ROME – In a recent interview with the Jesuit-run America magazine, Pope Francis defended each his concessional approach to engagement with China and his hesitancy to sentence Russia over its role within the war in Ukraine.
Asked concerning the Vatican’s controversial agreement with China on the appointment of bishops and his alleged silence on human rights abuses in China, Pope Francis said, “It shouldn’t be a matter of speaking or silence.”
“That shouldn’t be the truth. The truth is to dialogue or to not dialogue. And one dialogues as much as the purpose that is feasible,” he said, praising the late Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who served because the Vatican’s Secretary of State from 1979-1990 under Pope John Paul II.
On the time, Casaroli was the chief architect of the Vatican’s policy of Ostpolitik toward the Communist bloc.
Casaroli’s approach was condemned by critics as being overly desirous to compromise, yet it has also been praised by historians who argue that this soft tactic helped keep the church alive until the autumn of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Pope Francis said Casaroli “did what he could, and slowly was in a position to re-establish the Catholic hierarchy in those countries.”
“Dialogue is the best way of the most effective diplomacy,” he said, and in terms of China, “I actually have opted for the best way of dialogue. It’s slow, it has its failures, it has its successes, but I cannot find one other way.”
His remarks got here amid fresh tension between China and the Holy See, which on Saturday issued a rare public criticism of the Chinese for installing an auxiliary bishop in a diocese not recognized by the Vatican, saying the move violated the terms of their 2018 provisional agreement of episcopal appointments.
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Francis also defended his apparent unwillingness to directly criticize Russia or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Once I discuss Ukraine, I speak of a people who find themselves martyred. If you’ve gotten a martyred people, you’ve gotten someone who martyrs them,” he said, saying he stresses the cruelty of the war generally because he has received a number of information concerning the troops accountable for these acts of cruelty.
At a general level, “the cruelest are perhaps those that … aren’t of the Russian tradition, reminiscent of the Chechens, the Buryati and so forth,” he said, but admitted that the force accountable for invading Ukraine “is the Russian state. This may be very clear.”
“Sometimes I try to not specify in order to not offend and moderately condemn basically, even though it is well-known whom I’m condemning. It shouldn’t be obligatory that I put a reputation and surname,” he said.
When it comes to his refusal to directly name Putin as responsible within the war, Pope Francis said he hasn’t done it “since it shouldn’t be obligatory; it’s already known.”
He accused critics of wanting to “latch onto a detail,” saying, “Everyone knows my stance, with Putin or without Putin, without naming him.”
The Holy See’s position “is to hunt peace and to hunt an understanding. The diplomacy of the Holy See is moving on this direction,” he said, and reiterated the Vatican’s willingness to mediate the conflict.
Conducted Nov. 22 and published Monday, Pope Francis’s interview with America Magazine is the primary interview he has given to an American publication since taking office.
Present for the interview were Jesuit Father Matt Malone, the outgoing editor in chief of the publication; Jesuit Father Sam Sawyer, who will replace Malone; executive editor Kerry Weber; Vatican correspondent Gerry O’Connell; and Gloria Purvis, host of “The Gloria Purvis Podcast.”
Within the conversation, the pope touched on a big selection of other issues, including polarization within the church in the US, racism, abortion, and the trust between lay faithful and their bishop.
Francis said “polarization shouldn’t be Catholic.”
“The essence of what’s Catholic is each/and,” he said. “The Catholic unites the great and the not-so-good,” he said, saying that when polarization occurs, “a divisive mentality arises, which privileges some and leaves others behind,” whereas the Catholic approach “at all times harmonizes differences.”
Relating to the US church, “you’ve gotten a Catholicism that’s particular to the US—that’s normal. But you furthermore mght have some ideological Catholic groups,” he said.
Asked a few lack of trust within the US bishops’ conference, with one study finding that just 20 percent of faithful find it “very trustworthy,” Pope Francis said it was “misleading” to concentrate on the connection between Catholics and their bishops’ conference.
“The bishops’ conference shouldn’t be the pastor; the pastor is the bishop. So one runs the danger of diminishing the authority of the bishop once you look only to the bishops’ conference,” he said, saying the conference is essential when it comes to fostering unity among the many bishops themselves, but “each bishop is a pastor” of their very own flock.
The pontiff praised Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, which sits on the border with Mexico, saying he doesn’t know where Seitz stands ideologically, but “he’s an excellent pastor… He’s a person who grasps all of the contradictions of that place and carries them forward as a pastor.”
On abortion, Francis said that even on the scientific level, it’s indisputable that the unborn fetus “is a living human being.”
He kept away from calling the fetus an individual, saying “that is debated,” but called abortion “a criminal offense,” and asked, “Is it right to do away with a human being to resolve an issue? Second query: Is it right to rent a ‘hit man’ to resolve an issue?”
The issue with the abortion debate, he said, is when “killing a human being is transformed right into a political query,” or when pastors talk concerning the issue using “political categories.”
Francis also touched on clerical sexual abuse, including the necessity for greater transparency when the case involves allegations against a bishop, in addition to racism, calling the latter “an intolerable sin against God.”
On women’s priestly ordination, Francis said, as he has previously, that it’s impossible from a theological perspective, but that more room must be created for ladies in leadership and administrative positions.
