and deepen each other. Freedom cannot be realized outside the space of truth. At the same time, the truth is not so much in front of man, outside or above him, but rather inside him. “The transcendence of a person in action is thus constituted ultimately,” writes Wojtyła, “as transcending himself […] not so much “towards the truth” as “in the truth.”8 In another text, Wojtyła speaks about this even more clearly, claiming that the pursuit of truth is inscribed in the structure of the human spirit, that truth is the light of the human mind.9 The realization of freedom in the space of truth is connected with the fact that human autonomy has its limits. The fulfilment of freedom involves binding oneself to the real good. It is the human conscience where the dependence of freedom on truth is revealed. It defines the obligation to the good. The Krakovian philosopher even speaks of obligation as the normative power of truth in a person.10 Wojtyła is therefore a defender of reasonable, wise, mature and responsible freedom. For him, independence and self-determination are only half the truth about freedom. If this part were to be considered full, then freedom would be wild, as Ricœur says.11 This concept of freedom

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is present in liberalist thought, and to some extent in liberation theology, and in an extremely vulgarized form in anarchism and terrorism. The concept of freedom as creativity has also settled, especially under the influence of Hegel and the “early” Heidegger, in certain theological schools of thought.12 Freedom—as Wojtyła emphasizes—is first a gift from God and an auxiliary value. It can be used incomplete or full. Mature humanity means full use of freedom. According to Wojtyła, the fullest experience of freedom is, therefore, transcending yourself and transcendence in the direction of the good and truth that is chosen in the light, and in particular the full truth about man. Man realizes himself as a free being by learning the objective truth about himself and the fact that he is a being that cannot be fulfilled without giving himself to others, and in particular without transcending himself towards God, which is the culminating moment of mature freedom. Therefore, Wojtyła unmasks the new myth of the twentieth century, consisting of the fact that man is credited with the power of constituting his own essence and determining what is morally just or unjust. Given that this myth also finds more and more supporters among Christian philosophers, Wojtyła’s philosophy of freedom is even more significant. Along with such thinkers as Levinas, Ricœur, Hildebrandt, and, in Poland, Ingarden, Tischner and Styczen´ among others, he defends freedom, which is fulfilled only in connection with responsibility and in the service of good values and one’s neighbor. According to Wojtyła, the ultimate criterion for who and what should be served is the truth, but understood in a deeper way than in the Greek-intellectual tradition. This is a truth that is important from an existential point of view, especially religious and moral truth. It is also about the truth that man is a person, and therefore a being capable of self-determination and participation. “Dependence on the truth defines the limits of the human autonomy fitting to a person.”13 Ultimately, only truth can liberate man, but not every truth to an equal extent. According to Wojtyła, man is ultimately liberated by the truth, which is God. Entering closeness with God as the highest truth is the culmination of mature human freedom. Therefore, God is not indifferent to the true human good—quite the opposite: He is ultimately the guarantor of this good. Opening oneself completely to the truth, as well as the highest one, is only possible by one who is free, i.e. has the ability of self-determination. In this sense, the truth is conditioned by freedom, and man is responsible for the truth. According to Wojtyła, it is dangerous to doubt the ability to learn the truth about man and his dignity, and thus treat human life not in terms of holiness, but as

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a profit and loss account. This is the deepest source of a crisis of culture. A man guided by freedom understood in this way replaces the basic reference point, which is the truth about good and evil, with a subjective opinion, egoistic interest, or simply a temporary whim. A society that does not respect shared values, especially objective truth, becomes a community of unrelated individuals. Everyone wants to pursue only their own goals, which are not only independent of others, but often formulated against them. Without subjugating freedom (that is: a free man) to the objective, obligatory-for-all moral norm, it loses ground on which it can meet the freedom of others and focuses on the implementation of subjective, eternally unfulfilled desires (or rather: whims). Individual life projects must sooner or later collide with the intentions and actions of others.

Polish Pilgrimage---Ethos of Participation One of the important manifestations of Polish religiosity and Polish pastoral work is pilgrimage. Poland is one of the few countries in the world where high pilgrimage activity has continued uninterrupted since the beginning of its statehood. It is impossible to summarize here the rich history of Polish pilgrimages, but some facts are worthy of note. An icon of Our Lady placed in the monastery of Jasna Góra in 1382 soon began to attract large numbers of the faithful. The fame of the sanctuary dates back to 1655, the year of the invasion of Poland by the Swedish army. Having occupied almost the entire country, the Swedes aimed to seize the fortress-monastery of Jasna Góra. Here, however, they met with strong resistance. The successful defense of the monastery intensified resistance on the part of the Catholic population against the Protestant invaders, who began suffering defeats and were finally forced to withdraw from Poland. In 1656, King Jan Kazimierz recognized Mary as Queen of Poland and in 1717 papal crowns were added to the Jasna Góra image. Subsequently, Marian devotion became a feature of the Polish nation—a testimony of freedom and independence. Pilgrimage gained in importance especially after the end of the eighteenth century when Poland lost its independence for 123 years and disappeared from the map of Europe. In these difficult times, Poles often turned towards the Church, which protected their faith and the national culture. At that time an exceptionally powerful association was formed between religious and national awareness in Poland. In addition to their religious significance, pilgrimages often acquired patriotic

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meaning. In the period of loss of independence, Cz˛estochowa became a spiritual capital, second only to Kraków, the spiritual capital of Poland, a symbol of identity and national unity. A similar “national foundation” was at the root of the constantly growing pilgrimage movement to the Gates of Dawn in Vilnius, to Gietrzwałd (the site of the only appari´ askie tion of Our Lady recorded in Poland), Mount St. Anne, Piekary Sl˛ ˙ and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. Each of these contributed to the strengthening of religious as well as regional and national ties. Many sanctuaries were thriving educational and cultural centers which cultivated Polish language and culture among the local population and pilgrims visiting the sites. Celebrations on a monumental scale brought together thousands of participants, giving pilgrims a sense of community united by language and tradition. Religious experience deepened national consciousness. The pilgrimage movement flourished and gained a new dimension when Poland regained independence in 1918. This was short-lived, however. When World War II broke out in 1939, pilgrimages were inhibited once again, although despite the very difficult conditions and the persecution, they never ceased completely. Numerous pilgrimages set off again in the first years after the war, but participants faced a variety of reprisals during the time of communist rule. Pilgrimages to shrines again became a patriotic act, a symbol of resistance to oppressive rule. The postwar Warsaw Walking Pilgrimage (organized continuously since 1711) rapidly evolved into a nationwide pilgrimage and it gradually took on an international character. This pilgrimage led to annual diocesan pilgrimages in the 1990s (over 50 pilgrimage trails cross the entire country) making for Cz˛estochowa. It should be emphasized that Polish pilgrimages are not merely communal walks. Most importantly, they involve different forms of retreat on the way, providing an opportunity to listen to the teachings, partake of the sacraments, and build communities. It is difficult to overestimate the role played in the post-war era in Poland by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, ´ who since 1949 held the office of Polish Primate. He was not only an outstanding priest but also a statesman. He wanted the Church to preserve freedom, to prevent the nation from being deprived of the millennial heritage of its faith. For his uncompromising attitude towards the Communists he spent three years in seclusion and was unable to fulfil his ministry. When the political thaw came in 1956 and he was released, he began his pastoral work, seeking to revive the faith among the general public. What really inspired the

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Polish people at that time was the mass religious gatherings and especially the pilgrimages. They motivated many people, inspiring a sense of community and resulting in many conversions.14 Pilgrimages became an essential element of the victorious struggle of the Polish nation with communism and were an important manifestation of participation in the life of the Church and nation; a sign of subjectivity and dignity of both these communities.

The Pilgrim Pope In the mid-1990s, in an improvised address to the young people of Rome, the pope gave expression to his desire to overcome the barriers dividing the world: “The Polish song goes: you must embrace the world. Such was the dream. How can that world be reached if everything is closed, if there is an iron curtain? Yet the Lord and his Mother brought us here to Rome and then from Rome to the whole world” (April 6, 1995). John Paul II was a pilgrim who intended to visit every local church in order to systematically mobilize the Catholic community of the world. In the famous book Be Not Afraid: André Frossard in Conversation with John Paul II , the pope says modestly that he is not the inventor of papal visits, but two of his predecessors, John XXIII and especially Paul VI. It was they who were the first to officially venture beyond the Vatican, contrary to the convention established after the liquidation of the Papal States in 1870. However, in contrast to those of Paul VI, John Paul II’s travels were intended to approach entire communities. They were not merely symbolic visits to certain countries or important institutions. His goal was to visit various, especially Catholic, communities living sometimes in very remote and forgotten corners of the world. The pope briefly presented the motivation of his missionary journeys in the encyclical Redemptoris Missio: “I have a feeling that the moment has come to harness all the Church’s energies to a new evangelical mission among the nations.”15 As a pastor, John Paul II saw in pilgrimages an opportunity for face-to-face meetings with people, making contact with those whose spiritual leader he was. John Paul II wanted to govern the Church not through laws, but through initiatives for its revival. Meetings with the pope repeatedly achieved record attendances. The largest congregation was recorded during the mass celebrated by John Paul II on 15th January 1995 in Manila, during the papal visit to the Philippines. Approximately four million of the faithful congregated on

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that occasion. The pope did not understand, however, the Church of the masses as an alternative to elitist Catholicism developing within ecclesiastical movements and communities, an extraordinary number of which had already come to the fore during and after the Vaticanum II. It should be remembered that in the Catholicism which Cardinal Wyszynski left behind in Poland, the key role was played by families, who transmitted the faith from one generation to the next. Therefore, Catholicism, as it came into existence in Poland, was not superficial, despite the fact that it was a religion of the masses. In many families, especially in rural areas and in southern Poland, it was strong and deep-rooted. For the pope, mass religious ceremonies were actually supposed to demonstrate the strength and vitality of the Church, as well as to stimulate the activity of the priests and of the faithful in the sphere of religious teaching, particularly in families. Hence the pope’s teachings about marriage and the family, often accompanying his pilgrimages developed on the basis of his pastoral experience in Poland. Large-scale gatherings with the pope understandably aroused interest in the global media. In this way. it was possible to extend, to an unprecedented degree, the Good News to wide circles of secularized societies, to attract young people and encourage them to seek new forms of pastoral work in a rapidly changing world. The pilgrimages brought about what was really important to the pope: a new evangelization. Moreover, John Paul II discovered in pilgrimages his providential vocation. During one of his pilgrimages to South America, he told reporters: “I live for Lenten retreats; pilgrimages are my retreats. I want to meditate, listen and suffer with the people of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Haiti.”16 It is difficult to overlook in these words a reference to the Polish experience of pilgrimage. Like the pilgrimages organized for centuries in Poland, those undertaken by the pope also often resulted in extraordinary spiritual revivals and a strengthening of local churches. In some countries, they were also very important social and political events; they were reminders of the need to care for the poor, the rights of working people and the fate of the persecuted, imprisoned and marginalized in society. Sometimes they supported transformations of political systems; they carried hope for the resolution of conflicts. Pilgrimages to various parts of the world also had Polish features, in that the pope often alluded to problems observed in Poland. Even as a cardinal, in his speech of 1974 entitled “Evangelization as an aspect of pastoral care in Poland”, he stressed the tension between evangelization and anti-evangelization, and against this background “our ‘Polish gift’ in the evangelization of

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the modern world.”17 By this he meant the desire to cover all areas of human life by the umbrella of pastoral care, inspiring contemporary cultural creativity, the creation of new forms of pastoral work amongst the young, to forestall or at least limit the threat of Marxist ideological influence on young people. All these activities were influenced by the broad and gradually expanding pilgrimage movement in Poland.

Pilgrimages to Poland---A Message of Solidarity, Freedom and Truth Poland was the country most frequently visited by John Paul II. In 27 years, he made eight trips here. Each of them had a slightly different character, but all resulted in the search for new forms of the presence of religion in social life. In particular, they portrayed the social power of religious life, undermining both the achievements of the forced atheization of the world of work by the communist state as well as the necessity of the connection between modernization and secularization. Three visits were still under communist rule (1979, 1983, 1987). Perhaps the first of them had the greatest spiritual and political value.18 The pope’s presence in Poland then released new spiritual energies, awakened hope for change to Christianity, which—as the pope showed—is culturally alive and able to shape history. It was not only the first papal visit to Poland but also the first visit to a communist country. It raised hopes of independence in Poland and contributed significantly to the rise of “Solidarity” in 1980— the first great social movement in the countries of Eastern Europe, which initiated the fall of communism. Without the deep religious, humanistic and patriotic content of the papal teaching, “Solidarity” would not have become a breakthrough in the latest history of Europe and the world. From its very beginnings in the July and August labor strikes of 1980, the movement drew inspiration from the teachings of John Paul II, whose portraits were hung even on the gates of striking workplaces (e.g. the Gdansk ´ Shipyard). At the same time, however, another process was under way: the issue of solidarity was becoming one of the main ideas of papal teaching. During the second and third pilgrimage to Poland, the pope made a strong case for “Solidarity”. He even demanded the protection of many victims of repression of martial law. Therefore, it is not by accident that the considerations of the second pilgrimage in June 1983 show the relationship between the idea of solidarity and mercy—with the latter being shown as a practical, truly Christian realization of the former. In

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his speeches, the pope emphasized solidarity with the repressed and the need to return to the August 1980 agreements. He became, in a sense, a spokesman for the legitimate demands of “Solidarity”. In 1987, during a meeting with workers in Gdansk, ´ he said simply: “I speak about you and I speak for you.” In praising the non-violent methods of fighting employed by this trade union, John Paul II emphasized: Solidarity must come first before one resorts to fighting. Then humanity can survive. And every nation can survive and develop in a great human family. […] I will say: solidarity also triggers the fight. But this is never a fight against one other. […] It is a fight for man, for his rights, for his real progress: the fight for a more mature shape of human life.19

The Polish experience—in the pope’s opinion—clearly shows that the concept of solidarity, although associated with a particular movement, cannot be limited to it. For it contains the idea of a truly personal community. The timelessness of the idea of solidarity will also return during subsequent papal pilgrimages. John Paul II points out that solidarity is not only the past, but also a task waiting to be fulfilled. The pope reminds: “I heard you saying in Gdansk at the time: there is no freedom without solidarity. Today we must say: there is no solidarity without love.” During his last pilgrimage in 2002, the pope consecrated the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy in Krakow-Łagiewniki and entrusted the whole world to Divine Mercy. In the homily delivered to almost three million faithful participating in the mass in Krakow, the pope called to spread the message of mercy from Krakow and Poland to the world. Significantly solidarity is not limited to overthrowing one of the totalitarian systems. It is a universal lesson of humanity, it is a practical implementation of the principle of participation, social love and concern for human dignity.

What Does the Future Hold for Polish Catholicism? If civil society in Poland before 1989 was shaped in opposition to the communist authorities and Marxist ideology, then the Church has always supported these initiatives, and was also an alternative to the statecontrolled plane of intergroup ties.20 At that time, the Church’s people

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were largely accoucheurs of civil society. Its means of expression were religious rituals, processions, pilgrimages, solemn masses, meetings with the pope. After 1989, the Church longs to join the discourse on civil society. The new emerging role and position of the Church in the emerging civil society sometimes causes controversy. It is mainly a dispute about the normative foundations of the emerging social order. As Poland’s integration with the secularized European community progresses, these tensions come to the fore. The religiosity of Poles in a declarative sense remains at a high level. Invariably, nearly 95% are considered to be Catholics, the same number are described as believers, and more than half (54%) are considered to regularly practice.21 In the doctrinal sense, however, one can see a considerable amount of selectivity and individualization of faith. In general, however, in Poland (in contrast to many European countries) at the level of pre-political choices (especially concerning issues so vividly discussed as abortion, euthanasia, homosexual relationships), it is the Christian-democratic consensus that dominates, not the liberal one. Poles show greater moral rigor than the inhabitants of Western Europe, as well as most Eastern European countries.22 The battle for the shape of public awareness in Poland has been (at least for now) won by the Church, which has the chance to create an environment conducive to the development of various forms of social involvement. “John Paul II’s Generation”—this term has become very fetching in Poland—may trigger changes leading not to a model of political culture that is not political but active in the public sphere. That is why the Polish Church has a chance to preserve its strength and specificity. The scenario of widespread secularization is not—as one might presume—a universal process of modernization, but a transitional stage of the evolution of Western societies. This process may or may not be repeated in Poland. The Catholic Church in Poland is now one of the largest in the world. Despite rapid economic and social transformations, the temples in Poland are filled still with large congregations of the faithful, and the teaching of the high-ranking clergy is generally accepted. Among European countries, Poland is characterized by the greatest religiosity. A large percentage of people attend Sunday masses and partake in the sacraments. Many Catholics are also involved in Church movements, the largest of which is the Light-Life Movement, the Neocatechumenate and Renewal in the Holy Spirit. Many faithful listeners and TV viewers have the Redemptorist-founded Radio Maryja and TV Trwam. In November 2016, some important events took place in Poland. In

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addition to celebrations of the 1050th anniversary of the baptism, there were the World Youth Days in July, and on 15th October a great day of national repentance took place at Jasna Góra, attended by over 100,000 participants. This event, initiated by lay evangelists, was dedicated to the struggle against social sin, which is rooted in specific people but affects destructively the social reality. More than a month later, at the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Kraków, at the end of the Extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy, also with the participation of a vast numbers of the faithful, the Act of Entrusting of the Polish people to Christ the King took place. Representatives of the highest state authorities also attended this solemn ceremony. These were events without precedent in the history of Poland and perhaps of the world, testifying to the living faith of Poles. John Paul II came from this dynamic Church. Finally, on 14 September 2019, a great prayer meeting under the slogan “Poland under the Cross” was held in Włocławek, with the aim of the spiritual renewal of the nation. It gathered around 100,000 people. That is why I make so bold as to suggest that the Polish pope’s pilgrimage is not over yet. It will still continue in the world thanks to the Polish Church. The Church will never be the same as it was before the pontificate of John Paul II. This is not only because of irreversible technological and social changes. It is thanks to the great spiritual and moral sensitivity of the pope himself and his ability to read the signs of the times, focusing on the inalienable dignity of the person. But the transformation of the universal Church and of the style of the papacy’s approach to its activities, is also an achievement of the Polish Church, the outcome of over a thousand years of history and many painful experiences. Returning after many years to the time of his election as pope, John Paul II expressed his appreciation of the way the conclave, “as if requesting the testimony of the Church from which the Cardinal came, requested him for the good of the universal Church.”23 Acknowledgement The project is funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name ‘Regional Initiative of Excellence’ in 2019–2022, project number: 028/RID/2018/19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 PLN.

Notes 1. Jan Galarowicz, Człowiek jest osoba. ˛ Podstawy antropologii filozoficznej Karola Wojtyły (K˛ety: Wydawnictwo ANTYK, 2000), 253.

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2. Karol Wojtyła, Katolicka etyka społeczna, edited by Urszula Janczyk, ´ Wojciech Kruszewski, Gerald J. Beyer, Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik, and Alfred M. Wierzbicki (Lublin: Instytut Jana Pawła II KUL, 2018), 126. 3. Ibid., 93. 4. Karol Wojtyła, Osoba i czyn oraz inne studia antropologiczne (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1994), 450. ´ 5. Andrzej Szostek, Sladami my´sli ´swi˛etego. Osoba ludzka pasja˛ Jana Pawła II (Lublin: Instytut Jana Pawła II KUL, 2014), 86. 6. Karol Wojtyła, Osoba i czyn, 426. ´ 7. See also Józef Tischner, Swiat ludzkiej nadziei (Kraków: Znak, 2014), 147–148; Roman Ingarden, Ksia˛ zeczka ˙ o człowieku (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2017), 74. 8. Karol Wojtyła, Osoba i czyn, 47. ´ etego Jana Pawła II do młodych całego 9. Jan Paweł II, List apostolski Ojca Swi˛ ´swiata z okazji Mi˛edzynarodowego Roku Młodziezy ˙ (Wrocław: Tum, 2005), 44. 10. Karol Wojtyła, Osoba i czyn, 208–209. 11. Paul Ricœur, “Wolno´sc´ rozs˛adna i wolno´sc´ dzika,” Znak, 193–194 (1970): 839–859. 12. Tadeusz Styczen, ´ “Prawda o człowieku a etyka”, Roczniki Filozoficzne, 30, 2 (1982): 41–95, here 41–49. 13. Karol Wojtyła, Osoba i czyn, 324. 14. Karol Wojtyła, “Znaczenie Kardynała Stefana Wyszynskiego ´ dla współczesnego Ko´scioła,” Zeszyty Naukowe KUL, 3 (1971): 19–27. 15. John Paul II, Redemptio Missio (Vatican: Liberatrice Vaticana, 1990), Vatican December 7, 1990, § 1,3. 16. See Ryszka Czesław, Kto si˛e l˛eka papieza ˙ (Wrocław: Tum, 1989), 163. 17. Karol Wojtyła, Człowiek droga˛ Ko´scioła (Rzym: Fundacja Jana Pawła II, O´srodek Dokumentacji Pontyfikatu, 1992), 145. 18. See the contribution of Frank Bösch in this volume. 19. Own translation. Jan Paweł II, Pielgrzymki do ojczyzny (Kraków: Znak, 2012), 447. 20. Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, ´ Z socjologii radykalnej zmiany społecznej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1996), 101. 21. Janusz Marianski, ´ “Wiara i wierzenia religijne Polaków – analiza socjologiczna,” in H. Mielicka-Pawłowska (ed.), Religijne wymiary z˙ ycia społecznego (Kielce: Uniwersytet Jana Kochanowskiego w Kielcach, 2013), 303–311, here 305. 22. See Aleksandra Jasinska-Kania, ´ Poles among Europeans (Warszaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe SCHOLAR, 2004). 23. Tomasz Królak, 1001 rzeczy, które warto wiedzie´c o Janie Pawle II (Kraków: Wydawnictwo M, 2010), 56.

CHAPTER 8

Spectacle and Power: Sites and Spaces of Papal Visits in Spain Rubén C. Lois González and Belén Castro-Fernández

Spain, similar to Italy, Ireland and Poland, is often considered as one of the models of a European Catholic nation. However, the public and political space of Spain is rather split between rivalry identities of which only one celebrates the Catholic continuity of the Spanish heritage while others memorize a conflictual nation building process in which loyalty to the pope ranks low. Papal appearances in the public sphere of Spain has, thus, to manoeuvre between these historically constructed identities and the conflicts and compromises that constituted modern Spain as a still predominately Catholic nation. Papal visits to Spain have to be understood as an attempt to support the Catholic identity of Spain, while at

R. C. Lois González (B) Department of Geography, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain e-mail: [email protected] B. Castro-Fernández Department of Applied Didactics, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_8

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the same time catering to different attitudes, including regional differences and animosities against Spanish nationalism or conservatism, all of which incorporate Catholicism within their very own political projects. At least a brief historical overview of the developments since the nineteenth century is necessary to understand the current options of public papal diplomacy in the cultural landscape of Spanish politics.

Slow but Conflictual Transformation: The Emergence of a Catholic Mass Base As historian J. Álvarez Junco reminds us in his influential study of Spain Mater Dolorosa,1 the modern national idea of Spain was first established in a period between 1830 and 1860 as a liberal project. Before these decades, Spanish monarchs defended their absolutistic rule based on the doctrines of the Catholic Church. The influence of the Catholic Church was even in the nineteenth century still strong enough to resist the Napoleonic occupation in 1808–1814. The Court of the Spanish Inquisition did not dissolve until the early 1830s.2 In the new era of the mid-nineteenth century, the liberals introduced new forms of government, a territorial division of the state into homogeneous units called provinces and a judicial system that surmounted feudal inertia.3 In this context, Spain was defined as a modern and constitutional nation which sparked the resistance of a fierce ultraconservative opposition, with the unconditional support of certain regions and an overwhelming majority of the Catholic establishment. Consequently, Spain split into a liberal nation on the one side and a customary Catholicism loyal to the pope on the other side. This situation changed in the second half of the nineteenth century.4 Throughout this period a progressive transformation of the Church took place, which supported the emergence of a public and political sphere beyond Catholic dominance. This opening towards pluralism was politically based on the liberal-conservative pact. During these years, prominent Catholic thinkers embraced the development of Spain as a Catholic Nation.5 Until today, Spanish identity oscillates between liberalism and conservatism, while the later cultivates Catholicism not only as its background but as the roots of the Spanish nation.6 The Spanish development of the second half of the nineteenth century coincided with a turbulent period in the history of the papacy, marked by Italian nation building and the end of the Papal States. In fact, some

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Spanish historians insist that the idea of Spain as a Catholic nation was easier to popularize after the end of the Papal States in 1870s. Another important factor of this development was the Encyclical Rerum Novarum signed by Leo XIII in 1891 that established the modern social doctrine of the Catholic Church. Although the strong presence of socialist and anarchist unions in Spain was hardly altered by organized Catholic workers movements, they did create some societies and religious groupings, which built a solid Catholic mass base that increased and stabilized far into the second half of the twentieth century. Finally, the Catholic hierarchy was able to successfully mobilize tens of thousands of believers throughout the country in processions and mass pilgrimages. Among them, celebrations were promoted in Covadonga (Asturias), in honor of the Virgin of Montserrat in Catalonia, the pilgrimage of El Rocio in Andalusia and numerous festivities dedicated to Mary, Our Lady; the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was also revived after it had disappeared for an extended period.7 These three factors of Catholic nationalism, Catholic unions, and popular piety of pilgrimages formed at the turn of the century a mass base that was able to shape Spanish public and politics in the struggles of the twentieth century.

Catholic Masses Against Secularism and Revolution (1900--1960) The beginning of the new century brought even tenser conflicts between Spaniards wherein the public role of religion became central.8 Despite the alliance with parts of the working class, the hierarchy of the Church adopted usually a conservative, sometimes reactionary position, alongside the traditional dominant groups of landowner and aristocracy against a dynamic society that demanded a more egalitarian sharing of power and distribution of wealth. Geographically, the anti-clerical positions were entrenched in Barcelona, Madrid or the Andalusian countryside, with large masses of proletarians and landless laborers influenced by socialists and anarchists. By contrast, in rural Castile, the Church had a great reputation and influence, even more so in areas such as the Basque Country, Galicia or exurban Catalonia, where the clergy and believers held traditional values, which on many occasions related to regionalist or nationalist identity movements.9

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Until the crisis of the monarchical system of the Restoration in 1917, the conflictual situation kept a calm surface but then social and political tensions exacerbated. The dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera from 1923 to 1930 is interesting for our purpose, as a genuine nationalization project was undertaken through the educational system. In it, the Catholic Church was called on to play a central role thanks to the condition of Spain as a country obedient to the pope.10 There was thus a clear identification between groups supporting the regime and the religious establishment, which would begin to be subject to criticism. On the one hand, the attempt to unify and standardize the educational system and its contents by the dictator collided with the interests of a Church firmly established in the sector, with hundreds of private schools. Furthermore, the dictatorship encountered the resistance of the Catalan Church, opposed to the widespread use of the Castilian language in the cult and that had strong support from Rome.11 Thus, relationships with the papacy were not as amicable as they were supposed to be. Consequently, these years would be unsatisfactory for the Church in Spain as it failed to achieve a full concurrence of objectives with the political power and at the same time was identified by much of the population as a basic component of the coalition of reactionary forces that held power.12 The proclamation of the Republic in April 1931 substantially changed the Church-state relationship as it approved the secular nature of the Spanish state. In order to resist secularist programs of the left-leaning parts of the Republican parties, Catholic Action movement and Catholic unions were able to mobilize enough voters in the 1933 elections, that their loose but well-organized coalition grouped under the acronym CEDA and the leadership of José Maria Gil-Robles became the strongest Parliamentary force. However, it failed to gain the majority of votes.13 From here, the progressive political radicalization in Spain, unstable governments and some attempts at rebellion, significantly worsened the moderate position of much of the Church. Most bishops, clergy and practicing Catholics were identified as reactionary and increasingly prone to authoritarian positions, while the leftist forces redoubled their threats and anti-clerical actions. This scenario was characteristic throughout Spain, except in Catalonia and especially so in the Basque Country where the hegemonic Catholicism maintained its republican commitment due to its defense of regional autonomy and self-government. When in February 1936 a clearly left-wing government was formed, the popular anticlericalism started to escalate, culminating in attacks on religious buildings

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in a context of increasing political violence. This led to a major segment of the Church radicalizing in their opposition against the Second Republic and, in the opposite camp, to many leaders of radical or extreme right to claim the catholicity of Spain. The almost total breakdown between the Church and the Republican regime was evident on the eve of the outbreak of the Civil War. When the attempted military coup of July 1936 led to the Civil War, the position of practically all of the Spanish Church in favor of the rebels and against the Republic government was clear. Only part of the Catalan clergy and the majority of the Basque remained with the legitimate government. Moreover, in Republican Spain, anarchists, communists and socialists launched a violent assault campaign on churches and convents, with the murder of a significant number of clerics in a context of massive crimes perpetrated by both sides.14 This prompted the quick decision of almost all the Spanish bishops to draft a “Collective Letter to the whole world in 1937” where they defended the legitimacy of the Franco uprising, the undisputed character of Spain as a Catholic nation and the definition of Franco’s war as a crusade. However, the papacy, under immediate pressure from some moderate Catalan prelates in exile, refused to acknowledge it.15 With the military victory of Franco in 1939, however, the Vatican fully allied with the National-Catholic doctrine of the new regime, ushering in a period of identification of the Church with the dictatorship. The first Franco period was the stage where the Spanish Church, with support from the Roman papacy, maintained complete identification with the dictatorship of Franco. The period between 1939 until the first years of 1950s is known as National-Catholicism. In this period, the Church, through its highest representatives, was always present in the public acts of the regime. In fact, the religious vocation of the nation manifested itself into a moral code based on the radical defense of the family.

The Opening of the Spanish Church (1960--1980) From the 1960s, the complete identification of the Church with the dictatorship during the first part of the Franco regime gave way to a very different situation.16 The call for a profound renewal that the Catholic Church took from the Second Vatican Council quickly reached Spain. The country had been urbanized, modernized and reached a certain level of economic development where the authoritarian view of religion was losing

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strength and meaning. In addition, the 1960s recorded the flourishing of the social Church from the proliferation of associations and grassroots movements that were active in urban settings.17 The reform-orientated Church had settled in Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country, and had Cardinal Tarancón as its main reference. This was in a context where many members of the clergy still held Franco’s positions and were openly refractory to any changes. Despite this division, the modern Church managed to change its position on the regime and history: “two Spains,” one clerical and the other one anti-religious were overcome by a vision of love, brotherhood and reconciliation; a part of the Catholic masses, most of whom were working class, intellectual and urban, began to mobilize in favor of political change, and the authoritarianism of Franco was contrasted by the tolerance of the pope (John XXIII or Paul VI).18 Although the image of the pope was extolled by the official media, the celebration of the Second Vatican Council caused great concern among the leaders of the regime. The short time that John XXIII remained alive, he avoided further conflict, however the election of Paul VI revealed the deep disagreement between the late Franco regime and the new rules coming from the Second Vatican Council. In fact, the Catholic nation par excellence in southwestern Europe, with a government that resorted to religious events as a form of official speech, expressed its displeasure with the pope and the curia, who at the same time refused to promote any acts that could be interpreted as supporting the Franco dictatorship. Throughout this period, one could say that the Church would have preferred a Christian Democratic regime in Spain, just as in Italy, but these types of groups were banned in Franco’s Spain and stood in opposition to the regime.19 This issue was significant, but would not reach the level of popularity of a different one: the evolution of the Spanish Catholic Action and its Working-class Fraternities (known as HOAC) towards openly leftist positions. In fact, the Second Vatican Council and Paul VI himself inaugurated a pastoral centered on the welfare of workers and the modest urban families who had grown up in the economic boom of the 1950s. Therefore, some of the priests or parishioners involved were arrested for their political and social activities, tried by special courts and then convicted. In these cases, the post-Vatican Church openly sympathized with them, joining the demands for freedom, democracy and autonomy for different regions, which produced a climate of confrontation between the Franco regime and the papacy.

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The Church moved alongside the masses of a modernized society and abandoned its exclusive identification with the elite. Most of the clashes between the government of Madrid and the Vatican were buried, although in some cases, such as the crisis caused by a homily by the bishop of Bilbao, Monsignor Añoveros, demanding freedom and respect for Basque identity, were about to cause a diplomatic rupture. The pope had not attempted to travel to Spain, however this scenario dramatically changed once Franco had died and the democratic transition was almost completed and John Paul II became the head of the Catholic Church in 1978.

A Symbolic Geography of Catholic Mass Spaces The modern history of the relationships between the Catholic Church and the Spanish government explains much of the itineraries, architecture and public spaces used in visits made by John Paul II and Benedict XVI to the country, as the Vatican employs a real geopolitical code in the pastoral visits of their highest authorities.20 In a nation as complex as Spain, the code must have taken into account at least two major constraints. On the one hand, the territorial issue, as the logical center embodied in Madrid, might not have coincided with the territoriality of Basque and Catalan communities. On the other hand, all urban centers and shrines are polysemic, but respond to a specific past and present iconography, symbols and ideological reading.21 To maintain continuity with the previously developed discourse, an enumeration of the main symbols of Spanish National-Catholicism should be undertaken. Among them, Covadonga certainly stands out, a Sanctuary found in the mountains of Asturias, that marks the beginning of the Christian reconquest of Spain against the eighth century Muslim invasion. Although this fact and the concept of reconquest should be regarded more as a myth than as real history, Franco and the various authoritarian regimes used it as a pretext to justify the beginning of military campaigns against others (Muslim, anti-Christian, et cetera), campaigns that served to restore the intrinsic catholicity of Spain. In the case of Santiago de Compostela, the use of old images of the apostle as a warrior was also used as a resource by Franco in the 1940s and 1950s. A third major reference of this interpretation is the Basilica of Our Lady of El Pilar in Zaragoza, a city that had been on the side of Franco from the beginning. The Basilica creates a large urban square to gather pious Catholic masses,

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and its internal symbolism alludes to the Spanish American community of nations; that is, formed by Spain and the countries of Central and South America that had been colonized and converted to the Catholic faith. Today, these three great monuments have adapted to a more popular, democratic reading, and are even linked to some regional features of diversity in Asturias, Galicia and Aragon. Conversely, the Catalan and Basque nationalists, and Galicians to a lesser extent, who for many decades were identified by their catholicity, maintained religious buildings understood as sacred as places of affirmation of their uniqueness. The most notable case is the Basilica of Our Lady of Montserrat near Barcelona.22 It is the emblematic shrine of Catalonia, where monks marched and numerous clandestine meetings against Franco were held. Something similar happened at the Basilica of Santa Maria de Aranzazu, the emblematic place for the start of the work of Ignatius of Loyola, appropriated by Basque nationalism as a sanctuary. Finally, the very Spanish and Francoist Cathedral of Santiago has evolved into a large icon of cultural and urban tourism. It is also a place where every 25th July (day of Santiago), thousands of Galician nationalists and separatists gather to demand self-determination. Popular religiosity has been reinforced in Spain in recent times due to the fact that it has built holy places of great importance. There are some remarkable ones in the southern half of the country and in particular those of Andalusia, where a strong community tradition allows us to understand celebrations that bring together hundreds of thousands of people through pilgrimages. There are mass demonstrations at the start of every evening, with people taking part in processions and carrying large sculptural ensembles with detailed scenes from the Passion of Christ. These celebrations are expressions of the origin of the Counter-Reformation and have now become some of the most popular religious events of the West. Alongside them, some concrete pilgrimages, such as the chapel of El Rocio, encourage hundreds of thousands of devotees to walk and travel by carts through rural areas. Catholicity in Spain has always manifested itself in public squares and emblematic streets, and also in modest churches and shrines filled with people. In our view, these expressions of faith have influenced the stage designs and organization of mass events promoted by the travelling popes. The penultimate issue to be raised refers to the system of cities of Spanish Catholicism and their geopolitical meaning. The main opposition is between Madrid, the capital of the nation and thermometer of the

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dominant trends in the Spanish Episcopal Conference, and Toledo, the metropolitan headquarters and a modestly sized city. The first, Madrid, has had archbishops (always converted to Cardinal) ranging from tolerant in the democratic transition (Monsignor Tarancón), conservative coinciding with the pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and again moderate with Pope Francis. By contrast, the primate of Spain in Toledo has always maintained conservative or reactionary positions. Moreover, in Catalonia the traditional religious capital is Tarragona while the dynamic center, whose archbishop is usually a cardinal, is Barcelona. Something similar happens in the Basque Country, with Pamplona and Bilbao respectively. In Catalonia and the Basque Country, it is argued that the bishops have to be born in their territory and, at the very least, speak their language. Finally, other important sites found in large cities and/or that contain an important sanctuary are Zaragoza, Seville, Santiago de Compostela and Valencia. Finally, it should be pointed out that everything Catholic in Spain has been linked to certain artistic styles and urban aesthetics. Thus, the consolidation of Christianity in the north of the country was expressed with a Romanic style.23 Baroque was the most appreciated style for its theatricality, demonstration of power and taste for perspective, with a wide variety of manifestations ranging from main squares to large squares presided over by a church or cathedral, to dramatic sculptures depicting the Passion of Christ at Easter.24 Although the figure of Gaudí established a clear link between modernism and the architecture of the new contemporary spirituality, throughout the twentieth century architecture and public religious spaces oscillated between a dominant constructive historicism, or revival, and original contributions of architects and urban planners in basilicas such as Aranzazu or Meritxel.25

The Pope as a Socio-Political Actor: Papal Visits From the Second Vatican Council, papal trips have been key to understanding the survival of the Catholic Church. John XXIII and Paul VI had ended the voluntary confinement of the popes in the Vatican since the fall of the Papal States, which initiated a series of international trips. From then on, the socio-political content of the journeys of John Paul II and Benedict XVI has had an extraordinary impact.26 During both pontificates the Vatican created its own television channel, website and papal

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twitter account27 . The media contributes to the integration of the Vatican’s international policy in the apostolate.28 The visits are a display of convening power, strengthening its influence on international relations. With the support of the press, recent popes have built a social and religious leadership with a strong presence in society’s collective imagination. Pastoral messages rely primarily on photo language.29 Wojtyła was the first pontiff to be shown skiing. With him, trips ceased being extraordinary and became commonplace. The media transformed him into a leader that attracted crowds and talked about moral and social issues.30 His travels were not only aimed at Catholics; he also met with followers of other religions. Ratzinger had a lower media presence, opting for an encyclical foreign policy but, even so, he also masterfully used propaganda in acts such as the 2012 World Youth Day in Madrid. The persuasion strategies that Francis has been employing perpetuate the intentional use of the media to convey the central message of the Church.31 Among papal destinations Spain occupied a prominent place, yet it is waiting to be on Francis’ agenda. John Paul II travelled to Spain five times (1982, 1984, 1989, 1993, 2003) and Benedict XVI three times (2006, 2010, 2011)32 . John Paul II’s first visit (1982) was the longest stay of a pope in this country. It lasted a total of ten days in which he visited eighteen cities. Spain, which had just hosted the World Cup, was still in a time of change following four long decades of Franco’s dictatorship. All papal events were followed by thousands of people. According to the Spanish Episcopal Conference, the Mass of Families at Lima Square in Madrid and the meeting with young people at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, also held in the capital, were attended by around one million people. They were the two biggest events of this first tour. Almost this entire papal trip was broadcast live on public television and the places visited were emblematic for their role in the historical context of the country. The choice of the Shrine of Loyola in Navarra, the Basilica of El Pilar in Zaragoza, the Abbey of Montserrat and the Temple of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, as well as the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, was in the interest for confirming identities (national, European) and nationalisms (Catalan, Galician, Basque). They represented the ideological exploitation of a religious symbol. The Basilica of El Pilar was used by Franco and the Spanish American ideology, the Sanctuary of Loyola was closely linked to the Navarran culture and rural identity, like the Abbey of Montserrat was to the Catalan rural identity and the Sagrada Familia

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to the Catalan urban and bourgeois identity. Meanwhile, the visit to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela was based on the pro-European role that the Spanish state had given to the Camino de Santiago. The next trip by John Paul II to Spain (1984) only lasted sixteen hours and the city of Zaragoza was its single destination. It was a stopover on his trip to Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico with a view to preparing the fifth centenary of the discovery of America. There was an obvious symbolism in this visit to Zaragoza, again at the Basilica of El Pilar, patroness of the Hispanidad, the liturgical festivity in which the Catholic Church maintains that the so-called new world was discovered and placed by the discoverer under the cross of Christ. Five years later, the pope attended the closing ceremony of the fourth World Youth Day in Santiago de Compostela (1989). According to the Spanish Episcopal Conference approximately one million young people were in attendance. There the pope took part in the symbolic pilgrimage of the last hundred meters of the Camino de Santiago wearing pilgrim symbols. At the will of the pontiff, the trip was extended to Asturias, which had been one of the stages left out of his first trip to Spain, where he visited the Holy Cave of Covadonga, before returning to the Vatican. In Covadonga, a holy place related to the myth of the Christian Reconquest and recovery from the Muslim Hispania, the pope proposed the moral re-conquest of Europe. One of the main reasons for the fourth papal trip to Spain (1993) was the closing of the 45th International Eucharistic Congress in the city of Seville, where the 1992 International Exhibition had also been held. It should be noted that John Paul II always presided over the closures of various International Eucharistic Congresses held during his pontificate. The Congress in Seville was also part of the commemoration of the fifth centenary of the Discovery of America, an endeavor for which this city played a significant role. Also, a papal visit to the Columbian sites in Huelva, where Christopher Columbus made preparations for his first trip to America, was scheduled as well as another to the Chapel of El Rocio in Almonte, a place of Marian devotion linked to Andalusian folklore and identity. It is in Madrid where, among other acts, the pope blessed the Cathedral of Almudena. This event held special significance because its construction, which had begun in the late nineteenth century and was interrupted by the Civil War, had been put on hold in the sixties by Franco, at a time of tension between the Spanish state and the Holy See.

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Twenty years later Cardinal Suquía recommenced the works with the help of the first socialist government in 1993 and got John Paul II to celebrate its consecration. The canonization of five blessed Spaniards was the reason for the fifth and final visit of John Paul II to Spain (2003), giving him the opportunity to meet almost one million young people. After beginning his papacy, Joseph Ratzinger made his first visit to Spain as pope (2006). The destination was Valencia, for the fifth World Meeting of Families. Benedict was only in Spain for twenty-six hours and had time to meet with the Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the King of Spain. A multitudinous Mass with, according to the Spanish Episcopal Conference, one and a half million attendees was the finishing touch to this visit. The meeting was part of a context of tension between the Spanish Episcopal Conference and the socialist government, particularly in the bishops’ opposition to same-sex marriage, which had been approved in July 2005 and the Education Organic Law passed in February 2006. Before his visit, a gay, lesbian and AIDS group, among others, organized the campaign “Nosaltres not t’esperem” to express their disagreement with his visit. On the occasion of the 2010 Jacobean Holy Year, Benedict XVI visited two Spanish cities: Santiago de Compostela, where he celebrated mass at the foot of the cathedral on an altar specially built for the occasion; and Barcelona, where he enshrined the temple of the Sagrada Familia. A modernist project of the late nineteenth century (currently still under construction), which represents the resurgence of political Catalanism by the business bourgeoisie, articulated around the claim of the sovereignty lost in the eighteenth century. This involvement of the Church in the Catalan cause through the consecration of this identity symbol is rather significant. Only one year later, the 26th World Youth Day held in Madrid brought Benedict XVI to Spain for one last time (2011), a multitudinous ceremony with around one and a half million participants, and which became the most controversial papal tour in this country. In the days of his stay, the organization of the event and its financing was criticized and several demonstrations were held.33

The Papal Architectures: From the Monument to the Ephemeral Stage The images of the places visited on pastoral trips are beamed around the world. Nonverbal communication surpasses even the ecumenical message,

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giving way to the factual assessment of each of these events. Therefore, staging is a key factor in the interpretation of each of the trips made by the popes. The stages that host their ceremonies and meetings in Spain are classified into three distinct areas: monumental, public space and ephemeral architecture. During the first trips of John Paul II, the pope went to holy places, historic buildings, which were considered landmarks in cultural and religious history. They were intimate visits, which enhanced the figure of the pope sharing the limelight with an architecture that, in this symbiosis, made the event an epic occasion. The photographs of those meetings collected by the press and the television images focused on the rites that the pontiff performed in the sacred area: The Sanctuary of Loyola, the Basilica of El Pilar, the cathedrals of Compostela, Seville and Madrid, the shrine of El Rocio, of Covadonga or the monastery of El Escorial. The poetic force of the visit was based on the language of the icons visited by the pontiff and the ability to understand the performance of that rite by tradition and memory. The identification between the ecclesiastical message and the meaning that the building represents was sought. The people who were waiting for the pope, but did not participate in the meeting, were located far away and cheered him on during his parade. Progressively, the communication policy of the Holy See promoted encounters of the pope and his followers in public spaces, where a stage for the liturgical celebration was assembled. Not only large and wide areas, but symbolic in the sense of the visited cities: some emblematic such as football stadiums (Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid and Camp Nou in Barcelona) and other urbanistically strategic, such as squares, that brought the cities to a standstill (Lima and Colón Squares in Madrid, Valencia Boardwalk, Seville Fair grounds). The impact of the papal visits had an effect on daily routines, piquing people’s interest and curiosity. The invaded public space reinforced the media dimension of the apostolic stay, initiating the taste for platforms that is so similar to rock concerts and Hollywood-style red carpets. Mass gatherings in Spain starring John Paul II (Madrid, 2003) and Benedict XVI (Valencia 2006, Santiago de Compostela 2010, Madrid 2011) led to the creation of an ephemeral architecture, reminiscent of theatre lifts, canopies or baldachins of the Spanish Baroque. In fact, the architect Ignacio Vicens, who since 1982 has designed most of the Madrid stages for papal visits, is the author of a doctoral thesis on

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the ephemeral architecture of the baroque. The image of this architecture is reduced to an artistic representation and element of visual communication. The baldachin to welcome John Paul II to Madrid (2003) had an independent cover that came from behind the stage. The color of the background was Vatican yellow and was decorated by a luminous cross and a giant screen. It was a low stage, so that people ringside were relatively close to the pope. In Valencia (2006) the altar, designed by the architect Juan Pablo Mas, was extremely ostentatious. A twelve-meter high tower-guide became the symbol of the colossal stage. Weighing seven tons, it had an interior lighting system with a golden hue lit up at night during the celebration of the World Meeting of Families. According to reports at the time, the building material was reused in the construction of churches and schools in Peru. In the Obradoiro Square, Santiago de Compostela in 2010, the architect projected a more discreet triangular altar with a metal base and wood paneling, which housed the royal family on the right of the pope, and around one hundred invited bishops on the left side. The structure was placed in the southwest corner of the square to leave clear the surrounding monumental facades and the front of the cathedral. Approximately eight and a half meters tall, it was conceived as a presbytery which was reached through a raised platform two meters above the level of the square. The structure provided a cover to protect them from possible rain. As a symbol of Christianity, a three thousand kilo, two and a half meter high by three-meter wide large stone cross was installed. This time it was also said that once the ceremony was over, 70% of the materials would be recycled. The intense heat of August 2011 in Madrid and Benedict XVI’s eightyfour years inspired architect Ignacio Vicens eccentric tree design—the trunk is bent to one side—as big as a tennis court, which gave shade and sprayed micronized water on the pontiff. The scenario of Cuatro Vientos, measuring about two hundred meters long, was a scaffolding structure, covered, according to the author, with re-used event carpeting that was placed on top, wrinkled and painted white. Occasionally, papal scenographies have unleashed controversy. The taste for mass ceremonies has not always been well received and various sectors have criticized them for their festive and anti-evangelical character. The expense and organization of the numerous tours held by the host countries and financed with public money have also been criticized, especially when it comes to visits to poor countries.34 In the case of Spain,

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the high economic expenditure of the papal visit to Valencia (2006) led to a court case on political corruption. It is clear that in all ages, architecture (ephemeral or not) recounts the reality and culture by transforming human scenarios into images, in architectural narratives.35 In this sense, architecture plays a key role in the creation and projection of the idealized image of a given culture; in this case, the idealization of the papal figure and Vatican diplomacy.

Conclusion As part of the change sought by the Second Vatican Council (1962– 1965), papal trips are key to understanding the survival of the Catholic Church and its entry into the third millennium. They also mean a display of convening power, which strengthens its influence in international relationships. With the support of the press, recent popes have built a social and religious leadership with a strong presence in the collective imagination of society. Despite some concerns from various perspectives, the great enthusiasts of papal trips have staged moments of maximum splendor. In the five trips that John Paul II made to Spain, he found a complex nation where, although most of the population was Catholic, society appeared increasingly secularized.36 In addition, relationships between the Church and the state were not always harmonious during his pontificate, as tensions arose with the various democratic governments on issues such as abortion, divorce or education. This climate of tension was heightened during the pontificate of Benedict XVI and his three visits to Spain were accompanied by social unrest. Spectacle and power are once again intermixed. The film industry knows very well about this. Que Dios nosperdone [May God forgive us], is a Rodrigo Sorogoyen thriller, released in October 2016, set in a Madrid straining under the weight of the thousands of Catholics around the world awaiting the arrival of Benedict XVI in August 2011.37

Notes 1. José Álvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Taurus, 2001). 2. Josep Fontana, Cambio económico y actitudes políticas en la España del siglo XIX (Barcelona: Ariel, 1973).

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3. José Álvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa; Jacobo García Álvarez, Provincias, Regiones y Comunidades Autónomas. La formación del mapa político de España (Madrid: Temas del Senado, 2002). 4. José Álvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa; Javier Moreno Luzón and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (eds.), Ser españoles. Imaginarios nacionalistas en el siglo XX (Barcelona: RBA, 2013). 5. José Álvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa. 6. Antonio Gramsci, Las maniobras del Vaticano (Buenos Aires: Godot, 2010); Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas. Religión y nación en la Europa de entreguerras (Madrid: Sílex, 2013); Mary Vincent, “Religión e identidad nacional,” in Javier Moreno Luzón and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (eds.), Ser españoles. Imaginarios nacionalistas en el siglo XX (Barcelona: RBA, 2013), 207– 246. 7. Rubén C. Lois González, “The Camino de Santiago and Its Contemporary Renewal: Pilgrims, Tourists and Territorial Identities,” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14, 1 (2013), 8–23; Rubén C. Lois González and Belén Castro-Fernández, “The Cult of Mary in Spain: From Political Interest to Pilgrimage Tourism,” in Maria Stella Calò Mariani and Anna Trono (eds.), Le Vie della Misericordia. The Ways of Mercy (Galatina: Congedo, 2017), 321–338. 8. Julián Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco (Barcelona: Crítica, 2001); Manuel Ortiz Heras and Damián A. González (dir.), De la cruzada al desenganche: la Iglesia española entre el franquismo y la transición (Madrid: Sílex, 2011); Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas; Mary Vincent, “Religión e identidad nacional.” 9. Alejandro Quiroga, “La trampa católica. La Iglesia y la Dictadura de Primo de Rivera,” in Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas, 161–192; Joseba Louzao Villar, “¿Una misma fe para dos naciones? Nación y religión en el País Vasco de los años treinta,” in Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas, 271–298; José R. Rodríguez Lago, “Los católicos, las instituciones eclesiásticas y el nacionalismo gallego (1918–1936),” in Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas, 299–324. 10. Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas; Alejandro Quiroga, “La trampa católica”; Mary Vincent, “Religión e identidad nacional.” 11. Alejandro Quiroga, “La trampa católica.” 12. Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas; Mary Vincent, “Religión e identidad nacional.”

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13. Mary Vincent, “Religión e identidad nacional”; Feliciano Montero, “La dimensión nacional e internacional de la Acción Católica Española, 1920– 1936,” in Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas, 219–246. 14. Julián Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco; Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas. 15. Alfonso Botti, Feliciano Montero, and Alejandro Quiroga (eds.), Católicos y patriotas. 16. Manuel Ortiz Heras and Damián A. González (dir.), De la cruzada al desenganche. 17. Feliciano Montero, “La Iglesia dividida. Tensiones intraeclesiales en el segundo franquismo (La crisis postconciliar en el contexto del tardofranquismo),” in Manuel Ortiz Heras and Damián A. González (dir.), De la cruzada al desenganche: la Iglesia española entre el franquismo y la transición (Madrid: Sílex, 2011), 51–77; Enrique Berzal de la Rosa, “Sotanas, martillos y alpargatas. Las contradicciones del movimiento obrero impulsado por el clero,” in Manuel Ortiz Heras and Damián A. González (dir.), De la cruzada al desenganche: la Iglesia española entre el franquismo y la transición (Madrid: Sílex, 2011), 103–133. 18. Manuel Ortiz Heras and Damián A. González (dir.), De la cruzada al desenganche. 19. Hilari Raguer Suñer, “La oposición cristiana al franquismo en Cataluña,” in Manuel Ortiz Heras and Damián A. González (dir.), De la cruzada al desenganche: la Iglesia española entre el franquismo y la transición (Madrid: Sílex, 2011), 161–187. 20. Peter J. Taylor, Geografía Política. Economía-Mundo, Estado-Nación y Localidad (Madrid: Trama, 2002). 21. Gemma Cànoves Valiente and Asunción Blanco Romero, “Turismo religioso en España: ¿la gallina de los huevos de oro? Una vieja tradición, versus un turismo emergente,” Cuadernos de Turismo, 27 (2011), 115– 132; Rubén C. Lois González and Belén Castro-Fernández, “The Cult of Mary in Spain.” 22. Gemma Cànoves Valiente, “Turismo religioso en Montserrat: montaña de fe, montaña de turismo,” Cuadernos de Turismo, 18 (2006), 63–77. 23. John Williams, “Arquitectura del Camino de Santiago,” Compostellanum, 29 (1984), 267–289; Serafín Moralejo, “Arte del Camino de Santiago y arte de peregrinación (ss. XI-XIII),” in Serafín Moralejo (dir.), El Camino de Santiago (Santiago de Compostela: Fundación Alfredo Brañas, 1987), 7–28. 24. Fernando Checa Cremades and José M. Morán Turina, Arte barroco (Madrid: Istmo, 2001); Antonio R. Fernández Paradas (dir.), Escultura barroca española: nuevas lecturas desde los siglos de oro a la sociedad del conocimiento (Antequera: Exlibric, 2016).

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25. Esteban Fernández Cobián, El espacio sagrado en la arquitectura española contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Galicia, 2005). 26. Diego Contreras, La Iglesia católica en la prensa. Periodismo, retórica y pragmática (Pamplona: University of Navarra, 2004); Alejandro Pedraza Cortés, “La propaganda del Vaticano,” Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (2015). 27. Miguel Candelas Candelas, “Maestros de la propaganda: de San Pedro al Papa Francisco”, Política crítica. Revista digital (2014). 28. Alejandro Pedraza Cortés, “La propaganda del Vaticano.” 29. Jesús Vázquez, Juan Pablo II en España a través de la prensa. Estudio sociológico (Madrid: Instituto de Sociología Aplicada, 1983). 30. Manuel J. Cartes Barroso, Análisis y tratamiento de las visitas de san Juan Pablo II a Andalucía, según la Prensa de Sevilla: ABC y El Correo de Andalucía (Dissertation, University of Seville, 2014). 31. Miguel Candelas Candelas, “Maestros de la propaganda: de San Pedro al Papa Francisco.” 32. Data on these tours were extracted from the official website of the Spanish Episcopal Conference. 33. Manuel J. Cartes Barroso, Análisis y tratamiento de las visitas de san Juan Pablo II a Andalucía, según la Prensa de Sevilla: ABC y El Correo de Andalucía. 34. Ibid. 35. Juhani Pallasmaa, La imagen corpórea. Imaginación e imaginario en la arquitectura (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2014). 36. Vicente Cárcel Ortí, Historia de la Iglesia en la España contemporánea. Siglos XIX y XX (Madrid: Palabra, 2002). 37. For the role of the papacy in film see also Melanie Barbato’s contribution in this volume.

PART III

Global Transformation

CHAPTER 9

Transatlantic Solidarities: Ultramontanism and Papal Mobilization in Latin America Francisco Javier Ramón Solans

Throughout the nineteenth century, the pope changed from a distant and limited authority into a visible and powerful one, whose influence reached into almost every corner of the planet. This change of scope was the result of the centralization and globalization process the Catholic Church underwent during this period. In addition to factors such as the improving means of communication and transportation and the decline of doctrines limiting papal power, the establishment of transnational and transatlantic Catholic networks played a major role in the increasing power of the Vatican on a global scale.1 While appearing fascinated by national narratives of clerical-anticlerical struggles, historians have often neglected the gradual rapprochement around the papal agenda for Catholics from both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century.2 The forging of these new contacts should be understood as an ultramontane response to the transnational challenges

F. J. Ramón Solans (B) University of Zaragoza, Saragossa, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_9

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of modern times: industrialization; migrations; political changes; anticlerical, anarchist and socialist movements. Resistance both to state attempts to control the Church and to attempts to separate Church and state triggered these contacts between Catholics from both sides of the Atlantic. In this way, the creation of these networks should also be analyzed as a response to the challenge of modernity and especially to the unfolding internationalization of anticlerical and anti-Catholic movements.3 This chapter intends to explore the consolidation of ultramontane and papal mobilization in Latin America from a transatlantic and transnational perspective. To address these questions, this chapter has been divided into three parts. The first part offers an historiographical account of the transnational dimension of the mobilization for the pope during the second half of the nineteenth century. The second part focuses on the ultramontane movement in Latin American Catholicism after the Spanish American wars of independence. Finally, the chapter will analyze the role of a fairly unknown, but nevertheless important transnational actor, José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, on the implementation of the Peter’s Pence and other initiatives in favor of the Holy See in Latin America. In the long-term this Latin American mobilization would be instrumental in the redefinition of the dynamics between the centre—the Holy See—and the periphery within global Catholicism. The Romanization of the Catholic Church in Latin America, as well as the role played in the international campaign in favour of the pope, reinforced its presence in the central structures of the Global Catholic Church; a presence which would be seen to be confirmed in 2013 with the election of the first American pope in history, Pope Francisco.

From a Traditional State to a Transnational Player? The traumatic loss of the Papal States during Italian unification was largely offset by building a transnational solidarity with the pope. Massive global support during the 1860s and 1870s would legitimize the Vatican in its new role as a center of a new international Catholic opinion “which acted as a substitute shield for the papacy’s independence, a much more effective one than the Papal States had been for a very long time.”4 In the making of this new legitimacy we might identify three different turning points: the Revolutions of 1848, the loss of the territories of Romagna, Umbria and the Marches in 1860, and the Capture of Rome in 1870.

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After the Revolutions of 1848, the Catholic Church was seen as a bulwark of social order. Following the more liberal first part of his pontificate, Pius IX also adopted an intransigent stance concerning Italian nationalism, which forced him to look beyond the Alps. His exile in Gaeta following the revolution in Rome triggered protests in the Catholic world as well as the international military expedition led by France. From 1849 petitions and collections were taken across Europe and America. The Comité Catholique de Paris “reinvented the medieval Peter’s Pence, as a voluntary contribution.”5 Soon it was successfully adopted in some French and Belgian dioceses. In their more limited way, these first attempts foreshadowed the impressive mobilization of the 1860s, including the coordination between clergy and laity, and the use of mass media such as L’Univers and the Civiltà Cattolica.6 These displays of solidarity contributed to the densification and creation of new transnational Catholic networks. These contacts were not only structured around Rome but also throughout other important cities in Europe and America.7 Nevertheless, Pius IX implemented several initiatives reinforcing the symbolic role of the pope as the center of Christianity, such as the encyclical Inter Multiplices (1853), endorsing the ultramontane newspaper L’Univers in its controversy with the Gallican archbishop of Paris, and the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854), sanctioning de facto papal infallibility.8 As a result of the Italian War of 1859 and the rebellion of Romagna, the Papal States lost two-thirds of their territory. The papacy mobilized and appealed to international Catholic opinion. This mobilization took a great variety of forms and organizational structures, from the collection of five million signatures addressed to Pius IX to the recruitment of 11,000 volunteers between 1860 and 1870, mostly from Northern Europe, the so-called Zouaves, and the flourishing and worldwide spread of devotion to the pope as martyr.9 But above all, the 1860s witnessed the consolidation and globalization of Peter’s pence. Although it remained a predominately European phenomenon, non-European total contribution to Peter’s Pence went from 14.35% in 1864 to 25.47% in 1870. This collection had the support of public figures, such as the Comte de Chambord or Maximilian I of Mexico, as well as religious communities, Catholic associations and Catholic journals.10 The importance of this contribution lay not only in the financial help provided to a state struggling on the verge of bankruptcy and in funding

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the papal armies, but also in its “profound effect upon the role of the pope himself, and his relation to the faithful” because “[i]t was also the first opportunity for the Catholic faithful to play an active, and usually public, part in the life of their Church.”11 As a result of this mobilization and thanks to the development of photography, the image of the popes is “personalized,”12 developing emotions and feelings towards them. The Capture of Rome in 1870 would intensify the features of this mobilization. Italian unification led to a global wave of protest in favor of the self-declared “Prisoner in the Vatican.” Pius IX’s refusal to accept the new state was not followed by other countries, with the exception of Ecuador, whose president, Gabriel García Moreno, broke off diplomatic relations with Italy and became a global Catholic hero. The main outcome from this period was the creation of a secret organization, the Black International, which brought together Catholic leaders from nine European countries to drive protest against the Capture of Rome and to fight the First International. Although it relied on the implied consent of the Vatican, this organization was viewed with mistrust by the Holy See due to its autonomy and its legitimist leanings.13 Researchers have long analyzed this mobilization from a vertical perspective, either from the pope to the world or vice versa. Most frequently, scholars describe it as a spontaneous Catholic movement towards Rome which was subsequently driven by the Vatican.14 Despite its global dimension, this phenomenon has been analyzed either from a national perspective or a Vatican-centered one. Vincent Viaene was one of the first historians to point out the transnational nature of this mobilization, stressing the ascendancy of Northern European Ultramontanism in this worldwide mobilization.15 He made a huge contribution to the study of Ultramontanism, although the scope of that study nevertheless remained too narrow and Eurocentric, with the sole exception of Peter D’Agostino’s book on the impact of the Roman Question among Catholic Italian Americans.16 Vincent Viaene and Olaf Blaschke have recently pointed out the need for a transatlantic understanding of Ultramontanism. The study of transnational and transatlantic ultramontane networks may contribute to a better understanding of this multidirectional phenomenon, which built bridges among Catholics from all around the world and created a sense of belonging for a community led by the pope.17 This transnational mobilization ran in parallel with the processes of globalization, centralization, homogenization and hierarchization which

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the Catholic Church underwent during the nineteenth century and which are commonly known as Romanization. Globalization of Catholicism and papal supremacy were two sides of the same coin. As Jose Casanova pointed out, it entailed: The reconstruction, reemergence, or reinforcement of all those transnational characteristics of medieval Christendom that had nearly disappeared or been significantly weakened in the early modern era: papal supremacy and the centralization and internationalization of the Church’s government; the convocation of ecumenical councils; transnational religious cadres; missionary activity; transnational schools, centers of learning and intellectual networks; shrines as centers of pilgrimage and international encounters; transnational religious movements.18

In the same way, other religions experienced similar processes of globalization, centralization, hierarchization, bureaucratization, and formalization of rites and doctrines throughout the nineteenth century. Together with better communications and technological improvements, these changes allowed religions to reach a greater geographical scope and deeper penetration into societies. These processes have led some scholars to speak of the rise and rule of real empires of religions and to draw similarities between them and the new nation states with regards to their organization and ability to control and mobilize the population.19

The Ultramontane Movement in Latin America During the first third of the nineteenth century the Catholic Church in Latin America was on the verge of schism. The long road to papal recognition of the new American states, which did not occur until Gregory XVI, had left a large number of dioceses devoid of replacements for exiled or dead bishops since 1808, holding reforms and missions in abeyance. Some laymen and prelates were ready to break with the Holy See and create a national church.20 Due to Spanish diplomatic pressures and the revolutionary nature of these new republics, the Holy See refused to recognize their independence. The one exception was the Empire of Brazil, which was recognized by the Holy See in 1826, and from that moment, Brazilian Catholics had the first papal diplomatic representation in Latin America. The nunciature in Rio de Janeiro strengthened Roman presence in Latin America

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and contributed to gathering information on the Catholic Church in these countries (political traditions, ultramontane priests, etc.) as well as to spreading ultramontane doctrines.21 Recognition of the new Republics was also hampered by their attempt to inherit the Patronato Regio (royal patronage), the ecclesiastic privileges granted by the pope to the Spanish monarch.22 Among these privileges were the control of major appointments of Church officials and the Exequatur (the right to retain papal bulls if they are against Spanish laws). The Republican governments’ insistence on inheriting the Patronato Regio also led to tensions within national churches. Therefore, some laymen and ecclesiastics abandoned regalism, embracing ultramontane doctrines.23 The outbreak of a Liberal Revolution in Spain (1820–1823) changed the Holy See’s attitude towards the new Latin American republics. Pius VII agreed to send a diplomatic mission to Chile commanded by the auditor of the Nuncio in Vienna, Giovanni Muzi, and composed of Giovanni Muzi and Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferreti, the future Pope Pius IX. The mission did not achieve its main religious goals in the short term because of the many conflicts with local and national authorities about its ecclesiastic privileges. Despite this setback, Muzi’s mission had a long-term effect in the region because of the designation of key figures in the dissemination of Ultramontanism.24 The restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1823 briefly set these first diplomatic contacts back. The decisive victory in Ayacucho (1824), British diplomatic recognition, and French mediation forced the Holy See to change its mind over Latin America. The new pope, Gregory XVI, recognized New Granada (1835), Mexico (1836), Ecuador (1838) and Chile (1840).25 After diplomatic recognition of the new Latin American countries in the 1830s, a significant part of the Catholic hierarchy and laity embraced Ultramontanism during the 1840s and 1850s. This process was due to many factors, especially the growing Catholic hostility to state interference in religious affairs and the influence of French Catholicism. The Romanization of Latin American Catholic life was a long and complicated process, due to the persistence of Gallican traditions and the resistance of those Catholics who were affected by this process due to their privileges and closeness to political power.26 Romanization ran parallel with internationalization. Latin American Catholics read newspapers from all over the world, travelled across Europe and America, and

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met other colleagues in pilgrimages, congresses, and papal audiences, and so on.27 The establishment of diplomatic relations was instrumental in the revival and consolidation of an ultramontane episcopate in Latin America, with the appointment of 41 new prelates. Among them were some priests who had never dealt with the colonial Patronato regio, such as the Archbishop of Bogotá, Manuel Mosquera, the Bishop of Buenos Aires, Mariano Medrano, and the Bishop of Santiago de Chile, Manuel Vicuña.28 Facing the interference of the new republican authorities, this episcopal generation looked beyond the mountains and the ocean to Rome in search of guidance.29 This new episcopal generation rolled out comprehensive reform of their dioceses. Special attention was paid to training priests, with the foundation and reform of seminaries and the recruitment of European teachers. They embraced the arrival of new religious congregations such as the Redemptorists and the Salesians, the return of the Jesuits, and the promotion of spaces for the laity such as Societies of Saint Vincent de Paul. This episcopal generation also played a major role in founding a confessional press in Latin America, bolstering periodicals such as the Chilean magazine Revista Católica (1843–1894), the Argentinian magazine La Religión (1853–1862), and the Colombian newspaper El Catolicismo (1849–1861).30 The dioceses attained a high level of uniformity and homogeneity under their episcopates. The improved communications with Rome and Europe as well as the arrival and institutionalization of Roman and European Catholic trends contributed to the standardization and homogenization of Latin American Catholicism. The reception of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854) in Chile reflects the multidimensional nature of this process. The definition of this dogma was a response to the challenges produced by the European Revolutions of 1848, and the political reading of this religious statement was also clear in Chile after the insurrection in 1851 led by the Society of Equality and Francisco Bilbao. The dogma itself contributed to the homogenization of worship and the reinforcement of papal authority. During the celebrations for the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception in Santiago de Chile, on December 8 1855, Chileans could see for the first time the portrait of Pius IX, hanging from the main entrance to the Cathedral. This dogmatic definition strengthened the authority of the pope and enhanced his image, associating it with popular devotion to Mary. Similar religious

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ceremonies which took place in the main Latin American capitals, such as Buenos Aires, Mexico, and Bogotá, were also a sign of the growing ultramontanization of the organizers, the Latin American episcopacy. Unlike European Ultramontanism, its Latin American counterpart was not linked to any kind of royalism or legitimism. The encyclical Quanta Cura (1864) with the Syllabus Errorum radicalized the political position within European Catholicism, weakening liberal Catholics and those ultramontanes willing to accept modern freedoms strategically. Despite the appeaser role played by the Bishop of Orléans, Félix Dupanloup, conflict broke out on the eve of the First Vatican Council when the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà cattolica distinguished between true Catholics and liberal Catholics.31 The form of government and liberal freedoms did not give raise to any conflict in Latin American Catholicism, since with the sole exception of the Empire of Brazil and the brief Mexican Empire, the Latin-American states were republics. This partly explains why Latin American Catholics established contacts with liberal Catholics such as Montalembert and legitimist ultramontanes such as Louis Veuillot. It was due to the abovementioned conflict that Latin American Catholics were gradually forced to abandon their contacts with European liberal Catholicism, embracing the more radical forms of Ultramontanism.32 In any case, the key issue was how to create an independent and strong Catholic Church to face the challenges posed by secularization and anticlericalism.33

Eyzaguirre and the Latin American Mobilization in Favor of the Pope This ultramontane movement laid the foundations for the mobilization in support of the pope between 1850 and 1870 in Latin America. It was coordinated by José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre and boosted by the apostolic legates and bishops. The Chilean priest Eyzaguirre (1817–1875) is one of the most influential figures in nineteenth century Latin American Catholicism, yet there is no historical biography of him.34 Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Santiago and Liberal deputy from 1849 to 1852, he went into exile after the Revolution of 1851 in Chile that led to a presidential system headed by Manuel Montt. Eyzaguirre travelled around the world35 and settled in Paris where he wrote Catolicismo en presencia de sus disidentes (1855), summarizing his

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impressions of the religious affairs of the countries he had visited. Eyzaguirre’s book should be understood within the context of the nineteenth century struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism. His book was heavily influenced by Balmes’ famous appeal against Protestantism: El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo en sus relaciones con la civilización europea (1842). Contemporaries even saw it as its sequel and complement because of Eyzaguirre’s focus on the effect of Protestantism in modern societies and the restrictions of religious freedom in Protestant countries.36 In 1862, the future president of Ecuador and intransigent Catholic, Gabriel García Moreno, wrote to Eyzaguirre from his shared exile in Paris, thanking him for his important contribution “to the triumph of our true religion and to the blessing and honor of America”.37 Catolicismo en presencia de sus disidentes had a major impact not only in Spanish America but also in Europe. It was translated into French and Italian and reviewed by Jean Barrier in L’Univers (1855).38 In a private audience in 1855, the pope himself congratulated Eyzaguirre for his important contribution at that time.39 During this papal audience, Pius IX proposed the creation of a Latin American College to Eyzaguirre, to train the Latin American Catholic elite in Rome. In his letter to his brother, Salvador Eyzaguirre, José Ignacio narrated the papal concern about the situation of the Catholic Church in Latin America. The pope showed him several dossiers and nuncios’ reports on the Latin American need for Romanization and priestly education.40 In 1850 Rafael Valdivieso, Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, wrote to Sebastian Buscioni, ad interim head of the Holy See mission in New Granada, to propose the union of the Latin American Episcopate to “break the chains of the inherited Spanish regalism in our democratic governments.”41 With the support of the Cardinal Secretary of State and the diplomatic representatives of the Papal States in Latin America (the internuncio of Brazil and the apostolic delegates in Mexico and New Granada), Eyzaguirre travelled across Latin America in 1856 in order to fundraise for the Latin American College. He established contacts with 31 bishops and archbishops from Argentina to Mexico, becoming the core of a transnational Latin American network.42 Eyzaguirre overcame many challenges and managed to found the College in Rome, which “played critical roles in shaping the modern Latin American Church in both its internal organization and in its relations with the papacy and the faithful. [The

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trainee priests’] education and later careers have served as a critical part of a broader strategy to modernize and Romanize the Latin American Catholic Church in the face of rising secularism.”43 After his mission, Eyzaguirre was appointed as Papal Legate in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador (1860–1863). During this time, he used the contacts he made while founding the Latin American College in Rome to promote the collection of signatures in favor of the pope in Latin America. His initiative received the enthusiastic backing of the apostolic legates Marino Marini (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) and Mieczysław Ledóchowski (Nueva Granada), a strong supporter of the Latin American College in Rome. On March 12, 1860, Ledóchowski wrote to ask Eyzaguirre to join the cause: Your instructions about the public declaration in favor of His Holiness and the rights of the Apostolic See has my support. For some time now I have been thinking about how could I influence the spirit of these people, as it is a shame that these Catholic and religious people don’t know how to break out of their old routine, acting as mere spectators when they should be a responsive part of the joys and sorrows of the Church’s body, of which they are members and certainly not the worst of the Church’s body.44

It is interesting to note that these public statements in favor of the pope were seen as a sign of the changing role of the Latin American Church that would allow Latin American Catholics to become part of a general movement for Rome. It was in this spirit that in April 1860 the young Chilean scholar in Rome, José Milcíades Bernardo Echagüe, informed his old supervisor, Eyzaguirre, that “donations and support for the Vatican came from all over the world and it is hoped that Catholic Latin America will also console the Pope, given that even schismatic Russia and some Protestant countries had taken this laudable step.”45 The apostolic legate in Nueva Granada, Mieczysław Ledóchowski, pointed out that they should address the matter quietly. Collecting signatures in favor of the pope should be driven without public campaign to avoid anticlerical backlashes. The diplomat also informed Eyzaguirre that he had already contacted some staunch Catholics to gather signatures, and El Catolicismo had published a few articles to prompt Catholic opinion indirectly to support this initiative. He expected to collect a few thousand signatures.46 In May 1860, Ledóchowski wrote again to Eyzaguirre to suggest he implement Peter’s Pence in Latin America. After informing

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Eyzaguirre about the progress made by public demonstrations in favor of the pope, he expressed his desire that Latin America emulated European countries in its economic contribution to the pope. As for the gathering of signatures, Ledóchowski asked him to proceed with caution.47 This insightful observer was fully aware of the political and religious situation of Latin American countries. Indeed, after being expelled from Colombia in 1861, Ledóchowski wrote a lucid report on Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli. In it, Ledóchowski highlighted how positive the separation had been and the new possibilities for Catholic development in Colombia, where the separation of Church and State took place as early as 1853.48 Indeed, Ledóchowski wrote to Eyzaguirre in March 1860 criticizing “the excessive and growing dependence of the spiritual authority” due to the “excessive and even limitless intervention of political authorities” in Peru. To address this problem, and after having dwelled on the examples of Colombia and the USA, Ledóchowski recommended “accepting [the separation of Church and state] without resistance when it was proposed.”49 Eyzaguirre recommended Peter’s Pence not only to the Catholic hierarchy under his jurisdiction but also to his old Chilean colleagues.50 Eyzaguirre also contacted the Bishop of Buenos Aires, Mariano José de Escalada, one of the main supporters of the Latin American College in Rome. On July 1860, he wrote to Eyzaguirre to congratulate him on his successful initiative, which was warmly welcomed by the apostolic legate Ledóchowski. Monsignor Escalada regretted the harsh criticism of Peter’s Pence by the anticlerical press, even when he tried to keep it a secret and only ask money from people who deserved his trust.51 Bishops played a major role in the mobilization in favor of the pope since they could disseminate this information throughout the whole diocese via circular letters which would be read and explained after mass. These documents were usually emotionally charged, evoking the sorrow Catholics felt when they saw the tragic situation of the pope. They also emphasized the global dimension of this fundraising in favor of the pope and that even Protestants from different countries had already contributed to Peter’s Pence.52 Bishops asked priests and religious communities to celebrate masses pro papa. These sorts of prayers contributed to developing a sense of belonging, since the participants were joining “the prayers of all the Catholic world”.53

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Conclusions Throughout the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church in Latin America went from being on the verge of schism with Rome to being perfectly integrated in a hierarchized, centralized and globalized religious structure. After the Roman recognition of the Latin American Republics, the new generation of ultramontane prelates undertook a profound reform of their dioceses. They welcomed new religious congregations, reformed the seminaries, and promoted new spaces for the laity such as the Societies of Saint Vincent de Paul and the emerging Catholic press. These changes were instrumental to the mobilization of Latin American Catholics during Italian Unification. Catholics from all over the continent became familiar with public readings, petitions, gathering of signatures, and collections in favor of the Holy See, as well as the first portraits of the pope coming from Europe. They were also invited to develop deep emotional bonds with the pope. Latin American Catholics were not mere spectators; they also contributed to building the processes of Romanization and internationalization of the Catholic Church, strengthening the presence of the Vatican in the continent. This mobilization in favor of the pope was largely coordinated by Eyzaguirre and boosted by apostolic legates, the episcopacy and the Catholic press. Having travelled across Europe and Latin America several times, Eyzaguirre enjoyed a privileged position from which to orchestrate these actions. Indeed, the establishment of the Latin American College in Rome turned him into a channel between Rome and Latin America, and among Latin American Catholics. Even though this papal mobilization was unable to stop the annexation of the Papal States to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, it fostered the internationalization of the papal agenda and the creation of a transnational solidarity with the papacy. The mobilization placed the pope at the centre of a global Catholic opinion, transforming the head of an old feudal state into a global soft power.

Notes 1. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under Grant Juan de la Cierva Incorporación and the research projects HAR2015-65991-P and HAR2016-75002-P; and by the research project C2-26 “Ultramontanism as a transnational

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and transatlantic Phenomenon, 1819-1918” led by Olaf Blaschke within the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” (WWU Münster). Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, “Bis ans Ende der Welt: Transatlantische ultramontane Netzwerke zwischen Lateinamerika und Europa,” in Olaf Blaschke and Francisco Javier Ramón Solans (eds.), Weltreligion im Umbruch. Transnationale Perspektiven auf das Christentum in der Globalisierung des 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Campus, 2019), 308–337. See Olaf Blaschke, “Der Aufstieg des Papsttums aus dem Antiklerikalismus,” Römische Quartal Schrift, 112, 1–2 (2017), 21–35; Manuel Borutta, Antikatholizismus. Deutschland und Italien im Zeitalter der europäischen Kulturkämpfe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010); Lisa Dittrich, Antiklerikalismus in Europa. Öffentlichkeit und Säkularisierung in Frankreich, Spanien und Deutschland (1848–1914) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014); Yvonne Maria Werner and Jonas Harvard (eds.), European Anti-Catholicism in a Comparative and Transnational Perspective (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013). Vincent Viaene, “The Roman Question, Catholic Mobilisation and Papal Diplomacy,” in Emiel Lamberts (ed.), The Black International, 1870–1878 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), 135–177, 176. Ibid., 139; On Peter’s pence see John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Arthur Herisson, “Une mobilisation international de masse à l’époque du Risorgimento: l’aide financière des catholiques français à la papauté (1860–1870),” Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 52 (2016): 175–192. Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831–1859): Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th-Century Europe (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), 506–511. Vincent Viaene, “The Roman Question,” 535; Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, “Bis ans Ende der Welt”. Austin Gough, Paris and Rome: The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign, 1848–1853 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 199–208. Vincent Viaene, “The Roman Question,” 143; Jean Guénel, La dernière guerre du pape. Les Zouaves pontificaux au secours du Saint-Siège (1860– 1870) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1998); Bruno Horaist, La Dévotion au Pape et les catholiques français sous le pontificat de Pie IX (1846–1878). D’après les Archives de la Bibliothèque Apostolique Vaticane (Rome: École Français de Rome, 1995). John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise, 33. Ibid., 32–33. Ibid., 34. Emiel Lamberts (ed.), The Black International, 1870–1878.

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14. Arthur Herisson, “Une mobilization international de masse,” 175–192. See also John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise, 31; Philippe Boutry, “Ultramontanisme,” in Philippe Levillain (dir.), Dictionnaire historique de la Papauté (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 1651–1653. 15. Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, and Vincent Viaene, “The Roman Question,” 135–177. 16. Peter R. D’Agostino, Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 17. Vincent Viaene, “International History, Religious History, Catholic History: Perspectives for Cross-Fertilization (1830–1914),” European History Quarterly, 38, 4 (2008), 578–607; Olaf Blaschke, “Transnationale Parteigeschichte. Das Zentrum zwischen kleindeutschem Zuständigkeitsbereich und ‘schwarzer Internationale’,” in Andreas Lisenmann and Markus Raasch (eds.), Die Zentrumpartei im Kaiserreich. Bilanz und Perspektiven (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), 339–366. See also Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, “Bis ans Ende der Welt”. 18. José Casanova, “Globalizing Catholicism and the Return to ‘Universal Church’,” in Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James Piscatori (eds.), Transnational Religion and Fading States (Boulder: Westview, 1997), 121–143, 122. 19. Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 325–365. 20. Álvaro López V., Gregorio XVI y la reorganización de la Iglesia hispanoamericana. El paso del régimen de patronato a la misión como responsabilidad (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2004). 21. Pedro de Leturia, Relaciones entre la Santa Sede e Hispanoamérica, III Apéndices-Documentos-Índices (Caracas: Sociedad Bolivariana de Venezuela, 1960), 52–69; Ignacio Martínez, “Circulación de noticias e ideas ultramontanas en el Río de la Plata tras la instalación de la primera nunciatura en la América ibérica (1830–1842),” Historia Crítica, 52 (2014): 73–97. 22. Lucrecia Raquel Enríquez, “Reserva pontificia o atributo soberano? La concepción del patronato en disputa. Chile y la Santa Sede (1810–1841),” Historia Crítica, 52 (2014): 21–45. 23. Álvaro López V., Gregorio XVI , 354–355; Pedro de Leturia, Relaciones entre la Santa Sede e Hispanoamérica, II Época de Bolívar (Caracas: Sociedad Bolivariana de Venezuela, 1939). 24. Ignacio Martínez, “El ‘obispo universal’ y sus tenientes. Ingreso de la autoridad papal a las iglesias rioplatenses. 1820–1853,” Signos en el tiempo, Rastros en la tierra, 5 (2011): 17–38. 25. Álvaro López V., Gregorio XVI , 175–188 and 354–355.

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26. Sol Serrano, ¿Qué hacer con Dios en la República? Política y secularización en Chile (1845–1885) (Santiago de Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008), 82–83; Cecilia Adriana Bautista García, “Hacia la romanización de la Iglesia mexicana a fines del siglo XIX,” Historia Mexicana, LV (2005): 99–144. 27. Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, “Bis ans Ende der Welt”. 28. Sol Serrano, ¿Qué hacer con Dios en la República? 62. 29. Elisa Cárdenas Ayala, “La construcción de un orden laico en América Hispánica. Ensayo de interpretación sobre el siglo XIX,” in Roberto J. Blancarte (coord.), Los retos de la laicidad y la secularización en el mundo contemporáneo (México: El Colegio de México, 2008), 85–106. 30. Sol Serrano, ¿Qué hacer con Dios en la República? 55–85; Ítalo Domingos Santirocchi, Questão de Consciência. Os ultramontanos no Brasil e o regalismo do Segundo Reinado (1840–1889) (Belo Horizonte: Fino Traço, 2015); Jeffrey Klaiber, The Catholic Church in Peru, 1821–1985: A Social History (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992); and David Brading, “Ultramontane Intransigence and the Mexican Reform: Clemente de Jesús Munguía,” in Austen Ivereigh (eds.), The Politics of Revival in an Age of Revival (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2000), 115–142. 31. “Corrispondenza di Francia”, La Civiltà cattolica, V (1869): 345–352; Roger Aubert, Le pontificat de Pie IX (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1952), 224– 261 and Austin Gough, Paris and Rome, 60–79. On nineteenth century political Catholicism, see Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See. 32. Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, “Bis ans Ende der Welt”. 33. Elisa Luque Alcaide, Iglesia en América Latina (siglo XIX). Renovación y continuidad en tiempos de cambio (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2012), 84– 93; Elisa Luque Alcaide, “Libertad Eclesial y separación Iglesia-Estado en Colombia. Opción del delegado apostólico Monseñor Mieczyslaw Ledochowski,” Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades, 92, 828 (2005): 23–43. 34. Josep Ignasi Saranyana, “Teólogos y canonistas académicos en las repúblicas independientes y en Cuba,” in Josep-Ignasi Saranyana (dir.) and Carmen-José Alejos Grau (coord.), Teología en América Latina. Volumen II/2 De las guerras de independencia hasta finales del siglo XIX (Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2008), 515–871, 739–755. 35. Chile, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Cuba, USA, United Kingdom, Ireland, Holland, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Serbia, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Malta, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and the Vatican. C. Looten, “Le voyage en Europe du chanoine chilien Eyzaguirre,” Revue de Littérature comparée, 11 (1931): 13–22.

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36. On Anti-Protestantism see Olaf Blaschke, “Anti-Protestantism and AntiCatholicism in the 19th Century: a Comparison,” European Studies, 31 (2013): 115–134. 37. Julio Armijo Suárez, Gabriel García Moreno. Presidente de la República del Ecuador y Monseñor José Ignacio Eyzaguirre. Fundador del Pontificio Colegio Pio Latino Americano (Quito: La Prensa Católica, 1962), 5. 38. L’Univers, September 1, 1855. 39. “Carta de José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre a Salvador Eyzaguirre (Roma, 19 de noviembre de 1855),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo Jaime Eyzaguirre, XX, fol. 146. 40. “Carta José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre a Salvador Eyzaguirre (París, 26 de febrero de 1856),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo Jaime Eyzaguirre, XX, fol. 156. 41. “Carta de Rafael Valentín Valdivieso a Sebastián Buscioni (Santiago, 27 de agosto de 1850),” in Archivo de la Archidiócesis de Santiago de Chile, Fondo General, Correspondencia, Cartas del Prelado Valdivieso, vol. 283 (1850–1851), fol. 50. 42. Francisco Javier Ramón Solans, “Bis ans Ende der Welt”. 43. Lisa M. Edwards, Roman Virtues: The Education of Latin American Clergy in Rome, 1858–1962 (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 1. 44. “Carta de Mieczysław Ledóchowski a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (12 de marzo de 1860),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, vol. 13, fol. 666. 45. “Carta de José Milcíades Bernardo Echagüe a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (12 de marzo de 1860),” Biblioteca Nacional de Chile. Fondo José Milciades Bernardo Echagüe, Correspondencia Eyzaguirre- José Milciades Bernardo Echagüe, nº 12597. 46. “Carta de Mieczysław Ledóchowski a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (12 de marzo de 1860)”. 47. “Carta de Mieczysław Ledóchowski a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (Bogotá, 16 de mayo de 1860),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, vol. 13, fol. 670. 48. Elisa Luque Alcaide, “Libertad eclesial”. Catholics growing more hostile to state interference in the Church, as well as its positive consequences, can also be observed during the Mexican separation of church and state. Cecilia Adriana Bautista García, Las disyuntivas del estado y de la iglesia en la consolidación del orden liberal, México, 1856–1910 (México: El Colegio de México, 2012). 49. “Carta de Mieczyslaw Ledochowski a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre (Bogotá, 25 de marzo de 1860),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, vol. 13, fol. 668.

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50. “Carta de José Miguel Aristegui a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (Santiago de Chile, 6 de julio de 1860)”; “Carta de obispo de Concepción a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (Concepción, 14 de julio de 1860)”; “Carta del obispo de la Serena a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (La Serena, 20 de julio de 1860),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, vol. 13, fols. 215, 216 and 217. 51. “Carta del obispo de Buenos Aires a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, (Buenos Aires, 13 de julio de 1860),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, vol. 13, Pieza 145, fol. 460. 52. See for example the circular letter that the vicar of the dioceses of Cuzco and Puno, Mariano Chacón y Becerra, sent to Eyzaguirre. Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones Privadas, Fondo José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, vol. 13, fol. 139. 53. “Carta del obispo de Buenos Aires a José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre (Buenos Aires, 11 de febrero de 1862),” in Archivo Nacional de Chile, Colecciones privadas, Fondo José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, vol. 13, fol. 462.

CHAPTER 10

Holy Alliance? The Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and the Holy See Tassilo Wanner

The establishment of full diplomatic relations between the United States of America and the Holy See on January 10, 1984 marked an important moment in the relationship between two global actors, arguably also in world politics.1 After almost 120 years during which Washington kept contacts with Rome to only an informal level, this act by President Ronald Reagan came at a decisive political moment. After a period of détente, the East-West Conflict had escalated into a Second Cold War. Starting with the NATO Double-Track Decision of December 12, 1979—in reaction to the Soviet nuclear build up in Europe—and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan of December 24, 1979 that sought to secure communist rule, the world saw itself threatened by a new confrontation of the two superpowers. Shortly before, John Paul II, the first Polish pope, had been elected on October 16, 1978.

T. Wanner (B) Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_10

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In the years following the agreement between the U.S. and the Vatican, the Cold War took a sudden turn, beginning with Mikhail Gorbachev becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985 and ending with the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Does this coincidence hint at a causal relationship? While the effects of U.S. power and papal influence are as widely accepted as the personal impact of Reagan and John Paul II,2 an alleged “Holy Alliance”3 between the president and the pope might be exaggerated. The claim here is a more modest one. Recently released White House documents and interviews with leading decision-makers from the U.S. and the Holy See suggest that the establishment of full diplomatic relations happened in an environment of close cooperation.4 A full-fledged alliance, in breach of the obligatory neutrality of the Holy See, was certainly not an option. Taking the bilateral and the structural background into account, the analysis shows, however, that the establishment of diplomatic relations was the result of a close strategic cooperation and a trust-based personal entanglement of like-minded leaders on both sides, foremost Reagan and John Paul II themselves, but also including devout Catholics who served as high-ranking officials in the U.S. administration. The most important areas for the bilateral cooperation of the United States and the Holy See were Poland and the joint support for Solidarno´sc´ (the union movement Solidarity), Latin America and the containment of Marxist influenced Liberation theology, and last but not least a common view on the necessity of brinkmanship in the arms race with respect to which the Holy See even rebuked pacifists inside the Catholic Church, most importantly within in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. These factors provided the background against which Washington put an end to a period without full official contacts with Rome. The case sheds lights on the impact of the Holy See on world politics already during the Cold War but also on the incremental return of religious actors onto the political scene of a increasingly post-secular global public. The establishment of full diplomatic relations therefore certainly is an early opportunity of “finding faith in foreign policy”5 and an important indicator of the rise of the papacy in world politics.6

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Bilateral Relations Between the Holy See and the United States: A Short History Since 1797, the United States had been represented to the Papal State by a consul whose primary interests were commercial. In 1826, Rome responded by sending a consular representative to New York. In 1848, Washington upgraded its representation in Rome with Jacob L. Martin as a Chargé d’Affaires and then in 1854 with Lewis Cass as first Minister Resident. With Martin’s appointment the United States recognized the Papal States, however, not the Holy See, as a peer in diplomatic relations.7 With the Italian unification, an ambivalent situation arose in which diplomatic relations with Rome should soon be suspended again. The background to this development were continuously strong anti-Catholic sentiments in the political elite of Washington and their understanding of the imperative in the U.S. Constitution on separation of Church and state. Additionally, a wave of public sympathy for the young Italian Republic swept through the United States. Some further factors and incidents triggered a Congressional vote that did not affect the 1848 recognition of the Papal States, but prohibited any further funding of a diplomatic mission to the pope: “no money hereby or otherwise appropriated shall be paid for the support of an American delegation at Rome, from and after the thirtieth day of June, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven.”8 On this basis, the incumbent Minister Resident was recalled in August 1867, while the Papal Consul in New York remained in place until his death in 1896, but was not replaced thereafter. The Apostolic Delegate in the United States, the papal representation to the American Catholic hierarchy, which had been established just three years before in 1893, remained, however, continuously.9 An exchange of notes between the two heads of states during the First World War resulted in an audience of President Woodrow Wilson with Pope Benedict XV on January 4, 1919. The Holy See’s hopes that solving the Roman Question with Italy through the Lateran Treaties 1929 would also pave the way for a new start with the United States were in vain. It was only during the course of World War II that Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the importance of a U.S. presence at the Holy See and named Myron Taylor Special Representative of the President. However, this new position was unofficial, unpaid and tied to the condition of a nonpermanent presence in Rome. When Taylor ended his service in 1950

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for health reasons, the Curia was not even informed. Nevertheless, President Harry S. Truman planned, shortly after, to establish an embassy at the Vatican City State, established by the Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Holy See as mini state and legal subject of international law, in order to avoid the issue of the Holy See. However, these plans were soon dropped because of the strong public resistance against such a move.10 The period in which there was no mutual diplomatic presence lasted from 1950 to 1970. That does not mean that there have been no exchanges between the United States and the Holy See. Most prominently, former U.S. Presidents Herbert Hoover (1946 and 1947) and Truman (1956) met with Pius XII and on December 6, 1959 incumbent president Dwight D. Eisenhower was received in audience by John XXIII at the Vatican as well as John F. Kennedy, who on his last travel abroad met with Paul VI on July 2, 1963. When the Pope started to travel, the first visit to the United States was in 1965, and meetings between presidents and popes became more frequent.11 Finally, in 1970, Richard Nixon managed to send Henry Cabot Lodge to Rome as his Personal Representative to the pope. Nixon visited Paul VI twice at the Vatican, before and after the installment. Lodge’s position was similar to that of Taylor and required him to spend no more than a few weeks a year in Rome. Since Lodge took office in the summer of 1970, the line of American representatives to the Holy See has been uninterrupted. During the Jimmy Carter presidency, a parliamentary initiative was initiated to withdraw the ban on diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Senator Richard Stone’s bill passed the Senate but was shipwrecked in the House of Representatives.12 Secularist notions of constitutional restrictions with respect to the separation of Church and state, but also Protestant resentments against Catholicism and the papacy in particular were not easy to sideline. This shows that when Reagan took office, the establishment of full diplomatic relations was linked to massive political risks, especially with respect to public opinion. At the same time, there were also prospects of an electoral advantage as the Catholic vote was a major concern for Reagan. An undated and unofficial working paper from the Reagan White House, produced during his first term, reflected on the swing of the Catholic value voters and the positive impact friendly relations to the Holy See would have on these:

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Historically, the Democratic Party has been the Catholic Party in the United States. […] Currently the Catholic vote is in a state of flux. […] The […] time is ripe to foster the concept that the Republican Party is now the Catholic Party. […] One of the most important perceptions of American Catholics is the relationship between the U.S. government and the Vatican. Thus if this relationship is viewed in a favorable light, it will go a long ways in attracting Catholics to the Republican Party. To this end, frequent and visible consultations with Rome are necessary. […] Another way of nurturing a favorable image would be to have frequent and visible contacts with the Apostolic Delegate to the U.S. Finally, it would be advantageous to have further Papal visits to the U.S.13

The Holy See in the Cold War: Structural Environment In compliance with the Article 24 of the Lateran Treaty, which required a non-aligned status of the Holy See, Rome did not join either side during the East-West conflict; it was even absent from the movement of nonaligned states. However, concluding from the papal non-membership in the blocs to an equidistance between the protagonists of the Cold War would be misleading. A first indicator are diplomatic relations. Concerning those contacts, there was a strong imbalance between the two blocs. After the official recognition of the United States, the Holy See maintained full diplomatic relations with all NATO members, while, apart from Poland, the relations to Warsaw Pact countries, albeit never broken off completely, were largely inactive. In the case of Lithuania, it was even the Washingtonbased government-in-exile that had accredited a Chargé d’Affaires with the Holy See. A second indicator are the anti-communist positions of the Holy See. The obligatory neutrality demanded by the Lateran Treaty did not mean a withdrawal from international politics at any time. Pius XII, who ruled the Holy See until 1958, was considered to be particularly anti-Communist and Western-oriented. Already as Secretary of State he had established close connections with American prelates and visited the United States. His role was eminent to keeping the Communist Party of Italy away from power in Italy. His successor, John XXIII, used the Khrushchev Thaw to improve the relationship with Moscow. After his mediation efforts in the

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Cuban missile crisis he received Nikita Khrushchev’s daughter and son-inlaw, Izvestia editor Aleksei Adzhubei, in March 1963 before he issued his seminal encyclical Pacem in Terris only weeks before his death. Paul VI kept course by mediating between the superpowers and even receiving the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in private audience. However, in contrast to the density of Rome’s contacts with Washington, the exchanges with Moscow were much less intense. Nevertheless, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, who was already considered one of the main architects of the Holy See’s new Ostpolitik, positioned the Holy See as mediator in the CSCE process at the end of which Moscow acknowledged central human and civil rights for its sphere of influence. John Paul II appointed Casaroli as Secretary of State and created him a Cardinal in 1979. However, these steps should not be misunderstood as an absolute commitment to a continuation of Casaroli’s policy. The Polish pope, whose personal experience of the dictatorships of the twentieth century had shaped his political perspective, was more than willing to defy Moscow when necessary. This change of policy was already apparent at the beginning of his pontificate. In addition to his pathbreaking first papal journey to Poland,14 his social encyclical Laborem Exercens in 1981, in which he highlighted the right to form trade unions, was as significant as his condemnation of the proclamation of martial law in Poland in his outspoken resistance against communist rule. At that time, only very few expected categorical changes in the bipolar world order during their lifetime. According to Audrys Baˇckis, then Undersecretary of State, later Cardinal and Archbishop of Vilnius, the pope had a very different perspective: “I think the Holy Father at the time was the only person who believed that the Baltic nations would regain sovereignty.”15 That was probably only partially true as Reagan had a transformative stamina for the conflict, too. Already in 1977, he quipped: “my theory of the Cold War is we win and they lose.”16 These attitudes substantiated the conviction that there was nothing less than a moral gap for which there could only be one logical solution for a political strategy: “The United States is on the right side of this historic struggle and we have tried to build a lasting framework for promoting this positive change.”17 In John Paul II, Reagan recognized a political leader who expressed himself equally clearly on the differences between the two competing systems, but also, as an religious ethicist, argued in moral and philosophical categories in order to justify his views. Thus, in the 1980s, both the Holy See and the United States, while certainly differing in style

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and methods, were aligned in their anti-communism. The United States and the Holy See shared in principle a basic orientation, or as Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy point out: “They both wanted the end of secular theology from different perspectives: the politician wanted to put an end to Marxist theology’s taking the place of politics, the priest wanted to put an end to the substitution of Marxist political hopes for theology.”18

“Holy Alliance”? Did the like-mindedness of the White House and the Vatican constitute a “Holy Alliance”? When Reagan took office in January 1981, he appointed a Catholic and a close friend as his personal representative to the Holy See: William A. Wilson, whose appointment as ambassador would later accompany the 1984 decision to establish official diplomatic relations. This final step was preceded in the Autumn of 1983 by the abrogation of the Legislature of 1867 by both chambers of Congress. The Holy See appointed its Apostolic Delegate Pio Laghi in return as Pro-Nuncio to the United States. He had been assigned to Washington in 1980 and had made extensive contacts with the Reagan administration since. All the actions taken by opponents of this step, which again were basically aiming at a supposed incompatibility with the constitutional requirement of separation of Church and state, failed.19 The mission of sidelining all obstacles and establishing full diplomatic relations had been accomplished. Was this possible because a much higher interest was at stake? Were the three years between 1981 and 1984 years of a secret “Holy Alliance” to bring down communism and win the Cold War due to a shared spiritually informed view on world politics? Was the meeting of the president and the pope in 1982 at the Vatican the decisive moment for this? At least, this is what the American publicist Carl Bernstein claimed in his 1992 Time Magazine cover story “Holy Alliance”: Only President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were present in the Vatican Library on Monday, June 7, 1982. […] In that meeting, Reagan and the Pope agreed to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire, declared Richard Allen, Reagan’s first National Security Adviser: ‘This was one of the great secret alliances of all time.’20

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According to Bernstein, the alleged strategy focused on Poland as the corner stone to be broken out of the Soviet order and would, then, ultimately bring down the rest. The powerful Solidarity movement would bring that all about. The task of the president and the pope would only be to defend and support their activity. Bernstein is quick to admit that he does not claim these leaders brought down communism by their covert actions: “The Washington-Vatican alliance ‘didn’t cause the fall of communism,’ observes a U.S. official familiar with the details of the plot to keep Solidarity alive. ‘Like all great and lucky leaders, the Pope and the President exploited the forces of history to their own ends.’”21 In addition to the political rationale, Bernstein makes a further claim by calling the alliance “holy.” Obviously, this brings a strong religious connotation into the argument, implying that a U.S. administration plotted with a religious leader due to their own spiritual view on world politics. In fact, that is was Bernstein argues for: At their first meeting, Reagan and John Paul II discussed something else they had in common: both had survived assassination attempts only six weeks apart in 1981, and both believed God had saved them for a special mission. “A close friend of Ronald Reagan’s told me the President said, ‘Look how the evil forces were put in our way and how Providence intervened,’” says Pio Cardinal Laghi, the former apostolic delegate to Washington. According to National Security Adviser Clark, the Pope and Reagan both referred to the ‘miraculous’ fact that they had survived. Clark said the men shared ‘a unity of spiritual view and a unity of vision on the Soviet empire: that right or correctness would ultimately prevail in the divine plan.’22

Together with the Italian Vaticanisto Marco Politi, Bernstein developed the cover story into a book.23 The controversial claim resulted in a longer debate.24 The thesis of a “Holy Alliance” between Washington and Rome was widely criticized.25 Bernstein’s and Politi’s position suffered mainly because key players—including those who were brought forward by the two for their argument—contradicted the thesis. Cardinal Laghi was quoted by Jonathan Kwitny as saying that “no Holy Alliance” existed.26 Richard Allen, who, according to Bernstein, had spoken of one of the “great secret alliances of all time,” later reported on his conversation with the star journalist: “I went to great pains to let him know that there was nothing formal about it, that it happened that the Vatican was moving on one track and we on another track, our tracks were parallel.”27

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Taking the headline literally, the thesis has certainly to be rejected. There was no formal alliance in which two parties joined forces in a common strategy to win a war they waged together. Indeed, political interest and close personal entanglements do not constitute a “Holy Alliance”—but they are worth a closer look in order to understand how religion became more salient in world politics during the 1980s and helped to turn international relations towards a post-secular order.28

Converging Interests in Three Political Fields As Bernstein argued, the decisive subject of the bilateral dialogue was Poland. He hinted also to Latin America albeit to a lesser extent.29 Following the argument of Marie Gayte,30 at least a third, maybe the most important field from a structural security perspective has to be added: the nuclear arms race. These issues are just the most salient ones. In general, the United States perceived the Holy See as an actor who was able to gather information and to influence people on a global scale. Instructively, Wilson noted in his unpublished book draft on American-Vatican relations: The Government of the Pope, because of its universal reach, has significant influence in many parts of the world vital to American interests. […] In recent years, partly at the instigation of the United States, the Holy See interceded to prevent war between Argentina and Chile over the Beagle Channel; the Vatican assisted the United States in the effort to free American hostages in Iran and Lebanon, and, most recently, United StatesVatican cooperation played an important role in the relatively peaceful transition of power in the Philippines.31

More continuously of relevance than influence or missions in concrete situations was the sharing of information and interpretation, as Michael Ledeen pointed out: [T]he important thing was how does the Holy Father see the world, what does he think is going on, what does he think chances are of various things happening […]. Understanding. […] That was it. We were trying to compare notes, so that we would each know what the other thought the situation was. […] The point was that they knew the state-of-affairs on the ground in the Soviet Union and in the satellite countries better than we did. Their information was better. So they had priests all over the

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places. I mean they had people who were all over the place, real Poles, real Russians, real Czechs and so forth. We had, you know, these idiots from the CIA. The CIA was a terrible source of understanding of what was going on.32

For sure, the most important geopolitical spot was Poland. The talks on these issues were already established before martial law was imposed to crack down on the Solidarity movement. However, after the proclamation of martial law in Poland, this dialogue would further intensify. This is illustrated, for example, by the visit of Cardinal Casaroli to the White House on December 15, 1981. While traveling to Mexico during the previous days, he returned to Europe via Washington, informing the Reagan administration about the situation in Poland, where the government had declared martial law two days before. In addition to the 90-minute-length of the conversation, the participation of highest-ranking U.S. government officials highlights Washington’s extraordinary interest in the views of the Holy See: in addition to President Reagan, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the acting National Security Advisor, and the White House Chief of Staff attended the meeting. Due to the limited flow of information from Poland, it was of particular value to the interlocutors to exchange the information available to them about the situation on the ground. During that high-ranking conversation, Cardinal Casaroli even offered to the Reagan administration to have John Paul II establish an unofficial channel of talks to Moscow.33 The most sensitive point at issue was the direct cooperation on the support of Solidarity by channeling American funds to the union via the Church and their aids. Francis Rooney claims that “the church seems to have put the agency in contact with members of Solidarity. The CIA then channeled funds and equipment to support the group during martial law.”34 This fits to Robert Gates’ remarks, who served as chief of staff, and later as deputy to Director of Intelligence William Casey: I was always told that the CIA had no direct link with Solidarity and that, in fact, the union did not know in specific terms what, if anything, it was getting from CIA. Our people thought that deniability was important for Solidarity, and so we worked through third parties or other intermediaries in Western Europe. Most of what flowed out of CIA and through the intermediaries to Solidarity was printing materials, communications equipment, and other supplies for waging underground political warfare.35

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Another area of mutual concern between Washington and Rome were the developments in Latin America. An alignment of perspectives on this continent arose above all from the fact that the Holy See also observed the increasing influence of Communist ideas in the local societies and, consequently, the local churches with concern. For example, in 1979, the Nicaraguan priests Ernesto Cardenal and Miguel d’Escoto entered, in violation of the ban from all political activism applicable to all priests, the cabinet of the Sandinista Government.36 At the same time, the word of Rome had considerable weight in Latin America, with a then strong Catholic majority in every country. In view of this, it is not surprising that questions about Latin America played an important role in Washington’s bilateral exchange on geopolitical issues. Just one month after his appointment as a personal envoy, Wilson, already emphasized in a letter the significance of the Church for developments in Central America.37 Shortly thereafter, National Security Advisor Allen encouraged him to continue the exchange with the Holy See regarding Latin America: Your discussions with the Vatican on the situation in Central America are of the highest importance. We need the closest possible cooperation with the Church in securing democracy, stability and social justice in the region. You may wish to convey to Secretary of State Cassaroli (sic) and others that the President places the highest priority on achieving a working relationship with the Church in securing our mutually shared goals for Central America.38

At the same time, there were also significant differences between Washington’s and Rome’s perspectives on Latin America. While John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith had the task of rebuking liberation theologians, were critical of the Marxist influence in Latin American Catholic thinking, both were likewise critical of the exploitation of the poor in those societies. Insofar as the Church was not an easy partner with who to dialogue with respect to U.S. interests in political and economic stability. More than one misalignment between the White House and the Apostolic Palace with respect to Latin America became public during the 1980s.39 The question of the nuclear arms race was the crucial and most sensitive issue. Since the Cuban missile crisis and Pacem in Terris, the papacy had positioned itself as a force of peace critical of nuclear deterrence and

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the arms race. John Paul II was not able and not willing to change that position. At the same time, he shared the American point of view that a unilateral disarmament would not be helpful in the relationship with the Soviet Union. With that conviction, John Paul II was significantly more closely aligned with the Reagan administration than was the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their liberal hierarchy and bureaucracy were highly critical of the administration’s defense policy and were considering speaking publicly against it in form of a Pastoral Letter. Long-standing rumors that the White House had successfully interfered via Rome against such plans, are backed by newly declassified documents. When deputy National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane forwarded a memorandum on a summoning of the relevant committee of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops to Rome to Clark, he added an accompanying note that referred to a meeting of Ambassador-at-Large Vernon Walters with John Paul II, which had taken place a few months earlier: “You may recall that Dick Walters went to the Vatican and discussed this with the Holy Father. From the looks of the attached he must have had an effect. If you see Dick […] you might mention to him ‘Well Done.’”40

Personal Relations: The Catholics in Reagan’s Team In addition to the domestic policy and U.S. interests in international affairs, Andrew Essig and Jennifer Moore put an emphasis on the importance of President Reagan’s personal relationship with John Paul II.41 The attempts on their lives and their respective survivals in 1981, which both of them perceived as providential, brought them certainly closer together. Indeed, it was Reagan who personally made the final decision to formalize and upgrade relations to the Holy See, as two close associates confirm,42 but it was not a lonely decision. Reagan was supported by a team of Catholics who shared his positive view on the papacy. Due to the institutional power of the president to make his decision independently from the Secretary of State, and advised by a trusted core team with a particular perspective on the issue, George Shultz was less involved as one could expect—in particular, as the national security team around the president was skeptical towards the traditional realist view on international affairs. Asked about the position of Shultz, his Assistant Secretary for European Affairs gave the telling answer: “I don’t know if he felt that was a huge issue, but he felt that one of the President’s dubious friends

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was responsible.”43 Wilson, the President’s personal representative to the Holy See, was only one member of a group of close advisors several of whom were personal friends of Reagan, several of whom were devout Catholics, or both. The first to be mentioned here is National Security Advisor William P. Clark. He was even considered the President’s closest personal friend in the Reagan administration. He had been working with him for decades both on the California state level as well as in the presidential campaign. In younger years, Clark had considered the priesthood. Well informed White House sources point to him as a key advisor with respect to the upgrade of diplomatic relations.44 Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, also a Catholic, left office before the time when the decision was prepared and finally made, but he had installed Vernon Walters at the Department of State. Walters had risen to the position of General, had served as a military attaché in Paris, among others, and had been deputy Director of Intelligence in the 1970s. In 1981, he was appointed Ambassador-at-Large—officially without a portfolio, and unofficially as a coordinator for the worldwide weakening of communism. It is known that Walters was a devout Catholic who went to Mass daily.45 In this role, Walters valued a close exchange with the Holy See. He was extraordinarily appreciated in the White House, as Reagan’s chief advisor recalls: General Walters was kind of an overall advisor. […] He had a diplomatic background. He had a military background. He had an intelligence background. And he knew five or six different languages. He was just kind of an all-around kind of a guy […] and so that’s why […] the President used him in a number of ways.46

He often traveled to Rome, and at the same time had his close colleague Michael Ledeen set up an unofficial discussion channel in the Vatican. Ledeen went to Rome on a regular basis to meet Emery Kabongo, who served as Stanisław Dziwisz’s deputy and second private secretary to John Paul II from 1982 to 1987. This highly confidential backchannel was barely known even in the Vatican.47 In addition, Director of Intelligence Casey—a Catholic as well—would also travel to the Vatican in person to be received by John Paul II. Regular mass attendance was so important for Casey hat he even attended a service in Riyadh.48 Indeed, not to be underestimated is the role of Wilson—a convert to Catholicism—who served as Personal Representative of the President to the Holy See at the time of the decision for the upgrade of relations. He

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was one of Reagan’s closest personal friends, both had known each other since the 1960s, when Reagan had neither been a Republican nor a politician yet. The wives of both, Nancy Reagan and Betty Wilson, had become close friends. The couples regularly spent their vacations together, and it was the Wilsons who tracked down the estate near Santa Barbara for the Reagans that would later become a historic ranch of the president. As the offices of Californian Governor and U.S. President no longer permitted Reagan to administer his assets to avoid conflicts of interest, Wilson was chosen as director of the blind trust. In addition, following his role in the Californian kitchen-cabinet, he was part of the 1980/1981 transition team. This background makes obvious that Wilson had a particularly strong influence on presidential decision-making. This assumption can be confirmed by different pieces of evidence such as the fact that the two friends continued to communicate directly with each other, bypassing the entire bureaucracy, for example by making private telephone calls or via meetings on the sidelines of social events in California.49 All in all, Reagan was surrounded by a group of top aides who—due to their religiously informed view of politics—were better able to detect the value of the cooperation with an eminent religious actor and who therefore saw the Holy See not only as an “inspiration”, as it was stated by the president in a letter on the establishment of full diplomatic relations,50 but who had a vital political interest in the strategic cooperation as well.

Conclusion: Explaining the Establishment of Full Diplomatic Relations After a long history of evolving but rather occasional contacts and cooperation, the first Reagan administration developed a solid and stable working basis with the Holy See. Due to the tensions of the Cold War, particularly in Poland, but also in Latin America and due to the eminent question of the arms race, both actors had highly parallel interests with respect to certain world regions and global questions. A close exchange of information about insights on the ground but also interpretations about how to move forward, and joint cooperation, particularly the funneling of CIA funds to Solidarity in Poland, were the result of these shared interests. In addition, positive mutual perception and personal ties between the members of both U.S. and papal administrations developed into an extraordinary willingness to support each other’s respective efforts. With the domestic restraints of anti-Catholic sentiments well mitigated by the

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Reagan White House, the president took the risk of establishing full diplomatic relations before the 1984 election. This step supported the further deepening of a bilateral relationship that already during Reagan’s first terms was extraordinary in its structure and impact. Bernstein’s claim of a “Holy Alliance” is certainly exaggerated. Nevertheless, key decisionmakers in Washington and Rome did not only end a 120 years-long abstinence of full diplomatic relations, but also helped to end communism in Europe and to elaborate a post-secular order.

Notes 1. This contribution draws on material from Tassilo Wanner, Heilige Allianz? Die Aufnahme diplomatischer Beziehungen zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und dem Heiligen Stuhl (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016). I sincerely thank Christiane West for having kindly language edited this manuscript. 2. John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (London: Penguin, 2005), 195–236. 3. Carl Bernstein, “Holy Alliance. How Reagan and the Pope Conspired to Assist Poland’s Solidarity Movement and Hasten the Demise of Communism,” Time, 8 (1992): 28–35. 4. The source is the rich holdings of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Archive, the private archive of the first U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, and eighteen research interviews with U.S. and Holy See decision-makers of that period. Among the interlocutors on the American side were the then— U.S. Secretary of State and the first U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See; for the Holy See, four cardinals and four archbishops were interviewed. 5. Gregorio Bettiza, Finding Faith in Foreign Policy: Religion and American Diplomacy in a Postsecular World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 6. Mariano Barbato and Robert Joustra, “Introduction: Popes on the Rise,” Review of Faith and International Affairs, 15, 4 (2017): 1–5. 7. Jim Nicholson, The United States and the Holy See: The Long Road. Introduction by Giulio Andreotti (Rome: 30Days, 2002), 15; Thomas P. Melady, The Ambassador’s Story: The United States and the Vatican in World Affairs (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1994), 42; U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian: Chiefs of Mission for Holy See. 8. U.S. Congress, “An Act Making Appropriations for the Consular and Diplomatic Expenses of the Government for the Year Ending Thirtieth June, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Eight, and for Other Purposes,” February 28, 1867 (14 Stat. 413).

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9. James A. Coriden, “Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and the Holy See,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 19 (1987): 361–373, here: 365; Timothy M. Dolan, “‘Hence We Cheerfully Sent One Who Should Represent Our Person’: A Century of Papal Representation in the United States,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 12, 2 (1994): 1–26. 10. Office of the Historian, Presidential and Secretaries Travels abroad, Presidents, Woodrow Wilson; Dragan R. Živojinovi´c, The United States and the Vatican Policies 1914–1918 (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1978), 75–96; Gerald P. Fogarty, “The United States and the Vatican, 1939–1984,” in Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard (ed.), Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport and London: Praeger Publishers, 1994), 221–243, here 221–227; Ida T. Bucci, United States-Vatican Relations and the Taylor Mission. A dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Georgetown University (April 1949), 115–117; Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982), 321; Jim Nicholson, The United States and the Holy See, 40. 11. Anonymous, “Pope Pius XII Met, Talked with Four Presidents of U.S,” The Catholic Advocate, 7, 42 (October 17, 1958); Office of the Historian, Presidential and Secretaries Travels abroad. Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy; Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter. 12. Robert F. Illing, America and the Vatican: Trading Information After World War II (Palisades, NY: History Publishing, 2011), 121; Gerald P. Fogarty, “The United States and the Vatican 1939–1984,” here 237. 13. “General Plan of Appeal to Catholics”, no date, Box 12450, Folder‚ Catholic Strategy [3 of 3], Robert Reilly Collection, Ronald Reagan Library. 14. See Frank Bösch’s contribution in this volume. 15. Interview of the author with Audrys Cardinal Baˇckis, February 22, 2014, Vatican City (Under-Secretary of the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church, 1979–1988). 16. Interview of the author with Richard Allen, November 7, 2012, Berlin (Chief foreign policy advisor of the Reagan presidential campaign, 1977–1980; Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 1981–1982). 17. White House, National Security Strategy. Washington 1987, 1. 18. Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy, “Translators’ Afterword: Buttiglione on Wojtyła’s Philosophy of Freedom and an Update on Fifteen Years of Studies of Wojtyła’s Thought,” in Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 307–351, here 316–317.

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

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Coriden, “Diplomatic Relations,” 366–373. Bernstein, “Holy Alliance.” Ibid. Ibid. Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time (New York: Doubleday, 1996). Tassilo J. Wanner, “Die „Bernstein-Kontroverse“ über das bilaterale Verhältnis zwischen den United States und dem Heiligen Stuhl in den 1980er Jahren,” Historisches Jahrbuch, 130 (2010): 577–599. Jonathan Kwitny, Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 445–449; George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper, 1999), 441–442. Kwitny, Man of the Century, 447. Stephen F. Knott, Russell L. Riley and James Sterling Young, Interview with Richard V. Allen. Edited by the Miller Center of Public Affairs. Presidential Oral History Program. Ronald Reagan Oral History Project. (Charlottesville, 2006), 58. Mariano Barbato and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-secular Political Order?” European Political Science Review, 1, 3 (2009): 317–340. Bernstein, “Holy Alliance.” Marie Gayte, “The Vatican and the Reagan Administration: A Cold War Alliance?” in The Catholic Historical Review, 97, 4 (October 2011): 713– 736. William Wilson, Unpublished Draft on American-Vatican Relations, 48. Interview of the author with Michael Ledeen, February 27, 2009, Washington, DC (Special Advisor to the Secretary of State, 1981–1982). Protocol, December 15, 1981, Box 49, Folder “Memcons-President Reagan (12/15/81) [Agostino Cardinal Casaroli],” Executive Secretariat NSC: Subject File Collection, Ronald Reagan Library. Francis Rooney, The Global Vatican (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 142. Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 237. Ricardo Peter, “Reflections on the Nicaraguan Revolution and the Holy See in the 1980s,” in Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard (eds.), Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport and London: Praeger Publishers, 1994), 245–251. Letter of William Wilson to Timothy Manning, March 31, 1981, William A. Wilson Papers, Box 2 Folder 66, Georgetown University Library. Letter of Richard Allen to William Wilson, June 25, 1981, William A. Wilson Papers, Box 1 Folder 4, Georgetown University Library.

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39. Wanner, Heilige Allianz? 250–252. 40. Letter of Robert McFarlane to William Clark, undated, Box 9, Folder‚ Vatican Establishing Diplomatic Relations, Clark William Collection, Ronald Reagan Library. 41. Andrew M. Essig and Jenniffer L. Moore, “U.S.-Holy See Diplomacy: The Establishment of Formal Relations, 1984,” Catholic Historical Review, 95 (2009): 741–764. 42. George Shultz, Secretary of State: “President Reagan did. Anything like that the President would decide.” Edwin Meese, Counselor to the President: “[I]t was the President. He made all those kinds of decisions, and I know particularly that one.” Interviews with George Shultz, February 24, 2009, Stanford, and with Edwin Meese, February 25, 2009, Washington. 43. Interview of the author with Richard Burt, February 19, 2009, Washington, DC (Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs, 1983–1985). 44. Interview of the author with Robert Reilly, March 2, 2009, Vienna, VA (Special Assistant to the President; Chief Liaison Officer for the President to the American Catholic Community, 1983–1985). 45. Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 262. 46. Interview of the author with Edwin Meese, February 25, 2009, Washington, DC (Counselor to the President, 1981–1985). 47. Not even Justin Rigali was aware. Interview of the author with Justin Cardinal Rigali, February 20, 2012 in Rome (Chief of the English language department of the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, 1970–1985). 48. Nigel West, The Third Secret: The CIA, Solidarity and the KGB’s Plot to Kill the Pope (London: HarperCollins, 2000), 134. 49. Interview of the author with Michael Hornblow, April 24, 2008, Washington, DC (Deputy Chief of Mission to the Holy See, 1980–1983) and with William Wilson, May 9, 2008, Carmel, CA (Personal Envoy of the President to the Holy See, 1981–1984; Ambassador to the Holy See, 1984–1986). See also Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York u.a., 1990), 192–193. 50. Letter of Ronald Reagan to Regis N. Barwig, January 6, 1984, William A. Wilson Papers, Box 1 Folder 28, Georgetown University Library.

CHAPTER 11

The Holy See as Hybrid Actor: Religion in International, Transnational, and World Society Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl

Peace is, above all, a gift from God, which is sought in prayer, but it is also the result of the efforts of people of good will. In this perspective, believers of every religion have a special responsibility and can play a decisive role, cooperating in common initiatives. Interreligious and intercultural dialogue is a fundamental path to peace.1

Prayer, gifts from God and peace are a likely choice of words coming from a pope. What makes this message remarkable is that it was written by Pope Benedict XVI in reply to a letter from President Ahmadinejad who sought closer ties between Iran and the Holy See. Diplomatic relations between Iran and the Holy See date back to the seventeenth century,

K. McLarren (B) · B. Stahl University of Passau, Passau, Germany e-mail: [email protected] B. Stahl e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2_11

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they were formalized in 1954 under the regime of Sha Reza Pahlavi and endured the Islamic Revolution in 1979, with an intensification of visits and meetings in recent years. The differences between these two foreign policy and religious actors are undeniable—one was labelled a rogue state and, despite a large-scale international agreement, sanctions are still in place based on its purported ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. The other, though oftentimes also viewed critically, has a reputation as a soft power2 and has recently been commended for contributing to the easing of relations between the US and Cuba or for raising awareness for environmental issues. Iran is among the twenty largest countries of the world and over 90% of Iran’s 80-million population is Muslim (Shia). The Holy See, by contrast, is a sui generis construction that allows the papacy to act as a legal subject in international law. The papacy has a mini state at its disposal, the Vatican City State, an Italian enclave. Papal diplomats have the citizenship of the Vatican State. However, the papal power base are 1.3 billion members of the Catholic Church.3 These two seemingly diametrical opposites maintain not only diplomatic relations; they are also active in initiating interreligious dialogue. While both actors can be said to be foreign political actors with foreign political goals in the classical sense (negotiating to end sanctions, calling upon states to prevent global warming, etc.) and thus part of the international political system, they are not merely diplomatic actors, as most schools of International Relations thought would perceive them due to the secular presumption for all diplomatic actors engaging in international affairs. The religious element in both cases has a significant impact on the norms and values of the respective actors, and therefore also immense implications for their actorness, arguably transcending state boundaries. In this chapter we argue that both Iran and the Holy See are examples of what we term ‘hybrid actors’4 —actors, in this case based on a religious element, who have expanded foreign policy possibilities based on their state and transnational constitution. The question we seek to answer is how such actors contribute to linking the international (diplomatic) system with a transnational or even a world society (public) and how religion intervenes in politics. In order to do so, we base our analysis on the theoretical framework of the English School. In a first step we briefly review the challenge religion poses in International Relations and what attempts have been made to tackle it. We move on to the English School and examine its potential and advantage in grasping religion in International Relations. We particularly focus on

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the questions of transnational societies and actors and what significance these have in better understanding the Holy See and its international role. Consequently, we explain the concept of hybrid actors and apply it to the Holy See. Empirically, we focus on the relations between the Holy See and Iran, as this is a prime example of how religion continues to be not only present in international politics but also shapes transnational society. We seek to show how patterns of interaction emerge, indicating that religion has been and continues to be present, and arguably contributes to shaping international and transnational society.

Religion in International Relations “For an approach that sees the Westphalian international system as the creation of man, the divine is in trouble.”5 Discussing religion as a factor in political science and International Relations in particular, poses a challenge which stems from the fact that from a political science point of view, and an IR one at that, it was not perceived necessary to take religion into account as a separate element. If anything, it was reduced to being viewed as a part of culture. And yet religion is present at all levels of analysis which the field of IR examines—it is mentioned in international declarations; it plays a role in inter-state conflicts; religion is included in foreign policy debates; and it is found in the lives of individual statesmen. Why then, does IR theory not include religion? There are two possible answers: either the various schools of thought do not see a need to include religion or the respective theoretical frameworks are devised in a way that they are not capable of doing so. One of the main challenges already arises when trying to find an adequate definition of religion. In their 2000 contribution to Millennium, Laustsen and Wæver offer an attempt based on Kierkegaard’s thoughts: Religion deals with the constitution of being through acts of faith. […] Religion is a fundamental discourse answering questions like, why being, why law, why existence? It is difficult not to pose such questions. Answers to such questions have the character of transcendental justification, and as such anchor being (and societies).6

In her article “Towards an International Political Theory”, also published in the same edition of Millennium as the above, and subsequently in Petito and Hatzopoulos’ book Religion in International Relations —The

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Return from Exile,7 Kubálková may offer a solution, at the same time expanding Laustsen and Wæver’s proposed definition. She quite clearly states that it almost goes without saying that religions, when viewed as institutions, are simply socially constructed edifices. And similar to Fox and Sandler, she criticizes that in International Relations theory religion is usually treated as nothing more than a type of organization—both at the national as well as international levels.8 She warns of the two threats of either being led astray by a solely state-centrist approach, which would very (too) closely link states and religion, no longer differentiating between the two but using the term civilization to refer to both; or alternatively by an approach which completely separates states and religion. As with Laustsen and Wæver, Kubálková’s understanding of religion goes beyond shaping identity, it offers the raison d’être.9 In his book The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations,10 Thomas repeatedly considers the English School when seeking ways of including religion in IR theory. He argues that: the global resurgence of religion challenges the English Schools’ complacency about the kind of challenges that face the international order. The global expansion of international society, the incorporation of non-Western cultures and societies into a global international society, and global resurgence of religion have brought into prominence the role of religion and culture in international cooperation.11

The English School holds that the formation of a society requires common values, common institutions, etc. This implies a common culture or religious foundation,12 however, as we show later, the trait “religious” as such, as opposed to one common religion, may suffice to provide such a foundation. While the international system and society are largely understood to be constituted by states, the English School does not, per se, exclude non-state actors. When considering actors such as the Holy See and the religious sphere, therefore, the English School offers theoretical possibilities of expanding the scope of analysis of International Relations.

The English School, Religion, and Transnational Society Employing the English School in this chapter serves two purposes: on the one hand, it offers a theoretical approach in IR which examines historical

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developments or different forms of institutions, on the other hand, and more pertinently, it expands the scope of analysis beyond the international (state) system. Here we limit our analysis to the ideas of Barry Buzan.13 We employ the foundations provided by Buzan in his book From International to World Society—English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation to look at general starting points, as Buzan mentions religion several times, always in combination with a strengthening/intensification of identity, but also when considering transnational actors. In other words, we mainly focus on Buzan’s work because it helps theoretically grasp and link the Holy See with the public and international politics, which may help better understand the Holy See’s role and contribution to an international, transnational or world society. As mentioned above and as underlined by Thomas (2005), including religion was never a completely alien notion to the English School, however, it was neither ever prominently included in the theoretical framework.14 While analysing the concept of institutions and which role religion played in shaping, for example, diplomacy would be one avenue of considering religion in international politics,15 we will focus on Buzan’s idea of bridging the international and world society with a transnational one, as this is arguably what the Holy See takes an active part in. Buzan points out that the English School must take into consideration “questions about the constitution of society in terms of what values are shared, how and why they are shared, and by whom.”16 In other words, in order to conceptualize world society, he seeks an “escape from the Westphalian straitjacket,”17 by proposing to include non-state action within the international system in English School research.18 What then, does world society encompass, according to Buzan? His “starting position is that there is not much to be gained, and quite a lot to be lost analytically, from simply using world society as a label for the totality of human interaction in all forms and at all levels. Globalisation fills that role already.”19 Buzan shifts the focus to the actions and relations of transnational actors. What is significant about them is that they represent an interaction among all three domains (interhuman, transnational and interstate). Additionally, transnational actors can work together, particularly based on shared norms, rules and institutions. Buzan takes a closer look at transnational interaction, speaking of transnational societies, for he suggests that the central question is “how transnational actors relate to the society of states.”20 He suggests that here too is a spectrum, one he calls a weak-to-strong spectrum,

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i.e. on the one end a society in which states dominate, going as far as suppressing transnational actors. At the other end of the spectrum would be very strong transnational actors who recognize each other, accepting the respective varying types of actors. He calls this ultimate status “pure transnational neomedievalism.”21 Who are these transnational actors and how do they interact? And how does religion play into this scenario? Significantly, identity assumes an important role in these musings. “If units share a common identity (a religion, a system of governance, a language), or even just a common set of rules or norms (about how to determine relative status, and how to conduct diplomacy), then these intersubjective understandings not only condition their behaviour, but also define the boundaries of a social system.”22 Buzan later mentions what he labels as “interhuman identities,”23 which indicates both the complexity, but also the significance of transnational actors, as they shape the interplay of a myriad of factors. We next look more closely at Buzan’s consideration of religion, which, we argue, is limited to being linked to identity and how it shapes the behaviour of transnational actors. Buzan argues: Although it is true that patterns of shared identity among human beings can and do occur in large scales, the historical record shows pretty clearly that the creation of the larger “imagined communities” such as nations and religion depended heavily on states and TNAs [transnational actors] to promote them (the Christian churches, the later Roman Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate, etc.).24

Buzan’s main argument is that religion helps strengthen identity, similar to what Laustsen/Wæver and Kubálková imply in their definitions of religion. However, Buzan does not delve into an identity-theory approach and offers an explanation, but rather, true to the English School manner, he examines historical patterns. For example, Buzan argues that, “A handful of religions, most notably Christianity and Islam, have succeeded in creating vast subsystemic communities. Some civilizations (Western, Confucian) hold a similarly sized scale, but less intensely. In matters of identity, parochialism still rules. Despite some breakthroughs to larger scale, universal scale identity remains strikingly weak.”25 In essence, this means that the wider a transnational society spreads, the weaker it becomes, unless it is based on religion, which provides a greater “intensity” as Buzan calls it. Unfortunately, Buzan does not explore the idea

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of religion further; he only mentions these two religions, as though in passing. Instead, he lists examples of transnational actors who suffer from this parochialism—such as “clubs, firms, lobbies.”26 He pinpoints the weakness in its organisation, i.e. because they are organized locally, the shared norms or values tend to weaken with increasing geographical distance. While these transnational actors, in particular INGOs, can achieve a global scale, today all the more so due to increasing technology, he does not see a strong bond based on common values and rules. In conclusion, Buzan encourages English School scholars to focus more strongly on the sub-global level. We would add to this that including religion in the research would provide even stronger arguments of how transnational societies are formed and how they shape or even effect a shift from one type of society to another, as we discuss later. Taking Buzan’s ideas about the interplay between the different domains into account, we finally come to the Holy See as a hybrid actor that is capable of shaping not only institutions but also the shift from international to transnational or even world society.

The Holy See as Hybrid Actor In this next step we briefly clarify the term hybrid actor before examining the Holy See and specifically its interaction with Iran as a case study of how international, transnational and global public spheres interact and how they are shaped. In the introduction, we already hinted at the fact that both Iran as well as the Holy See fulfil certain requirements which qualify them not only as diplomatic subjects of international law with political aims but also as transnational public actors with a religious identity. We argue that this is due to the very strong religious elements, which shape/constitute the two respectively. In addition to the structures and international legitimacy these actors gain from being legal subjects of international law, the transnational realm(s) is integrated in their foreign policy to some extent. In the case of hybrid actors, the adjunct transnational actorness has borrowed credibility from the diplomatic international level and may be recognized as a substitute or even proxy actor of the transnational identity on the international level. As a consequence, for the diplomatic actor, new channels of information, of negotiation, and of influence open up. As the religion is not confined to the territorial borders, these political actors are not only part of an international system, but also address a transnational public. In both cases we

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have heads of state who are religious leaders, each elected by a body of religious representatives/clerics. Both internal judicial systems are based on religious law. While the pope is elected for life, the supreme leader is elected for a period of eight years, however, he can be re-elected an unspecified amount of times. This seemingly minor aspect has one prominent implication—policies need not be limited to short-term solutions but can be based on long-term visions, which potentially greatly impacts how these actors go about international politics. Buzan argued that a common religion helps strengthen identity, we however argue that simply the fact that both actors are inherently/constitutively religious, provides a foundation for interaction, most prominently in the shape of interreligious dialogue. Both hybrid actors take an active part in shaping an interreligious dialogue. In 2010, for example, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Tauran, headed a delegation which went to Iran to attend a Christian-Islamic meeting. On this occasion Tauran delivered a message from the pope to the Iranian president. President Ahmadinejad sought to strengthen the ties between the Holy See and Iran. And more recently, both President Rohani as well as Ayatollah Khamenei have underlined the importance of pursuing policies which lead to peace, as the Iranian ambassador to the Holy See, Rabbani, stated in an interview: Either the Holy See, as a religious institution that guides the Catholic Church, or His Holiness, Pope Francis, can propose a diplomacy geared to attaining peace. Justice, peace and development in the addresses of Pope Francis and in those of Ayatollah Khamenei illuminate our life to reach a collaboration that I would describe as multilateral religious diplomacy.27

He goes on to refer to the Holy See Secretary of State who had spoken of diplomacy as the art of hope: “In my opinion, this vision must be promoted in the world, because today we are living a critical situation which can only be resolved by a diplomacy that gives hope. This type of diplomacy also belongs to the political program of President Rohani.”28 And a year later he stated: “With divine help and the help of the great Abrahamic religions, especially with Pope Francis, Iran—as the country that heads the nations which are not aligned with the West, it could form a global alliance against violence and radicalism to promote lasting peace in the world.”29 What is remarkable here is that religion and foreign policy

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goals are so distinctly linked. In 2014 Rabbani was succeeded by Naseri who clearly listed the priorities Iran seeks in its cooperation with the Holy See: Our priorities include, above all, the building up of further cooperation between the two Abrahamic religions, Islam and Christianity, and cooperate on matters of common interest, viz. justice and peace in the world. We also intend to cooperate with the Holy See in cultural, scientific and religious fields. This requires mutual visits and meetings between the two sides. We have already set about this.30

Based on these assertions by Iranian diplomats, the scope of cooperation becomes even more evident. These are actors with long-term, global goals, who have a huge scope of possibilities of how to interact, not exclusively on a political inter-state level. Their cooperation transcends national borders, it is transnationalized so to say, for example by leading an interreligious dialogue. While diplomatic ties have existed for centuries, the forms of cooperation have evolved, and an institutionalization of this transnational cooperation has taken place. The relations between the Holy See and Iran pose a particularly interesting case as they are both hybrid actors but based on different religions. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this difference, a cooperation has taken place beyond state and religious borders. One might argue that this is no longer directly linked to international politics. We would turn this argument around and posit that this is an extension of foreign policy and also an expansion of the sphere in which cooperation takes place.

Conclusion Interreligious dialogue takes on different shapes and takes place at different levels. It ranges from one-off high-level meetings such as the recent meeting between Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, over regular meetings held by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue to encounters between individuals of different faiths and nationalities at events such as the Parliament of the World’s Religions. In all cases the bridge between international politics and a world society is built, as people of faith come together to discuss issues which are of political relevance and frequently issue policy recommendations. Interreligious dialogue thus arguably becomes an institution in itself and a transnational

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society is created which seeks to directly impact international politics (tackling climate change, alleviating poverty, supporting refugees, etc.). While there is a particularly strong sense of identity within the respective religious communities, regardless of the geographic distance, there is arguably also a common identity in being religious and joining in such an interreligious dialogue. To come back to the initial question of how the Holy See bridges the international system and transnational society, we take another look at interaction beyond interreligious dialogue. The Holy See has engaged in mediation on numerous occasions, either when both or even when none of the conflicting parties were Catholic. More recently, Pope Francis offered to act as mediator in Venezuela, an offer which both sides accepted. What is more, due to its hybrid character, the Holy See, or specifically the pope, can address audiences and issues which are not limited to state borders, such as those mentioned above. The Holy See is equally capable of cooperating with very different actors and drawing on resources not immediately available to states or transnational actors respectively. The aspect of time and long-term planning was already mentioned. What is more, such actors, and the Holy See in particular, can draw upon (local) expertise due to its world-spanning network of clergy and lay-people, which hardly any other state or transnational actor can provide. It can equally draw upon experience and trust gained over the past, such as mediating in conflicts. What we try to show in this concluding chapter is that there are indeed societies which transcend state borders and possibilities and that the Holy See, as a hybrid (international and transnational, diplomatic and public, political and religious) actor, offers a prime example of how this is achieved. These actors are present in all major international institutions, at the same time they fulfil actorness criteria which other transnational actors do not: they have clear representatives; they can sign treaties; it is unlikely that they will dissipate in the near future; etc. Moving towards a more identity theory explanation, these actors recognize shared goals, values, and have a wider variety of possibilities of interacting. And coming back to Buzan’s reference to interhuman societies—they also offer a bridge between the three domains of the individual, the state and the international level. Buzan argues: Given a numerous and geographically dispersed population, the processes by which humans interact seem inevitably fated to form collective entities

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each of which encompasses only a small part of the total human population. These entities might be collective units of some kind (possessing actor quality), and/or they might be patterns of shared identity (religious/ethnic, etc.), with network types of association amongst individuals poised somewhere in between.31

Hybrid actors like the Holy See play an important role within the reality of this framework and need to come more into focus in empirical and theoretical research. To conclude, a clear notion of what world society is, still has not been given, but including transnational societies in the debate is most definitely a helpful step for future research. Equally, or perhaps even more important, is the role of religion and including this topic in the IR research agenda. Religion, as Buzan hints at, but only marginally elaborates, provides a strong foundation for building societies—and this must not be limited to just one religion, but rather is open to include a multitude of religions. However, religion not only offers a strong set of long-term and enduring goals, values, and rules; it also impacts the constitution of actors and their possibilities of interacting. Our example of the dyad Iran–Holy See offers a glimpse of an almost parallel society, namely that of religions interacting in varying degrees of institutionalization and having an impact on international politics. Hybrid actors provide a bridge between international, diplomatic, and political actors with a status of legal subjects in international law and religious transnational non-state actors of the public sphere, which have and will continue to play a vital role in the future. These hybrid actors clearly did not suddenly appear on the international stage, on the contrary, they have been there and what is more, they are well-equipped to continue to shape the evolving international, transnational and world societies, reaching an ever-growing public that transcends state and religious borders.

Notes 1. Benedict XVI, Letter of His Holiness Benedict XVI to His Excellence Mahmoud Ahmadinejad President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, November 3, 2010. 2. Timothy A. Byrnes, “Sovereignty, Supranationalism, and Soft Power: The Holy See in International Relation,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 15, 4 (2017): 6–20; Jodok Troy, “Die Soft Power des Heiligen Stuhls. Unsichtbare Legionen zwischen internationaler Gesellschaft und

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3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

Weltgesellschaft,” Zeitschrift für Außen-und Sicherheitspolitik, 3, 4 (2010): 489–511. For a helpful overview of the unique and at the same time complex status of the Holy See and the Vatican State in international law see for example Mariano Barbato, “A State, a Diplomat, and a Transnational Church: The Multi-layered Actorness of the Holy See,” Perspectives, 21, 2 (2013): 27–48; Friedrich Germelmann, “Heiliger Stuhl und Vatikanstaat in der internationalen GemeinschaftVölkerrechtliche Praxis und interne Beziehungen,” Archiv des Völkerrechts, 47 (2009): 147–186. Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl, “‘Hybrid Actors’—Religion and the Shift Towards a World Society”. Paper Presented at the ECPR General Conference (Montreal, 2015). In contrast to Jodok Troy’s understanding of the Holy See as a hybrid actor we do not only combine religion and politics as the markers of hybridity. Our concept understands the dichotomy of diplomacy and public, the international and the transnational also as part of the notion of hybridity. Jodok Troy, “‘The Pope’s Own Hand Outstretched’: Holy See Diplomacy as a Hybrid Mode of Diplomatic Agency,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 20, 3 (2018): 521–539. Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler, Bringing Religion into International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Carsten Bagge Laustsen and Ole Wæver, “In Defence of Religion: Sacred Referent Objects for Securitization,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29, 3 (2000): 738. Fabio Petito and Pavlos Hatzopoulos (eds.), Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Vendulka Kubálková, “Towards an International Political Theology,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29, 3 (2000): 675–704. Ibid., 695. Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Ibid., 155. Ibid., 94. Andrew Hurrell’s notion of a transnationalization of governance would be fruitful alternative starting point. Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). As opposed to Wight or Butterfield, Bull was particularly sceptical of religion. In 1980, Bull “spoke of ‘our commitment to a modern outlook’ which favoured the ‘secular, scientific’ perspective over a ‘religious, magical view of the world’ as a subset of western values.” See Robert Ayson, Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 175.

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15. Cf. Adam Watson, Diplomacy—The Dialogue Between States (London: Methuen, 1982) or Nukhet A. Sandal and Jonathan Fox, Religion in International Relations Theory: Interactions and Possibilities (London: Routledge, 2013), 118–144. 16. Barry Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 4. 17. Ibid. 18. Buzan is of course not the first to suggest this, Bull never excluded looking at actors within or beyond the state, however, the English School traditionally had a strong focus on state actors, not only in research but also in its normative approach: Andrew Linklater and Suganami Hidemi, The English School of International Relations —A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 80. 19. Buzan, From International to World Society? 2. 20. Ibid., 137. 21. Ibid., 136. 22. Ibid., 8. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 136. 25. Ibid., 210. 26. Ibid. 27. Mohammad Taher Rabbani, “Iranian Ambassador to the Holy See Hopes for Peace Through Dialogue: Interview with Federico Cenci,” Zenit, December 23, 2013. 28. Ibid. 29. “Rohani’s Iran Looks to Francis for a Peace Alliance,” Vatican Insider/La Stampa, February 11, 2014. 30. Ali Akbar Naseri, “The Relations Between the Iranian Embassy and the Holy See. Interview with Serena Sartini,” August 30, 2011. 31. Barry Buzan, From International to World Society? 123.

Index

A Abbas, Mahmoud, 92 Abraham, 81, 82 Abu Dhabi, 88, 89, 91, 93 Adjaye, David, 89 Adzhubei, Aleksei, 176 Aflaq, Michel, 82 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 189, 196 Alacoque, Margaret Mary, 11 Alawite, 87 Aleppo, 87 Allen, Richard, 178, 181, 186, 187 Andalusia, 135, 140 Antonelli, Giacomo, 163 Aranzazu, 140, 141 Archangel Michael, 7 Assad, Bashar, 86, 87 Auschwitz, 49, 52, 54, 91, 92 Axial Age, 2, 19 Aziz, Tariq, 82 B Baˇckis, Audrys, 176, 186

Balmes, Jaime, 161 Barcelona, 135, 140–142, 144, 145, 147, 148, 150 Beijing, 17, 98, 104, 105, 107, 108 Benedict XV, 173 Benedict XVI, 6, 14, 15, 20, 26, 30, 38, 41, 64, 66–68, 85–88, 90, 92–96, 99, 100, 105, 106, 112, 116, 139, 141, 142, 144–147, 189, 199 Bernstein, Carl, 177–179, 185, 187 Bertone, Tarcisio, 29, 40 Bethlehem, 82, 91 Bilbao, 139, 141 Bilbao, Francisco, 159 Bogotá, 159, 160, 168 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 5, 9 Bourdieu, Pierre, 13–15, 21 Brazil, 157, 160, 161 Brezhnev, Leonid, 48 Buddhism, 102, 108, 109, 115 Buenos Aires, 148, 159, 160, 163 Buscioni, Sebastian, 161

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. P. Barbato (ed.), The Pope, the Public, and International Relations, Culture and Religion in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46107-2

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204

INDEX

C Cairo, 17, 83, 93, 95 Cardenal, Ernesto, 181 Casanova, José, 8, 9, 20, 46, 58, 157, 166 Casaroli, Agostino, 29, 176, 180, 187 Casey, William, 180, 183 Cass, Lewis, 173 Central America, 47, 181 Charlemagne, 7, 41 Chiang Kai-shek, 104 Chile, 158–160, 162, 167 China, 18, 65, 97–108, 112–116 Christ. See Jesus Christ Christendom, Christian, Christianity, 4, 8, 9, 14, 28, 37, 49, 50, 56, 57, 65, 70, 73, 81–94, 97, 99–104, 107–113, 123, 128, 138, 139, 141, 143, 146, 155, 185, 194 Church, 1, 2, 7–9, 11, 12, 14, 26, 28–31, 46–51, 54, 56, 58, 59, 61, 63–65, 67, 70, 72, 74, 75, 83, 85, 89, 92, 97, 99–108, 110–113, 119, 120, 124–127, 129–131, 134–144, 146, 147, 153–158, 160–164, 168, 172–174, 177, 180, 181, 186, 190 Clark, William, P., 183 Clement XI, 103 Cluny, 2, 8 Colombia, 163, 167 Columbus, Christopher, 143 Confucianism, 102, 103 Constantinople, 7, 85, 88 Covadonga, 135, 139, 143, 145 CSCE, 176 Cze¸stochowa, 48, 52, 56 D Dalai Lama, 108

Dalit, 110, 111 Damascus, 83, 89 Delanoë, Bertrand, 5 d’Escoto, Miguel, 181 Diplomacy, 3, 17, 26–33, 38, 39, 70, 87, 101, 106, 113, 134, 147, 193, 194, 196 Dziwisz, Stanisław, 183

E Echagüe, José Milcíades Bernardo, 162 Ecuador, 156, 158, 161–163 Egypt, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 167 el-Tayeb, Ahmed, 197 English School, 20, 190, 192–195, 201 Escalada, Mariano José de, 163 Europe, 3–5, 7, 8, 11, 17, 18, 28, 51, 54, 60, 102, 113, 124, 128, 130, 138, 143, 155, 158, 159, 161, 164, 171, 172, 180, 185 Eyzaguirre, José Ignacio Víctor, 154, 160–164, 169

F Falun Gong, 105 Fatima, 9, 10 Ferdinand VII, 158 Francis, 5, 10, 13, 15, 17, 25–27, 29, 34, 37, 38, 40, 64, 66–68, 87–95, 99, 106, 111, 112, 141, 142, 154, 196–198 Francis Xavier, 103, 110

G Gates, Robert, 125, 180, 187 56, 128, 129 Gdansk, ´ General Assembly. See United Nations (UN)

INDEX

Genevieve, 8 Genghis Khan, 103 Germany, 47, 59, 92 Gierek, Edward, 48, 49, 59 Gil-Robles, José Maria, 136 Goa, 101, 110 God, 6, 9, 13, 27, 29, 30, 36–38, 42, 70–75, 123, 189 Gregory XV, 26 Gregory XVI, 10, 157, 158 Guterres, António, 89 H Habash, George, 84 Habermas, Jürgen, 2, 3, 15, 16, 19, 22, 90, 95, 114 Haig, Alexander, 183 Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, 5, 7 Helsinki, 49 Hidalgo, Anne, 5 Hildebrandt, Dietrich von, 123 Hindu, 98, 99, 109–113 Holy See, 2–4, 6, 12, 13, 16–18, 26–31, 33, 34, 37, 40, 42, 82, 83, 85, 88, 91, 92, 95–97, 99, 100, 106, 108, 109, 111–113, 116, 143, 145, 154, 156–158, 161, 164, 171–177, 179–185, 188–193, 195–200 Hong Kong, 97, 99–101, 105, 108, 115 Hoover, Herbert, 22, 174 Hopkins, Anthony, 66 Hugo, Victor, 4 Hungary, 48 Hussein, Saddam, 82 Hybrid, 18, 40, 191, 195–200 I Ignatius of Loyola, 8, 11, 142 India, 18, 88, 97–99, 101, 109–114

205

Ingarden, Roman, 123, 132 Innocent IV, 103 International, 1, 3–5, 9, 12, 14, 16–19, 25–28, 30–32, 37, 39, 40, 46, 47, 49–51, 54, 55, 85, 91, 95, 99, 125, 141–143, 147, 154–156, 174, 175, 179, 182, 190–193, 195–200 Iran, 18, 47, 88, 189–191, 195–197, 199 Iraq, 6, 85, 90 Islam, 81, 83, 85, 87, 88, 93, 95, 102, 103, 108, 109, 115, 194 Islamic State, 3, 87, 89, 93 Israel, 81, 82, 84, 88, 91, 92, 96 Italy, 18, 133, 138, 156, 164, 167, 173–175

J Jan Kazimierz, 124 Japan, 34, 99, 114 Jasna Góra, 124, 131 Jasper, Karl, 15, 19 Jerusalem, 37, 91, 92, 95 Jesus Christ, 12, 82 John Paul II, 5–7, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 26, 30, 45–47, 52, 56–58, 60, 64, 82, 88, 89, 92–94, 99, 101, 105, 106, 112, 119, 126–132, 139, 141–147, 171, 172, 177, 176, 180–183 John the Baptist, 89 John XXIII, 5, 64, 126, 138, 141, 174, 175 Journey, 14, 17, 30, 36, 45, 47, 82, 85, 88, 89, 99, 106, 112, 126, 141, 176 Judaism, 81, 92 Julius II, 65

206

INDEX

K Kabongo, Emery, 183 Karol Wojtyla, 119 Keaton, Diane, 67 Kennedy, John F., 174, 186 Kerry, John, 32, 41 Khamenei, Ali, 196 Khomeini, 46, 47, 58 Khrushchev, Nikita, 175, 176 Kiril, 65 Korea, 97, 99, 106, 112 Kowalska, Faustyna, 13 Kraków, 48, 59, 125, 131, 132 Kublai Khan, 103 L Labouré, Catharine, 10 Laghi, Pio, 177, 178 Latin America, 154, 157–164, 172, 179, 181, 184 Law, Jude, 67 Ledeen, Michael, 179, 183, 187 Ledóchowski, Mieczysław, 162, 163 Leo III, 7, 41 Leo XIII, 7, 12, 64, 135 Levinas, Emmanuel, 123 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 174 Louis IX, (Saint Louis), 7 Lourdes, 9, 10 M Macao, 97, 99–101 Madrid, 135, 138–150, 167 Manila, 126 Martin, Jacob L., 173 Marto, Francisco, 10 Marto, Jacinta, 10 Mas, Juan Pablo, 146 Mastai-Ferreti, Giovanni Maria. See Pius IX McFarlane, Robert, 182, 188

Media, 5, 16, 17, 25–27, 30–33, 36, 38, 39, 45–52, 54, 68, 69, 89, 127, 138, 142, 145, 155 Medieval, 2, 4, 7, 8, 28, 120, 155 Medrano, Mariano, 159 Mexico, 37, 47, 58, 59, 155, 158, 160, 161, 180 Michnik, Adam, 47, 58 Middle East, 18, 37, 81–85, 87–89, 91–93 Modi, Narendra, 26, 112 Mohamed, 91 Mohammed VI, 95 Montalembert, Charles Forbes René de, 160 Montserrat, 135 Montt, Manuel, 160 Moreno, Gabriel García, 156, 161 Morocco, 88, 89, 91, 94 Mosquera, Manuel, 159 Mother Teresa, 111 Mozart, Wolfang Amadeus, 105 Munich, 15, 54, 60 Muslim, 82–86, 88–95, 97, 98, 108, 109, 139, 143, 190 Muzi, Giovanni, 158

N Napoleon III, 5 Naseri, Ali Akbar, 197, 201 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 109, 110, 117 New Granada, 158, 161 Nicaragua, 47, 127 Nicholas IV, 103 Nixon, Richard, 174, 186 Notre Dame de Paris , 4 Nye, Joseph, 15, 22

O Oslo, 93

INDEX

P Pahlavi, Reza, 190 Pamplona, 141, 150, 167 Papal revolution, 2, 16 Papal States, 12, 41, 126, 134, 135, 141, 154, 155, 161, 164, 173 Paraguay, 162 Paray-le-Monial, 11 Paris, 4, 5, 7–9, 11–14, 20, 21, 47, 155, 160, 161, 166, 167, 183 Parolin, Pietro, 100, 106–108 Paul VI, 9, 14, 21, 30, 85, 88, 93, 99, 112, 126, 138, 141, 174, 176 Peres, Shimon, 92 Peru, 146, 162, 163, 167 Peter, 5, 14, 19, 29, 41, 69, 71–73, 94, 105, 154, 155, 162, 163, 165 Philippines, 126 Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 49, 51, 52, 55, 57, 88, 93, 124–131, 135, 140, 143, 159 Pius VI, 5, 41 Pius IX, 11, 12, 76, 155, 156, 159, 161 Pius XI, 26 Pius XII, 26, 64, 68, 92, 104, 112, 115, 174, 175 Pius XIII, 68–70, 72, 74–77 Poland, 17, 45, 47–52, 54, 56, 57, 60, 119, 122–125, 127–131, 133, 167, 172, 175, 176, 178–180, 184, 185 Polo, Marco, 103 Postsecular, 15, 16, 82, 83, 86, 87, 90, 93, 98, 99, 112 Protestant, 11, 100, 107, 108, 124, 161–163, 174 Pryce, Jonathan, 66 Public, 1–14, 16–18, 21, 22, 29–34, 37, 45, 46, 48–50, 52, 54–58,

207

63–69, 71, 75, 81–85, 88, 90, 92, 93, 96–99, 108, 113, 125, 130, 133–135, 137, 139–142, 145, 146, 155, 156, 162–164, 172–174, 181, 186, 187, 190, 193, 195, 198–200 Putin, Vladimir, 87 Putnam, Robert, 14, 21

Q Quinn, Anthony, 65

R Rabbani, Taher, 196, 197, 201 Ratzinger, Joseph. See Benedict XVI Rawls, John, 15 Reagan, Nancy, 184 Reagan, Ronald, 18, 47, 171, 177, 185–188 Reformation, 2, 140 Ricœur, Paul, 122, 123, 132 Ricci, Matteo, 103 Rice, Susan, 32 Rio de Janeiro, 157 Rivera, Primo de, 136 Riyadh, 183 Rohani, Hassan, 196 Rome, 5, 7, 12, 18, 21, 67, 83, 98, 104–106, 126, 136, 154–156, 159, 161–166, 171–176, 178, 181–183, 185, 188 Rooney, Francis, 180, 187 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 173 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 8 Rue du Bac, 9–11, 13 Russia, 87, 162, 167

S Sacré Cœur, 12, 13 Sandri, Leonardo, 85

208

INDEX

Santiago de Chile, 159, 161, 167, 169 Santiago de Compostela, 135, 139, 141–146, 149 Seville, 141, 143, 145, 150 Shia, 86, 87, 190 Shultz, George, 182, 188 Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph, 9 Sikhism, 109 Sorrentino, Paolo, 67–70, 77 Soubirous, Bernadette, 10 Spain, 18, 133–147, 158, 167 Sri Lanka, 99, 112, 114 Stanislaus, 48, 54 Stone, Richard, 174 Sunni, 86–88 Syria, 37, 86–89, 93 T Taiwan, 100, 108 Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice de, 9 Taoism, 102, 115 Tarragona, 141 Tauran, Jean-Louis, 196 Taylor, Myron, 173, 174, 186 Teheran, 46 Tischner, Józef, 122 Transnational, 3, 9, 11, 12, 16–19, 21, 49, 153–156, 161, 164, 190, 191, 193–195, 197–200 Trip. See Journey Truman, Harry S., 174 Trump, Donald, 25, 31, 37, 91 Tsereteli, Zurab, 5 Twitter, 3, 17, 25, 26, 31, 33, 36, 38, 42, 142 U United Nations (UN), 17, 28, 32, 37, 38, 40, 89, 93 United States (US), 17, 18, 32, 37, 47, 54, 67, 87, 89, 163, 167,

171–177, 179, 184, 186, 187, 190 Uruguay, 162 USSR, 47 V Valdivieso, Rafael, 161 Valencia, 141, 144–147 Vatican, 18, 21, 28, 31, 38, 46, 48, 52, 56, 63, 66, 67, 70, 85, 87, 92, 93, 95, 100, 102, 104–108, 112, 126, 132, 137–139, 141–143, 146, 147, 153, 154, 156, 160, 162, 164, 172, 174, 177–179, 182, 183, 186–188, 190, 200 Venezuela, 106, 163, 166, 198 Veuillot, Louis, 160 Vicens, Ignacio, 145, 146 Vicuña, Manuel, 159 Viganò, Dario, 66 Vilnius, 125, 176 Vincent de Paul, 159, 164 Virgin Mary, 9–11 Voltaire, 8 W Wał˛esa, Lech, 56 Walters, Vernon, 182, 183 Warsaw, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, 58, 125, 175 Washington, 18, 21, 114, 115, 117, 167, 171–173, 175–178, 180, 181, 185–188 Weber, Max, 11 Wenders, Wim, 66 West, Morris, 65 Westphalian, 3, 28, 191, 193 Wilson, Betty, 179, 181, 183, 184 Wilson, William A., 177, 187, 188 Wilson, Woodrow, 173, 186

INDEX

Wojtyła, Karol. See John Paul II Wyszynski, ´ Stefan, 56, 125 Y Yad Vashem, 92

Z Zaragoza, 139, 141–143 Zen, Joseph, 108 Zola, Emile, 8 Zurayk, Constantine, 82

209