College of Cardinals – the diplomats

Gathering intelligence, brokering deals, bringing people together, persuasiveness – the Vatican’s diplomats have proved adept at all these on the world stage.

It was, for much of the media, the image from the funeral of Pope Francis: US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy deep in conversation in St Peter’s Basilica, just before the Requiem Mass began. Given that their last encounter at the White House had ended in an ugly bust-up, the headline writers could not resist calling it “The Miracle in the Vatican”.

Through backroom channels, papal visits and even seating plans, the Vatican’s diplomatic service has had an impact not just on the lives of Catholics but on the strategy and thinking of whole nations. Take the seating plan at the funeral. French is the traditional language of diplomacy; this was why Trump, President of Les États-Unis d’Amérique, and his wife Melania were seated next to the presidents of Finland and Estonia, with King Felipe of Spain (Espagne in French) just another seat along. So Trump was sandwiched between representatives of two nations who are deeply wary of Russia and highly concerned about any naivety on the part of Trump about President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions in Europe. The funeral might only have afforded a few minutes of conversation, but they can count.

Russia’s impact on freedom of religion, and on peace, has long been a concern of the Vatican. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, Vienna was the crossroads between East and West. Its cardinal, Franz König, charged by John XXIII with heading a new Secretariat for Non-Believers, would travel regularly to Eastern European Communist nations. In Hungary he visited Cardinal József Mindszenty, who was holed up in the US embassy. They would speak in Latin with the wireless turned up to full volume to thwart any bugging of their conversations – including by the Americans. König also visited Poland, where he and the Polish primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, tried to find ways of enhancing religious freedom without provoking confrontation with the authorities.

These were the days of Ostpolitik, a diplomacy of dialogue, developed by Mgr Agostino Casaroli, later John Paul II’s Secretary of State. But John Paul himself provided more direct confrontation with the Soviet bloc. As former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski once said: “To Casaroli, Communism was a form of power one should cohabitate with. To John Paul II, Communism was an evil that could not be prevented, but could be weakened.” In the post-Soviet era, attention shifted to ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox Churches.

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After serving as apostolic nuncio to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, in 2011 the Verona-born linguist and patristics scholar Claudio Gugerotti became the Vatican’s representative in Belarus. Pope Francis then appointed him apostolic nuncio in Ukraine, where he was stationed when Russia invaded Crimea. After a stint as nuncio in Great Britain, he was appointed as prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches; he was made a cardinal in 2023.

The invasion of Ukraine brought into sharp focus how Pope Francis and his diplomats dealt with Putin. In March 2024 Francis suggested that Ukraine should negotiate an end to the war, using the phrase “the courage to raise the white flag”. While others vilified the Pope, Zelenskyy visited him to discuss the humanitarian crisis. Ukraine also highlighted how Francis would sometimes go off-piste. He appointed his own peace envoy, Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, rather than Vatican diplomats to try and help broker peace. Although Zuppi met Zelenskyy in Ukraine in 2023, in Moscow the meeting was with Patriarch Kirill, who has supported Putin’s invasion, rather than with the president himself. There was another meeting of Zelenskyy with Zuppi – now considered papabile – at the Pope’s funeral, as well as with Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

When he met US Vice President J.D. Vance at Easter, Parolin admitted the approach of the current US administration was “not what we are used to”. He seems more comfortable with Beijing, but his outreach to China has been seen as a sell-out and may affect his chances of succeeding Francis. Full details of the China deal have never been published – and secrecy has always been part of the Vatican way of doing things. This was true of the Troubles in Northern Ireland where the British government, sometimes outwardly in dispute with Rome, benefited from back-route intelligence shared by the Vatican and gleaned via its priests in Republican heartlands. But perhaps one of the most astonishing secret Vatican coups was the 2014 deal it brokered to reopen diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba. It involved Francis meeting then US President Barack Obama in the Vatican Library, Cuban President Raúl Castro being handed a letter from the Pope by the cardinal of Havana, Jaime Ortega – and even Georgetown University in Washington being persuaded to host a conference as cover for Ortega to visit the US capital and slip away to the White House, where he personally handed a letter from Francis to Obama.

Gathering intelligence, brokering deals, bringing people together, persuasiveness – the Vatican’s diplomats have proved adept at all these on the world stage. Might the conclave turn to one of them next week?

Catherine Pepinster is a former editor of The Tablet.