Finding common ground to help save the planet is likely to be high on the agenda tomorrow when the Pope meets US President Joe Biden, the first Catholic elected to that office since John F Kennedy.
Although he is not travelling to Glasgow for COP26, Pope Francis is pulling all the diplomatic levers available to influence the climate change summit.
On Saturday he us due to have a private audience with the leader of one of the world’s emerging superpowers, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. After China, the US and India are the countries that produce the highest carbon emissions.
Moments before Biden walks through the marbled floors of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace and underneath its magnificent renaissance frescoes, the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, also a Catholic, will have just left following his meeting with the Pope.
Biden, Modi and Moon are all travelling to Rome to attend the G20 summit and after that will head to Glasgow.
Finding global agreement on how to address climate change is something that Francis has made a top priority of this pontificate. And this is expected to be a top of discussion in all the meetings, in the run-up to what is described as “the last, best chance” to get the world on track to keep to the goals set at the Paris COP.
Francis’ efforts with world leaders also come as the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has talked about being “very worried” that Glasgow may not secure the agreements needed.
The diplomatic groundwork for the Biden-Pope meeting has been carefully laid over recent months. In May, John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate, came to the Vatican to meet Francis while the following month it was the turn of Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State, who came to discuss “tackling the climate crisis”. Finally, on 4 October, in an unprecedented event, the Pope gathered around 40 of the world’s religious leaders in the Vatican to make a pre-COP26 appeal to world governments.
“What Francis has been trying to do is build the momentum,” says Victor Gaetan, author of God’s Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy and America’s Armageddon.
“The list of subjects that might be discussed when the Pope meets President Biden will be long from drug pricing, to peace in the Korean peninsula, to nuclear submarines in China, to terrorism and abortion. But what really burns the Pope’s heart is global warming. He released Laudato si’ [his encyclical on the environment] to influence the 2015 Paris summit which then led to the historic Paris agreement. Crucially, he has explicitly linked poverty, peacemaking, social justice to environmental concerns.”
The Pope's meeting with Biden also symbolises a new era in the US-Holy See relationship after the tension of the Trump years. Biden, 78, is from the same generation as the 84-year-old Pope, and they share common ground on several issues. Both have shown a desire to combat the divisiveness of nationalist populism, support multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and protect the environment.
Gaetan, who is senior international correspondent for the National Catholic Register, pointed out that as vice-president Biden “absorbed Laudato si’ in detail” while his decision to rejoin the Paris agreement after President Trump pulled out is appreciated in the Vatican.
Nevertheless, there are still areas of tension between the Holy See and Washington DC. The threat that some bishops in the US want to deny Biden communion over his pro-choice stance on abortion also looms large over this meeting. Rome has indicated it does not go along with the approach of the hardline US bishops, and images of the Pope meeting Biden will further underline Francis’ desire for dialogue rather than confrontation.
Earlier this month he met another Catholic politician who certain bishops believe should be refused communion for her support for abortion rights: Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives.
While Francis has unequivocally and repeatedly condemned abortion, he also says that communion is not a prize for the perfect but “a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” The Church’s law leaves the matter of reception of communion as a matter between Biden and his bishop, and this matter is unlikely to feature prominently in the Pope’s discussions with the president.
One of the “rules of thumb” for Holy See diplomacy, as Gaetan explains in his recently published book, is to find common ground and build from there. This approach has been deployed with the Pope’s relationship with the Muslim world and which led to the landmark Abu Dhabi document signed by Sunni leader Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb and the meeting with Shia authority, Ayatollah al-Sistani, in Iraq.
Finding common ground is also likely to be the Vatican’s strategy with Modi, whose Hindu nationalism runs counter to Francis' tireless efforts to defend religious pluralism and promote inter-faith harmony. The Pope has long wanted to visit India but has yet to receive a formal invitation. Meanwhile, anti-Christian persecution is on the rise in the country.
Gaetan says that Modi’s visit shows the Pope’s credibility on the world stage, which has only been enhanced by his ability to bring religious leaders together in a joint initiative on climate change. The Indian Prime Minister, however, is seeking to woo voters ahead of next year’s elections in Goa, where roughly a quarter of the population is Christian.
Having indicated he was willing to make the trip to Scotland, Francis decision not to travel to Glasgow has disappointment many. The presence of the Pope at a climate summit would have sent a powerful signal. Nevertheless, the Vatican delegation will be led by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State, and include members of the UK’s Catholic development agencies, Cafod and Sciaf.
Whatever the final outcome, the Pope’s final push ahead of the Glasgow summit offers some hope to Johnson, the leader of the host country who, like Biden, is also a Catholic. With a make or break summit about to get underway, the British Prime Minister needs all the help he can get to ensure a global agreement is achieved.
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