As many WPI readers doubtless know, the past two days have seen (at least) two startling claims, with boundless ramifications for the United States, the Church, and the world. One of these – open, public, and widely disseminated – arrived via social media on Tuesday:
This frankly genocidal post, if taken seriously as a practical proposition, would have implied a unilateral nuclear first strike against a country without nuclear weapons.
The other, less noted but hardly less startling, appeared in The Free Press yesterday. Journalist Mattia Ferrarese referenced a meeting at the Pentagon between then-Papal Nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby on January 22. Citing unnamed Vatican officials, his article posited a “bitter lecture” levelled at the cardinal, including intimations of a 21st Century reprise of the Avignon papacy – in essence, a captive pope, subject to American imperial power.
It is worth noting that neither Cardinal Pierre himself nor Fr. Antonio Spadaro SJ, the undersecretary for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, a prominent Vatican voice on social media and the author of a new book on Vatican diplomacy, have spoken publicly to any of these allegations. Fr. Spadaro posted the following today on X:
“The diplomacy of the Holy See does not seek the spotlight, but it is never absent. This became clear now when the Apostolic Nunciature in the United States confirmed a meeting on January 22 between card. Christophe Pierre and officials at the Pentagon.
At a time when international language is increasingly dominated by the logic of force, deterrence, and security, the quiet presence of Vatican diplomacy in places of power takes on a particular significance.
That unusual meeting at the Pentagon signals that Vatican diplomacy can enter the very spaces where that logic is shaped, in order to introduce-discreetly-another grammar. It is not a spectacular diplomacy, but a diplomacy of presence: listening, dialogue, persistence.
It is also a signal addressed to American Catholicism. The Holy See does not present itself as a counterparty, but as an interlocutor. It does not shy away from engagement with institutions, not even military ones, but seeks to orient that engagement toward what it calls “areas of mutual concern.” In a context marked by deep polarization, this approach avoids both alignment and frontal opposition.
In the end, coherence emerges precisely here: a public voice that rejects war, and a diplomatic presence that does not renounce speaking with those who prepare it-seeking, as far as possible, to prevent its inevitability.”
Any more blunt of a statement would be highly uncharacteristic on the part of Vatican diplomacy; indeed, it would directly contradict the essence of what Fr. Spadaro is saying here.
It should also be noted that the United States War Department has categorically rejected the public characterization of the January 22 meeting, and that Brian Burch, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, has attributed a similar denial to Cardinal Pierre himself. No confirmation of the ambassador’s statement in this regard, from the cardinal, the Nunciature, or any other official Church channel, has been forthcoming; once more, it would be entirely in the spirit of Fr. Spadaro’s statement to remain silent here.
However the case may be, it seems unlikely that the appearance of the Free Press article yesterday was entirely coincidental, or unrelated to the threats issued by the President the day before. Whatever did or did not belong to the exact character of the January 22 meeting, the events of this Easter week have been a shock to the Church and the world. As Pope Leo said on Tuesday, “Today as we all know there was this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable.” Although there is no way of being certain, the prospect that the Tuesday threats pushed someone in the Vatican diplomatic corps or the Curia over the edge of their customary discretion does not seem totally far-fetched.
Ferrarese, the journalist who broke the story for The Free Press, tweeted on X regarding the “paradox” that “one of the most Catholic administrations in U.S. history is also one of the most antagonistic to the Holy See.” Yet it is unsurprising that a would-be restoration of civic Christianity should run up against the guardian of Christian truth; those who wish to accentuate the ethnocultural aspects of religion are often impatient with moral and doctrinal niceties, and our Lord’s call to repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God has rarely found much favor with Caesar in any case.
It was the Easter Octave last year when our Holy Father Pope Francis died. I hope that no one, in the United States or elsewhere, is seriously contemplating another Avignon captivity – although one hardly would have needed to go back to the fourteenth century to find the pope under political duress. Let us pray this Easter Octave for our current Holy Father, that his efforts for peace and the preservation of human values may meet with the success achieved by the first Leo.
Raphael: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20199736
Dr. Paul Chu is currently a philosophy instructor for CTState, the Connecticut Community College, and has previously taught philosophy in college, university, and seminary settings. He also served as a staff writer and editor for various national publications. He is co-founder of Sacred Beauty, a Private Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport dedicated to honoring the beauty and holiness of God through artistic and intellectual creativity founded in prayer, especially Eucharistic contemplation. He contributes regularly to https://questionsdisputedandotherwise.substack.com/.
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