The assignment of Archbishop Pietro Parolin to the key role of
Secretary of State confirms that Pope Francis remains committed to his
project of reform at the Vatican. It is also likely to revive Rome’s
status as one of the most sophisticated players in global diplomacy.
Pope
Francis may have finally convinced sceptics that his pontificate will
be more than just a change of recent papal style.
His selection of the 58-year-old Archbishop Pietro Parolin, one of the
Vatican’s savviest new breed of diplomats, as his Secretary of State
could prove to be one of the most astute choices since 1979, when John
Paul II appointed the now legendary Agostino Casaroli to this key
position of “prime minister” of the Vatican.
Parolin, who has
spent the past four years in Venezuela in his first posting as an
archbishop and papal nuncio, has been for all but 10 of his 27 years as a
Church diplomat at the Secretariat of State in Rome. When he officially
takes over the reins of this key department on 15 October, there are
hopes that he will be able to restore and re-define its sense of purpose
and role, both at home and abroad.
Parolin certainly has his
work cut out for him. In the seven tortuous years under the guidance of
his predecessor, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone SDB, the secretariat has
become increasingly incapable of carrying out its traditional role of
coordinating the Roman Curia in any effective manner.
This is due, in
part, to lack of communication and regular meetings among the heads of
the various offices, but also because of the low esteem in which many
Vatican officials held the Salesian cardinal, who had no diplomatic
experience and limited foreign-language skills when he took up the post.
Under his leadership, and with Benedict XVI’s shift in priorities
towards internal church matters, the secretariat has come close to
squandering the Holy See’s once prestigious role as a key “soft power”
in the field of international diplomacy.
Parolin will have to
address these problems immediately, but he brings an impressive set of
skills to do so. The soft-spoken and friendly priest possesses the right
mixture of expertise, experience and personal character, all essential
for reshaping the secretariat into a key player in Francis’ project of
reforming the Vatican bureaucracy and redirecting the Church’s attention
towards those on the periphery of society.
There are high
expectations that he will be a major force in helping to re-establish
the Holy See’s prominence in global diplomacy, especially in the area of
peacemaking and advocacy for the poor, as well as resurrecting
broken-down relations with the Government of China, with the aim of
normalising the Church’s situation there, recovering a more synodal or
collegial model of universal church governance, and healing the
fractious environment inside the Curia.
Foreign diplomats who
have worked with Parolin hailed his appointment. “While logically of
Europe, he has very direct experience in Africa and the Americas, plus a
good track record with Asia,” said Australia’s former ambassador to the
Holy See, Tim Fischer. “His engagement with people of all standing was
always thoughtful and meaningful.” Another former ambassador to the Holy
See said: “He is a man of great humility, whose diplomatic skills,
though considerable, do not trump his priesthood.”
The archbishop
has had a long and thorough training for the job that awaits him. Just a
few years after his presbyteral ordination in 1980 for the Diocese of
Vicenza, in the Veneto region of northern Italy, and after brief
experience as an assistant parish priest, he spent three years in Rome
at the elite finishing school for papal diplomats, the Pontificia
Accademia Ecclesiastica. He studied canon law at the Gregorian
University, writing his doctoral thesis on the nature and functions of
the Synod of Bishops.
After brief postings in the Holy See’s
nunciatures in Nigeria (1986-89) and Mexico (1989-92), he returned to
Rome to spend 17 years in the foreign relations section of the
Secretariat of State. As a junior official, he sharpened his negotiating
and peacemaking aptitude under the guidance of some of the Vatican’s
most notable figures.
In May 1993, he accompanied Cardinal Roger
Etchegaray to war-ravaged Rwanda as emissaries of peace and
reconciliation. Later, he was part of then-Archbishop Jean-Louis
Tauran’s delegation to the UN General Assembly to add the Holy See’s
voice to discussions on the environment and global development. Closer
to home, he was part of the Vatican team that, in 2000, negotiated with
Italy to complete the 1984 revisions to the Lateran Pact.
Then,
in late November 2002, less than two months before his
forty-eighth birthday, the then Mgr Parolin was appointed by Pope John
Paul as the Vatican equivalent of deputy foreign minister. He began the
job under Tauran, by now a cardinal and widely considered the Vatican’s
most capable diplomat.
Parolin would serve in this role for six years,
working under both the now-Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo and the current
office holder, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti. He represented the Holy
See at numerous international conferences, bringing the Church’s
concerns to the fore on a plethora of issues.
The death of John
Paul II in 2005 and the election of Benedict XVI would lead eventually
to a fundamental change in direction at the Secretariat of State.
Cardinal Bertone was named in 2006 to replace the ageing Cardinal Angelo
Sodano, who had succeeded Cardinal Casaroli in 1990 as Secretary of
State. But Bertone was not accepted by many in the secretariat and other
parts of the Curia. This led increasingly to quiet defiance of his
directives and obstruction of his initiatives.
During this period,
Parolin and his counterpart in the internal affairs section of the
bureau, Mgr Gabriele Caccia, laboured to keep the secretariat on course.
By 2009, though, Parolin was being criticised by some as being part of
the Casaroli school – in other words, too much of a pragmatist. He was
promoted as nuncio to Venezuela in a classic Vatican move that was as
much exile as promotion.
Before he was moved to Venezuela,
however, Mgr Parolin played a fundamental role in helping to
re-establish relations with Vietnam’s Communist Government. Applying
patient dialogue and careful compromise, Parolin and his delegations
were able secure the appointment of new bishops and begin the course
towards diplomatic normalisation. He was also active in nudging the
Palestinians and Israelis to resume negotiations, as well as working to
advance the Holy See’s discussions with Israel over the Church’s
properties and tax situation in the Jewish state.
His most
impressive diplomatic achievement – unfortunately undermined soon after
he left for Venezuela – came with Communist China. A major writer of
Pope Benedict’s landmark letter to Chinese Catholics in 2007, Parolin
led delegations to the Asian superpower in 2008 and 2009, re-opening a
dialogue for the first time in more than 50 years. Again imitating
methods of the old Ostpolitik, he painstakingly achieved an agreement
with Beijing regarding the selection of 10 new bishops, something that
had not been achieved in six decades.
But before the deal was
officially signed, Benedict promoted Parolin to Venezuela. He replaced
him with Mgr Ettore Balestrero, who immediately took a hard line,
telling the Chinese that the Pope had decided not to sign the agreement.
Diplomatic sources told The Tablet that the key figure behind
Balestrero’s appointment (and one of his chief advisers on dealing with
China) was Cardinal Joseph Zen SDB of Hong Kong.
A Salesian confrère of
Cardinal Bertone, Zen opposed the Parolin approach and insisted that the
Vatican should make no compromises. His strategy, largely followed
since 2009, has only made Sino-Vatican relations worse. With Parolin’s
return to Rome, there are heightened expectations he will be able to
resuscitate the dialogue.
While it seems obvious that Pope
Francis wants the Secretariat of State to again play a more active role
in building relations with other countries, it is not clear where he
sees it in a reformed governing structure for the universal Church. He
has spoken of the need to find a way to enhance episcopal collegiality,
through a more deliberative role for the Synod of Bishops. At least in
this case, Parolin, with his doctoral research of the institution,
should be well equipped to help.
One thing seems sure. The Holy See
is poised to become more fully engaged than in the past several years in
foreign diplomacy. Expect the world’s oldest diplomatic entity to again
become a major voice in the fields of peacemaking, the promotion of
human rights and advocacy for the poor.