U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived at the Vatican on the morning of Oct. 1 for a visit, and held 45 minutes of talks at the Pontifical Palace with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Vatican Foreign Minister Archbishop Paul Gallagher. Pompeo touched on the issue of religious freedom in China, an issue on which the two sides apparently had what U.S. officials called “tactical differences.
A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two sides had “fruitful” exchanges about China’s human rights abuses and religious freedom. In China, the official said, more than a million Uighurs and Kazakhs are in internment camps, churches are burned, and their Catholic identity is assaulted, and nothing can be done without recognition of such abuses.
Another U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Vatican and the United States share the same goal of freedom for all believers in China, as well as the same goal of closing internment camps and ending forced abortions. But the official said, “They’re not a government, they’re a church, so the Vatican has a different tactical tool at its disposal than a superpower like the United States does.”
The U.S. official also signaled that the differences between the two sides are only temporary tactical differences. The official said that the Vatican has a long-term perspective on human rights and religious freedom, and that it has laid out in documents such as the 1965 encyclical the fundamental principles that must govern its diplomatic contacts with friendly as well as hostile countries, such as the United States. The official continued, “So I think that whenever we talk about religious freedom with the Vatican, there is sometimes tactical agreement or tactical disagreement. But the broader strategic vision of the United States and the Vatican are in lockstep, and it has been and will continue to be from generation to generation.”
After the meeting, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the two sides expressed their respective positions on relations with China and on some of the other conflicts in the world in an atmosphere of “respect, openness and cordiality.
The Vatican on Wednesday (Sept. 30) formally rejected a request for a meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Pope Francis, with Parolin saying, “The Pope has made it clear that he will not receive any political figures before the U.S. elections.
Pompeo had earlier written an article expressing his displeasure with the Vatican’s upcoming renewal of its agreement with China on the appointment of bishops, saying that the Vatican would “jeopardize its own moral authority” if it renewed the agreement. Bishop Parolin said the Pope was “surprised” by the article.
For its part, the Vatican said it interpreted the article more as a deliberate offense than as a diplomatic gesture. Subsequently, the Vatican refused to allow Pompeo to meet with Pope Francis and rebuffed Pompeo’s attempts to block the Vatican’s efforts to renew the agreement with China.
Some analysts say that Pompeo’s request for a meeting is partly about policy issues between the Vatican and China, and partly about the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Pompeo dismissed this as absurd, saying that the visit shows that President Trump is siding with those conservative American Catholics who are concerned about the possibility of a new deal with China under Pope Francis. These people fear that under the leadership of Pope Francis, the Vatican will show weakness toward China.
Secretary of State Pompeo’s visit was welcomed by opponents of Pope Francis who attended a religious freedom event organized by U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Callista Gingrich, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, a conservative leader in the church hierarchy who opposes Pope Francis.
In a speech at the event, Pompeo said that nowhere on earth is the problem of religious freedom violations more acute than in China. He called on the Vatican to join the United States in condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s violations of religious freedom. He said, “There are many meanings of a Church that is ‘always on mission’. One of them, of course, is for the Church to always defend fundamental human rights.”
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