In the wake of Russia’s contentious annexation of four regions of
Ukraine, here’s how a spokesperson for a major global institution, one
that’s already drawn criticism for its allegedly ambivalent attitude on
Putin’s war, reacted.
“We believe that all countries deserve respect for their sovereignty
and territorial integrity, that the purposes and principles of the UN
Charter should be observed, that the legitimate security concerns of any
country should be taken seriously, and that support should be given to
all efforts conducive to peacefully resolving the crisis,” the
spokesperson said.
“We hope the parties concerned will properly address differences
through dialogue and consultation. [We] stand ready to work with members
of the international community to continue to play a constructive part
in de-escalation efforts.”
Note the lack of a forthright condemnation of Russia’s action, the
apparent effort to suggest a degree of legitimacy to security concerns
cited by Putin as a pretext for the war, and the emphasis on calls for
dialogue and peace rather than assigning blame or taking sides.
While all that has been characteristic of commentary on Ukraine by
Pope Francis and his Vatican team – most recently, the pope hit many of
the same notes in a conversation with fellow Jesuits while he was in
Kazakhstan – in this case it wasn’t a spokesperson for the Vatican
quoted above, but rather China’s Foreign Ministry.
When the UN Security Council considered a motion Friday to condemn
the annexation submitted by the United States, 10 nations voted in favor
while four abstained: China, India, Brazil, and Gabon. The Vatican
doesn’t sit on the Security Council, but if it did, it’s easy to imagine
it probably would have voted with the abstentions.
Of course, the political, economic and strategic calculations which
have led China to take a mixed stance on Ukraine are far different from
the moral and humanitarian considerations driving Francis, but the fact
of the matter nonetheless is that the Vatican’s substantive position on
the Ukraine conflict often seems closer to Beijing’s than to, say,
Washington’s, or, for that matter, Rome’s.
For her part, Italy’s new Prime Minister-apparent, Giorgia Meloni,
issued a stinging statement Friday describing the referenda in the four
territories as a “farce” and the annexations as having “no legal or
political value,” adding that Putin’s attitude is “neo-imperialistic of
the Soviet variety.” Nobody in the Vatican has even come close to
something like that.
The fact that Francis and his Vatican allies sometimes sound more
like China, or India, than their historical partners in the West is,
naturally, one reason why some Catholic critics are unhappy.
Yet for a moment, let’s set aside the rights and wrongs and instead
try to understand the situation in historical terms. From a certain
point of view, one could argue that this papacy’s reaction to the
Ukraine conflict is a natural consequence of the massive demographic and
cultural transitions within Catholicism over much of the last century.
When the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) was founded in 1949,
it was sometimes jokingly said in Catholic circles that the pontiff at
the time, Pope Pius XII, should be appointed its chaplain. In part, that
was a result of Catholicism’s demography: In 1950 there were just over
400 million Catholics in the world, of whom roughly half were in Europe,
which depended heavily on the American security umbrella against what
was perceived as the threat of a European land war, and also the
anti-religious policies of the Soviet Union weighed heavily.
By 2022, the face of the faith has changed dramatically.
Today there are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, of whom more than
two-thirds live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, i.e., outside the
traditional boundaries of the West. Statistically speaking, the typical
Catholic in the world today is far more likely to be a person of color
and poor than white and middle-class, and also more likely to live in a
neighborhood where the presumed virtue of the United States and its
western allies isn’t axiomatic.
Many Christians across the Middle East remain leery of American
foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq war, an outlook turbo-charged by
what was perceived as our abandonment of Afghanistan. In Latin America,
many people have long memories of the checkered history of the U.S. in
the region. Even in Africa, many ordinary people today favorably
contrast China’s policy of investment and engagement with what they see
as broad American neglect.
Francis is the pope who’s put a face on these trends, the first
pontiff from the global south, the first from Latin America and the
first from outside Europe since the early centuries of the church. In
some ways it’s a return to Catholic roots, in that the very first pope,
St. Peter, was born in Bethsaida in modern-day Israel, into a people who
were also fairly skeptical about the day’s great empires.
None of this background, obviously, addresses the substance of the
pope’s line on Ukraine, which is open to legitimate debate – even the
most sweeping conception of papal infallibility would not include his
positions on geopolitics. Moreover, Francis himself claims not to be
bothered by the criticism, telling the Jesuits, “The pope does not get
angry if he is misunderstood, because I know well the suffering that is
behind it.”
Yet as Auguste Comte, the father of modern sociology, famously put it, “Demography is destiny.”
By that rubric, American and European Catholics probably ought to get
used to hearing notes from the Vatican that don’t come from the NATO
playbook – because whatever else popes may be today, they don’t seem
destined to be the chaplains of the Atlantic alliance anymore.
As a footnote, Francis arguably has another reason not to be irked if
he’s perceived as friendly to China right now, which is the Vatican’s
desire to see its controversial deal with Beijing over the appointment
of bishops in the country renewed. On that front, he might be encouraged
by something else the Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday, in
response to a question about the agreement.
“Since China and the Vatican signed the provisional agreement on the
appointment of bishops, the agreement has been successfully implemented
thanks to the efforts of both sides,” spokesperson Mao Ning said. “The
two sides will continue with the relevant work in accordance with the
agreed agenda.”
Whatever that actually means, it sure doesn’t sound like a flat “no.”
