By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Pope’s Foreign Policy

After Pope Francis’s death, on April 21, much of the world’s attention has focused on his personality: his humility, his humor, his hands-on management style. All that goes to the grave. The Argentine pope’s contributions to Vatican diplomacy, meanwhile, will be a lasting legacy. Francis charted a diplomatic course independent of Western capitals, elevated Catholic leaders in countries that had never been part of the church’s governance, and honed a diplomatic method that is both pragmatic and aspirational.

Through those efforts, Francis repaired relationships that had deteriorated under his predecessors and left behind a strengthened diplomatic network with access across the world. His successor must now capitalize on the vast goodwill accrued under Francis to advance the church’s priorities of compassion, justice, and peace. The tools to conduct meaningful and wide-ranging papal diplomacy are at the ready. The question is whether the next pope will have the prowess to make the most of a strong hand.

 

Looking Outward

Francis’s longest trip as pope, a 12-day journey through Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore last September, exemplified many of his diplomatic priorities. One way to improve relations between the Catholic Church and the Muslim world, particularly with followers of Sunni Islam. Those relations were at a low ebb under Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. In 2006, Benedict had given a speech that many Muslims perceived as insulting the Prophet Muhammad. And in 2011, one of the world’s highest Sunni authorities, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb, cut ties with the Vatican over comments Benedict made after a terrorist attack in Egypt. Francis was able to mend fences with Tayeb and ultimately built a productive friendship. The two leaders appeared together in 2019 in Abu Dhabi to sign a landmark joint agreement opposing religious extremism during what was already a historic trip—it was the first time a pope had visited the Arabian Peninsula.

Francis’s visit to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, reaffirmed his commitment to interfaith collaboration. He attended a meeting with other religious leaders at Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, and expressed his admiration for Indonesia’s healthy approach to religious coexistence. Symbolizing those connections, the Istiqlal Mosque is connected by an underground tunnel to a Catholic cathedral across the street.

Francis also urged the Catholic Church to be less institutional, or inward-looking, and more missionary, turning its attention to the peripheries of global society. He stocked the College of Cardinals, which will select his successor, with men from countries that previously had little or no representation in the church’s leadership. Among his appointees were cardinals in 25 countries that had never had one before, including Papua New Guinea, Singapore, and Timor-Leste. All popes use cardinals as envoys, but no pope has planted them in as many places.

This network of new leaders served Francis’s goal of making the church less Eurocentric and more focused on countries where Catholicism is spreading. He visited 13 countries in Asia and nine in Africa during his papacy, a notable increase from Benedict’s three African visits and zero trips to Asia. Timor-Leste, the country with the highest percentage of Catholics in the world, offers a prime example of the church’s growing influence. When Indonesia invaded East Timor (as it was known before its independence) in 1975, about 20 percent of residents were Catholic. Ten years later, that figure was 95 percent. During the Indonesian military occupation, which lasted until 1999, the church protected persecuted people and publicized records of atrocities, including massacres, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, starvation, and rape. When Francis visited, nearly half the country’s population of 1.3 million attended the mass he offered, despite extreme heat. Speaking on the ground where the Indonesian military had buried Timorese freedom fighters, Francis warned against the intrusion of Western liberal values that encourage materialism and selfishness.

 

Multipolar Vision

Francis often presented his view of the globalized world not as a sphere but as a polyhedron, a metaphor that he said “expresses how unity is created while preserving the identities of the peoples, the persons, of the cultures.” He appreciated, for example, Singapore’s determination to remain above the fray of geopolitical rivalries and embrace multipolarity. And during Francis’s papacy, the Vatican itself made strident efforts to cross geopolitical divides, devoting particular diplomatic attention to China. Before Francis, mutual suspicion had overwhelmed efforts to resolve a long-standing rift between Beijing and Rome. But when China selected its new leader on Francis’s first day in office, the pope wrote a personal letter of congratulations to Xi Jinping. Xi responded cordially, to the surprise of some Vatican staff.

Francis had a lifelong fondness for China. He selected as secretary of state Pietro Parolin, the cardinal who led the Vatican’s negotiations with Beijing between 2005 and 2009 (and now one of the leading candidates to succeed Francis). A year into his tenure, Francis told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that the Vatican was “close to China” and that diplomats maintained relationships on both sides. Those relationships were vital to resolving a pivotal disagreement over the appointment of bishops: for decades, Beijing had insisted on selecting Chinese bishops itself, rejecting Catholic religious doctrine that grants this authority to the pope. After four years of quiet , in 2018, the Vatican and the Chinese government reached a provisional agreement to make joint appointments of bishops. That agreement has been renewed three times, and 11 new bishops have been approved under its provisions.

Two popes before Francis had tried and failed to find a modus operandi with Beijing. Francis was especially persistent, instructing his diplomats to keep talking with their Chinese counterparts even when they faced setbacks. In earlier negotiations, unilateral decisions in Beijing had caused discussions to break down. But under Francis, the Vatican was undeterred, and eventually it made a breakthrough.

The rapprochement between the Vatican and China was on display at a conference in Rome last year, marking a century since a papal envoy, Cardinal Celso Costantini, convened an official synod of church leaders on the Chinese mainland that led to the appointment of six indigenous Chinese bishops. Foreign missionaries had led the Catholic Church in China before the 1924 synod rejected that practice. Among the participants at last year’s Rome conference was the bishop of Shanghai, Joseph Shen Bin, who gave a speech in Mandarin explaining that Beijing does not want to change the Catholic faith but expects Chinese Catholics to defend indigenous culture and values. Notably, Shen Bin had been transferred to Shanghai from another diocese by the Chinese government without Vatican consent. The move could have dealt a fatal blow to the 2018 agreement, but Francis instead decided to accept it, and even to welcome Shen Bin to high-level policy discussions in Rome.

Francis’s diplomacy in China faced extensive criticism, especially from the first Trump administration. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even wrote an essay in 2020 castigating the Vatican for its deal with Beijing. (In response, the Vatican rejected Pompeo’s request to meet the pope weeks later.) But being seen to oppose Washington boosted the Vatican’s reputation for geopolitical independence—an identity Francis cultivated. After he returned from his trip to Asia last September, for example, he told his weekly audience with thousands of faithful in Rome, “We are still too Eurocentric, or as they say, ‘Western.’ But in reality, the Church is much bigger, much bigger than Rome and Europe, much bigger!”

In addition to his approach to China, Francis split from Western powers in his response to the war in Ukraine. He opposed sanctions against Russia, following the church’s long-standing position that sanctions should not be used as a diplomatic weapon because they harm the well-being of regular people. Francis also prioritized ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. Popes since John XXIII, who served from 1958 to 1963, have pursued Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation, and strengthening the Vatican’s relationship with the Moscow patriarchate was one of Benedict XVI’s greatest diplomatic achievements. Francis developed a close friendship with the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, and expanded on Benedict’s outreach to the Russian Orthodox Church. At an airport in Havana, Cuba, in 2016, he became the first pope to meet a Russian patriarch in person. His signature on a joint agreement with Patriarch Kirill, however, unnerved some Ukrainian Catholics.

As conflict escalated in Ukraine, Francis refused to demonize Russia. Instead, he spoke about the tragedy of “fratricide” between Christian brothers. He often accused arms merchants of fomenting war. He even dared to suggest that NATO expansion, which he described as “NATO barking at Russia’s door,” contributed to Russia’s decision to invade. To be sure, he condemned the war and offered public prayers for the “martyred Ukrainian people,” even from his hospital bed, but he never leveled a personal charge against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

The Next Diplomat

Even if some of his positions could be controversial, Francis made Catholic diplomacy relevant again. He empowered the Vatican’s diplomatic apparatus, adding a new section to the Secretariat of State to support diplomatic staff. He strengthened peace efforts by naming cardinals in conflict areas, including Syria and Jerusalem, the latter a jurisdiction that covers Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories and is led by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, now a candidate to become Francis’s successor. Francis also bolstered small Catholic communities by planting first-time cardinals in the predominantly Muslim Bangladesh, Iran, and Pakistan, and the predominantly Buddhist Mongolia, Myanmar, and Singapore. To lead the department that focuses on interreligious dialogue, Francis appointed an Indian diplomat, Cardinal George Koovakad.

The values and strategy that Francis brought to international engagement are rooted in the gospel; they are not unique to him. His diplomatic style, moreover, is taught to the Vatican’s corps of priest-diplomats at the world’s oldest diplomacy school, the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. Parolin, the secretary of state and Francis’s foreign policy architect, attended the school. Should he be elected to succeed Francis, he will carry on with the work he began under Francis 12 years ago. But Francis also elevated plenty of other talented leaders with potential diplomatic gifts. If his successor is chosen from the global South, his evangelical campaigns may continue. The 135 cardinals who will elect the next pope may well choose this route. Considering that 108 of them were elevated by Francis, often referred to as the pope of surprises, chances are that the conclave, too, will surprise the world.

 

 

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