The appointment of Karachi’s archbishop as a cardinal will be a boost to relations between Pakistan and the Holy See and opens the door to the country appointing a full time ambassador to the Vatican, a senior Muslim politician says.
Shahryar Khan Niazi, who has responsibility for international affairs and policy making of the Pak Sarzameen party in Pakistan, welcomed Pope Francis’ decision to give a red hat to Archbishop Joseph Coutts, whom he says is respected by the government and Muslim leaders.
“This is a very proud moment for Pakistan, and all Pakistanis”, Khan Niazi, who last week visited the the cardinal-designate with his party chairman to congratulate the archbishop, told The Tablet.
“There’s a lot of respect for him. This appointment is also going to create more awareness about the Vatican in the country, and I see his nomination as a very positive step. It will help create a connection between Pakistan and the Vatican, and also bridge the communication gap that there currently is.”
Archbishop Coutts, 72, will become just the second cardinal to serve in the Muslim-majority country where he is closely involved with inter-faith dialogue while enjoying good relations with Muslim leaders.
But Khan Niazi said that the level of political engagement between the Holy See and Pakistan is “not high”, something Francis will be keen to address given his focus on building relations with the Islamic world.
At the same time the Vatican is also concerned about the plight of Christians in the country and in February the Pope met with the family of Asia Bibi, the Catholic woman sentenced to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy law and has been imprisoned since 2009.
The Vatican and Pakistan established full diplomatic relations in 1961 and while the Holy See has an embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan’s mission is served from Switzerland by a part-time envoy.
Following Archbishop Coutts' appointment, Khan Niazi, a former adviser to the British High Commission in Pakistan, said he will now lobby the Government to send a resident ambassador to ensure there is a full time diplomatic representation to the Holy See.
“We have a lot of common interests globally,” he explained.
Khan Niazi has worked closely with the Church in Pakistan on education and healthcare, pointing out that many of the county’s political leaders, particularly women, had received their education through church-run schools.
A girls school in Karachi, the Convent of Jesus and Mary, includes a dazzling array of alumni including Benazir Bhutto, the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan who was shot dead in 2007; Nergis Mavalvala, a groundbreaking astrophysicist; Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s youngest female foreign minister and Tehmina Janjua, the first female foreign secretary of Pakistan. Former President, General Pervez Mushareff, also attended a Catholic school.
The Congregation of Jesus and Mary, a religious order founded in Francis in the 19th century, set up the school in Karachi along with a number of others in Pakistan.
Sister Berchmans, one of its religious sisters, has been working in the country for 60 years where she led and taught in the order’s schools: she includes Benazir Bhutto as one of her former pupils. In 2012 she was given one of Pakistan’s highest civil awards for her work in education and promoting interfaith harmony. Meanwhile, Maria Coutts, the cardinal-to-be’s sister, is principal of a Jesus and Mary school in Muree.
Following news of Archbishop Coutts’ nomination as a cardinal, Tehmina Janjua, also a former ambassador to Italy who has met the cardinal-designate several times, sent a message of congratulations, and it is expected that a delegation from Pakistan will be in Rome to see the Pope give Karachis’ archbishop his red hat.
Archbishop Coutts will be formally inducted into the College of Cardinal on 28 June along along with 13 others at a consistory in St Peter’s Basilica.
His appointment comes at a time of increased religious tensions in the country, and major attempts to crack down on extremism. Founded in 1947 as a country for Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan’s laws are in conformity with Islamic teaching. Khan Niazi pointed out, however, that his political party believes the country, while remaining Muslim, belongs to all people including Christians, Hindus and Sikhs.
When asked about the case of Asia Bibi, who has been prosecuted under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, Khan Niazi said: “it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on an ongoing case,” but stressed the Pakistan army “is conducting counter terrorism operations” and that “they have done well to defeat terrorism and extremists”.
Cardinal-designate Coutts, he added, is pursuing a mission to “bring peace to communities” and “works with Mullahs and religious leaders, where there have been issues regarding to religion” while also having links with the government.
Khan Niazi added: “He engages with a range of communities, and that’s the right approach.”
The archbishop, who was been in Karachi since 2012, and whose episcopal motto is “harmony”, was in 2007 given a peace prize by the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.
Today he is the senior bishop in Pakistan, although no longer president of the bishops’ conference, in a Church which oversees a community of million Catholics in Pakistan, a small minority in a population of more than 200 million.
Fr Robert McCulloch, a member of the Missionary Society of St Columban who spent many years serving in Pakistan, said the archbishop has a “wide experience of the discriminatory situation of Christians in the three dioceses where he has been bishop and understands the pressures which Hindus are experiencing as believers.”
He added: “While being a forceful champion for religious freedom, he has constantly worked to further harmonious relations and contacts with Muslim religious leaders within Pakistan.” Fr McCulloch, an Australian priest who is now based in Rome, was given the Sitara Quaid-e-Azam award for services to education and promoting inter-faith harmony by the Pakistani government at the same time as Sister Berchmans.
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