Russia, West must put peace before partisan interests – Cardinal Parolin

July 31, 2017 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Vatican City, Aug 1, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- If problems between Russia and Western countries are going to be resolved, the two must overcome differences and concern for personal interests in order to achieve peace, Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Thursday.

“The question of peace and search for a solution to the various crises underway should be placed above any national or in any case partisan interest,” the Vatican Secretary of State said ahead of a planned trip to Moscow in August.

“I am convinced that it is part of the Holy See’s mission to insist on this aspect.”

Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican’s top diplomat, spoke about the Holy See’s mission in Russia in an interview with the Italian newspaper “Il Sole 24 ore,” published July 27.

Earlier Parolin told Italian media that he will be visiting Moscow sometime in late August, though the trip and exact dates have not yet been announced by the Vatican. It is believed the visit will include meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Vatican diplomat told journalists in June.

Speaking about Russia’s influence in the world, Cardinal Parolin noted that though there has been a period of uncertainty around Russia’s position on various issues, the country has always been part of the international scene.

Often, he said, we emphasize the differences between Russia and various Western countries as if “they were different worlds,” but in this context “the challenge is to contribute to a better reciprocal understanding between those who risk presenting themselves as opposite poles.”

“Here there can be no victors or defeated. Indulging your own specific interests, which is one of the characteristics in this age of return to nationalisms, distracts you from seeing how the possibility of a catastrophe is not averted on its own.”

This effort doesn’t mean the kind of compromise that leads to one side yielding its position to the position of the other, he underlined, but rather “a patient, constructive, frank, and at the same time, respectful dialogue.”

This kind of dialogue, he emphasized, is even more important for those questions at the origin of current conflicts and those that risk inflaming further tension.

The cardinal gave a few examples to show that the Holy See has always been invested in Russia and in Eastern Europe generally, such as the visit to Rome by Tsar Nicholas I in 1845, where he had two meetings with Gregory XVI.

Two years later he drew up an agreement with Bl. Pius IX. “The local Churches stood alongside their people, also in the dramatic moments of the persecutions,” he said.

“It is not just its being at the borders of Europe that makes Eastern Europe important, but also its historic role in terms of civilization, culture and Christian faith.”

The Holy See’s consideration of Eastern Europe is “long-running,” he emphasized, even in the most difficult times, the Church’s approach to diplomacy being always one of peace.

“The Holy See does not seek anything for itself. It is not present here and then there to not lose on any side. Its attempt is one that is humanly difficult but evangelically unavoidable, so that nearby worlds return to dialogue and stop being torn apart, by hate even before the bombs.”

Asked about the new administration in the United States, in particular President Donald Trump, and the international responsibility of the U.S., Cardinal Parolin said we cannot rush, but that “time is needed to judge.”

“We hope,” he noted, “that the United States – and the other actors of the international scene – will not divert from their international responsibility on various themes which up to now has been historically exerted” – particularly those surrounding new climate challenges, poverty and ongoing conflicts.

As regards conflict and the new challenges found also in places like Venezuela and China, Cardinal Parolin said that they “call for unprecedented and creative responses, but in the end the aim of the Church has always been the same, and it is by nature pastoral: bring God to man and man to God.”

“Specifically, the Catholic Church asks that it is guaranteed the right to freely profess one’s faith for the benefit of everyone and for harmony in society,” he continued. “Catholics wish to live their faith serenely in their respective countries like good citizens, working toward the positive development of the national community.”

If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

Related Articles

No Picture
News Briefs

Take care of those on the peripheries, Pope Francis tells mayors

September 30, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2017 / 10:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Saturday told mayors that they must go to those on the margins of their communities in order to learn how to best serve the common good, including the needs of the poor, unemployed, and migrants and refugees.

“To you, mayors, let me say, as a brother: You must frequent the peripheries, those urban, those social and those existential,” the Pope said Sept. 30.

To do so is to learn from the best school, he continued, because it teaches us about the real needs of people, shows us injustice, and helps us to build better communities, where everyone is recognized as a person and citizen.

“I think about the situation in which the availability and quality of services is lacking, and new pockets of poverty and marginalization are formed,” he said.

This is where a city becomes divided, he said: on one side of the highway are the secure and well-off and on the other are the poor and unemployed – including families and migrants who have no support.

Pope Francis’ speech was made in an audience with Italian mayors, members of the National Association of Italian Towns (ANCI), in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican Sept. 30.

In the audience he spoke about the specific issue of immigration, saying that he understands that many people are uncomfortable in the face of the massive arrival of migrants and refugees.

This discomfort is understandable, he said, especially when there is innate fear of the “stranger,” and the already-present wounds of economic crisis, lack of community, and inadequate response to emergencies by the government.

Francis said that these challenges can only be overcome through personal encounter, including the mutual exchange of artistic and cultural riches, as well as the knowledge of people’s places and communities of origin.

“I am delighted to hear that many of the local administrations represented here can be among the main advocates of good reception and integration practices, with encouraging results that deserve broad dissemination. I hope that many follow your example,” he said.

It is this way that politics can fulfill the “fundamental task” of helping people to see the future with hope, he noted, saying that it is “hope in tomorrow that brings out the best energies of everyone, of young people first of all.”

If a mayor is close to his or her people, directing everything toward the common good, then things will go well, he continued.

Pope Francis also spoke about the symbol of the city as it is found in Sacred Scripture.  

At the beginning of the Bible we hear the story of the history of Babel, a city “unfinished, destined to remain in the memory of humanity as a symbol of confusion and loss, presumption and division, of that inability to understand that makes any common work impossible,” he said.

The Bible also closes with the vision of a city. But unlike the city of Babel, the new Jerusalem “smells of heaven and tells of a renewed world.”

It is significant, the Pope continued, that the image of the city recurs throughout Sacred Scripture. It teaches us that human society can only stand when rested on the foundation of true solidarity.

Envy, unbridled ambition and a spirit of adversity, on the other hand, condemn us to the violence of chaos. To move away from this we need a politics and economy centered on ethics, “an ethics of responsibility, relationships, community and the environment,” he said.

“I would like to talk to you about a city that puts the public well-being above private interests, not allowing corruption or the privatization of public spaces, where the ‘us’ is ‘reduced to slogans, to rhetorical artifice that masks the interests of few,'” he said.

It is this view that helps people to grow in dignity. “It promotes social justice, therefore labor, services, opportunities,” he said.

“To embrace and serve this city it takes a good and great heart, in which to preserve the passion of the common good,” he encouraged, “because what contributes to the good of everyone also contributes to the good of the individual.”

If we do this, he concluded, “then the city will advance and reflect the heavenly Jerusalem.”

“It will be a sign of God’s goodness and tenderness in man’s time. A mayor must have the virtue of prudence to govern, but also the virtue of courage to move forward and the virtue of tenderness to approach the weakest.”

 

[…]

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*