APPEASING HATE--YEAH, THAT'LL WORK:

The Word From Rome (John L. Allen,Jr., National Catholic Reporter)

For once, I came to the States and the big Vatican news of the week followed me here. I refer to the mission of Cardinal Pio Laghi, who met with President George Bush on March 5 in a last-ditch effort to avert war in Iraq. This was but the latest installment in the Vatican?s full-court diplomatic press. The day before, in fact, John Paul II quietly received Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a rare Bush ally in Europe, for an exchange of views about the international situation.

In his conversation with Bush, Laghi accented the role of the United Nations, a constant theme of Vatican diplomacy. The Vatican sees the U.N. as the last, best hope for a meaningful international political organism capable of representing the common good within the economic order being constructed by globalization. Laghi also stressed that Iraq must comply with U.N. disarmament plans, the Vatican?s way of underlining that while it is anti-war, it is not pro-Saddam Hussein.

After his session with Bush, Laghi defined the meeting as "very friendly" but also "very frank," diplomatic code language for a meeting in which no one changed position.

The Vatican is under no illusion that Laghi's appeal, in itself, is likely to stay Bush's hand. Privately, sources in the Secretariat of State say that while one can always hope for a miracle, war is likely a foregone conclusion. The Vatican's diplomatic service, the oldest in the world, is anything but naive, and it is not in the habit of throwing good diplomatic capital after bad.

What, then, are they after?

Laghi, the 80-year-old former papal ambassador to the United States, was speaking, indirectly but unmistakably, to Cairo and Tehran, Khartoum and Peshwar, and Jakarta and Abouja. His presence in Washington spoke a message to the Islamic street: This is not our war.

Making that point is seen by Vatican diplomats as especially urgent in light of fears over the fate of Christian minorities in Islamic nations. In several such places, Christians are facing increasing strain.

Persecution of Christian minorities is cause for war, not an argument against it.

MORE:
Vatican Peace Initiative (Religion & Ethics Newsweekly)

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 7, 2003 7:38 PM