There is a curious innovation in Pope Leo’s method of governing : his frequent sending of telegrams written “in the name of the Holy Father,” but signed by the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
They are published in all caps, just like traditional telegrams, but with punctuation and paragraph breaks as in normal writing. And they are unusually long, contrary to the typical telegraphic brevity.
The first telegram of this kind to make news was the one sent on August 18 to the bishops of the Amazon. Which was by no means routine, but urged them both to avoid putting political battles over the proclamation of faith, because “wherever the name of Christ is preached” “injustice recedes proportionately,” and to care for the natural resources “that speak of the goodness and beauty of the Creator,” without submitting to them “as a slave or worshiper”: with a clear corrective reference to the two stumbling blocks of the synod on the Amazon held in Rome in 2019.
This was followed, on August 20, by a telegram to a moral theology conference underway in Bogotá, in which the pope urged people to take Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori as an example of balance between “the laws of God and the dynamics of man’s conscience and freedom.”
And then another telegram on the arrival in India in the 17th century of a great missionary, the Lithuanian Jesuit Andrius Rudamina, who was able to combine the proclamation of Jesus with cultural and interreligious dialogue.
In short, in these and other telegrams sent on behalf of the pope by Cardinal Parolin there is Leo’s evident desire to restore value to the role of the secretary of state, not only as head of diplomacy but above all with “the task of closely assisting the Supreme Pontiff in the care of the universal Church,” as written in the major reform of the curia carried out by Paul VI after Vatican Council II, with the 1967 apostolic constitution “Regimini Ecclesiae Universae.”
And Leo’s esteem for Parolin is also confirmed by his affiliation with the Order of Saint Augustine – of which the pope was prior general – which was bestowed on the cardinal on August 27, the feast of Saint Monica, the saint’s mother, in the Roman basilica named after her son, for his “merits acquired toward the Order.”
With the papal telegrams signed by Parolin, but not only with these, Leo wants to convey the image of a government of the Church that is not monocratic, with the pope as a solitary absolute monarch, but more “synodal” – for those who love this term – or in any case founded from the outset on the consensus of the one who has the role of first assistant to the pope.
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But there’s more. The concertedness of Pope Leo’s method of governing has found confirmation in recent days precisely on the terrain where in the previous pontificate the disorder at the Church’s highest levels was most visible and damaging : that of wars.
To understand this novelty it is enough to follow the sequence of events.
On August 22 Leo called for a day of prayer and fasting for all those suffering because of war, and the same day saw the publication of the message from the pope, signed by Parolin, to the Meeting for friendship among peoples, organized in Rimini by Communion and Liberation.
In his message the pope expressed appreciation for the witness of the martyrs of Algeria, killed in the nineties for not bowing to the order to leave that land. And the day after, August 23, receiving at the Vatican a group of refugees from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, forced into exile some time ago to make way for the Anglo-American military base on Diego Garcia but returned to their islands by an agreement in London on May 22, he took the opportunity to say that “all peoples, even the smallest and weakest, must be respected by the powerful in their identity and rights, in particular the right to live in their own lands, and no one can compel them to a forced exile.”
Everyone sees in this admonition of Leo a reference to the people of Gaza, under pressure to leave their land. And this is certainly the thinking of the Christians living in that territory, as evidenced by the joint statement published on August 26 by the Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Theophilos III, who quote verbatim none other than Leo’s words to the Chagos Islands refugees of three days before, to also say that “there can be no future based on captivity, displacement or revenge.”
In Gaza City, from which the government of Israel wants to expel all its inhabitants for military occupation, live the two small Christian communities of the Strip, the Catholic (see photo) and the Orthodox, which shelter hundreds of civilians, including Muslims, many of them weakened and malnourished. “Leaving Gaza City and trying to flee to the south would be nothing less than a death sentence,” the two patriarchs write. And for this reason, the clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds.”
It is the same response that the martyrs of Algeria gave to those who wanted to force them into exile. And it is what Pope Leo reiterated on Wednesday, August 27, at the end of the general audience, explicitly associating himself with the statement of the patriarchs of Jerusalem : “I plead that all hostages be freed, that a permanent ceasefire be reached, that the safe entry of humanitarian aid be facilitated, and that humanitarian law be fully respected, in particular the obligation to protect civilians and the prohibitions of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.”
And that same August 27, a few hours later, Cardinal Parolin, questioned by journalists, also agreed with what the pope and the two patriarchs had said regarding the expulsion of the population of Gaza City.
It is hard to find a more concerted and concordant message than the one expressed by these voices. And on such a sensitive issue. But for Leo – it is now clear – this is how the governing authority of the Church should be and appear.
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It can be added that, by restoring influence and authority to the secretariat of state, Pope Leo has effectively set to the side the role that the Community of Sant’Egidio exercised on the terrain of international relations during the pontificate of Francis.
Sant’Egidio’s rivalry with the secretariat of state was particularly evident with regard to the war in Ukraine, on which the respective judgments were very discordant, with Francis siding decisively with the Community’s pro-Russian orientation.
One proof of the change of course silently effected by Leo was the scant attention given on July 26 to the visit to the Vatican of Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, second in command of the Moscow Patriarchate and chairman of the department for international relations.
In the summer of 2023, on the occasion of a previous visit to Rome by Metropolitan Anthony and then the sending to Moscow of Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, a historic member of Sant’Egidio, as Francis’s delegate, the noise had been much greater, with particular emphasis given to the friendly relations between Anthony and the leaders of the Community, founder Andrea Riccardi and vice-president Adriano Roccucci, responsible for relations with Russia.
Today the Holy See’s voice on the war in Ukraine is again just one. And it is the pro-European and pro-Atlantic one, clearly and unanimously expressed by Leo and the secretariat of state, finally appreciated by the heroic Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and its major archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who now no longer have to suffer, in addition to ruthless Russian aggression, the collateral damage of Sant’Egidio’s “pacifism” and the inconsistencies of Pope Francis.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry : traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
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