Italy’s long experience can be useful to the US in coping with the Church. The bishop of Rome won’t yield to pressure but will help a sinner.
It must have been a very embarrassing moment. Reportedly, an American official shook the Papal Nuncio with the possibility of ‘Avignon’, the town where, in the 15th century, the French King moved the papal seat and appointed his own Pope against the ‘anti-Pope’ in Rome. The report was consequently denied by the American administration, but it is still quite awkward for the US.
Italian politics was born and grew in relation to the Church and the Pope. Italian unification itself was achieved by first eliminating the Papal State and then the Holy Roman Empire. The two institutions had occupied the peninsula and served as the cornerstone of European politics for over a millennium. Italians, therefore, carry in their DNA an awareness of how delicate the relationship between their State and the Pope truly is. Despite this, difficulties have never been absent — not in the past, not today — whether the Pope is Italian or not. It is therefore understandable that the United States, founded on a deist, Protestant, and substantially anti-papal ideology, does not quite know how to manage its first American Pope.
To rub salt in the wound, the current American president, Donald Trump, is controversial and often unpopular outside the United States, while the Pope is respected and popular both inside and outside the country. In some ways, the Pope represents another America — one different from Trump’s — that attracts many people in America and around the world who are skeptical of, or outright hostile to, current American policies, yet still dream of the American ideals of another era.
As an Italian, then, a few simple pieces of advice for American Catholics and non-Catholics alike who are unsure what to think or how to relate to the Pope and his Church.
The Pope, beyond and before his country of origin, is the Pope — and therefore he cannot follow the policies of any particular state. From the ninth century AD until 1918, the end of the First World War, the Bishop of Rome had a special relationship with the Holy Roman Emperor, whose seat eventually came to rest in Vienna. Even that special relationship was delicate and contentious, as the Pope always asserted his authority and global influence independently of the Roman Emperor’s policies. Nor was a clear hierarchy ever established between the Bishop of Rome and the Emperor — unlike the relationship that did exist between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Byzantine Emperor.
After the fall of the Papal State in 1870, and even more so after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1918, the Pope neither wishes nor is able to return to any kind of symbiotic or privileged relationship with the head of government of any country. Today more than ever, the Catholic Church projects itself onto the world stage. The majority of its conversions occur in Africa, and its greatest area of strategic interest is Asia, where it remains a tiny minority within what is 60% of the planet’s population. Many Muslims, despite old differences, now pay attention to the Pope, who spoke often of their plight as refugees and immigrants. The Bishop of Rome cannot and certainly does not wish to turn his back on the West and on the world’s leading power. But neither can he align himself with the American political agenda.
In theory, the long-term challenges facing the Catholic Church could resemble those surrounding the cultural — even before political — influence of the European and Western world, of which the United States is the keystone. But these dynamics cannot be easily described in hierarchical, chemical, or arithmetic terms; rather, they can — and perhaps must — find a productive dialectic between the parties involved. This is new ground, even for a Church that for over a century had turned inward, focused on defending and caring for its own faithful while neglecting issues that did not directly concern its Catholics. Today, however, under Pope Francis and now under Pope Leo, the Church speaks to 8 billion people on this earth — not simply to its 1.4 billion Catholics.
In this delicate balance, the Church has one clear compass: do not use religion to wage war. The Church didn’t allow Ukrainians, whose majority faith is loyal to Rome, to use it against the holy war called by Russian patriarch Kiril, because it doesn’t want Christianity involved in the fight against the religious Shiite nation of Iran. The Church had had enough of crusades and death for or against the cross.
Then some practical suggestions: talk to the Pope as a son to a father, or even as a brother, or as you would to a venerable holy man in a funny dress — but definitely never as a boss to an employee. The Catholic Church has stood up, respectfully but stubbornly, to every earthly power for millennia. It won’t buckle to a president now.
Find common ground, speak of your troubles, but also listen deeply. The Pope can then become your best friend. And in this relationship, the Church will be tolerant — it knows the world is made of sinners, not saints.
Ah, and the same advice, for what it’s worth, applies to any other head of government as well, including China’s President Xi Jinping.
