Judging by an image he has published by himself carrying a liturgical miter and papal dresses and his statements in recent days on his desire to become pontiff, American president Donald Trump seems to be unusual in the role of the Vatican in global politics. But he is not the only world leader with the skin of the game.
At a time of great international tension, religious radicalization and apocalyptic nuclear threats, the temptation for countries to influence the conclave is strong.
And although they come there more discreetly than Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni would try to have a pontiff that would be suitable for their priorities.
Rifts in Western political order ride internal cleavages within the Vatican, which saw the Catholic Church look further geographically and in terms of faith.
Consequently, the cardinals who choose the next pope could be polarized between Centralisers and Internationalists, suggests that Francesco Clementi, professor of public law comparative to the University of Sapienza in Rome.
“At the conclave, there will be a confrontation between an interpretation of the Church based on an idea of its central government and one according to which the European Church, faced with the West crisis, must in a way decentralize as much as possible,” he told Euronews.
The reforms of the Church institutions initiated by the late Pontiff moved to the second hypothesis, that of the internationalization of the Vatican executive and decision -making structures.
Pasquale Ferrara, director general of political affairs and international security at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and professor of diplomacy and negotiation at the University of Luist in Rome, said that the internationalization of the church elite had reached a tilting point.
“Pope Francis has appointed the cardinals all over the world,” he explains. This multinational composition brings very different sensitivities in the conclave. I believe that this conclave will precisely have the role of bringing the devices of the world to Rome. “”
In 2013, many observers called Pope Francis the “Pope of the Americas”. In the United States, the faithful and the political establishment believed that with its appointment, the axis of the Vatican power had passed from traditional Eurocentrism in the American world.
But the active and critical positions of Pope Francis on subjects such as war, the rights of migrants, social fractures of the current economic order, the dialogue of the Church with China and Russia, and his will to criticize Israel have frustrated some of their expectations.
“It is clear that all the values contained in the encyclical laudato against a socio-economic model that Pope Francis considers unfair: that of turbo-space, environmental devastation and a kind of neo-imperialism deprived of great technology”, explains Pasquale Ferrara.
These transnational problems do not only concern a country, he explains, but are clearly at the heart of the reality of life in the United States.
“It is a bit reductive to think that it is a question of being for or against the United States.”
The conclave agenda
War and peace are historically dear political subjects to all popes, but Pope Francis has sent his diplomats to historically active mediation roles in wars in Ukraine and Gaza, going far beyond the “you will not kill” command.
ADVERTISEMENTThe political positions of the deceased pontiff attracted both criticism and enthusiasm. In some cases, the Vatican diplomats had to correct their arguments on some of Pope Francis' sentences – as “NATO barking on the border of Russia” – in which the Vatican seemed to place authoritarian regimes and liberal democracies at the same ethical level.
Professor Stefano Cecanti, constitutionalist and former member of the Italian Parliament in the Democratic Party, described this model of commitment as “an excess of realpolitik”.
He contrasts the mandate of the last pope with a trend that started in 1965 with the Council of the Second Vatican, which opened the Church to modernity.
“On the wave of the affirmation of democratic Christian parties in Europe and the Catholic, democratic and anti-communist American president John F Kennedy, the Catholic Church and Pope Paul VI have established that democracy is the political regime closest to evangelical ideals,” he told Euronews.
ADVERTISEMENTThe openings and understanding of Pope Francis with non-democratic countries, notably Russia, China and others, have caused a certain consternation even within the Church itself.
“In some cases, perhaps the difference between the need of the Church to coexist and interact with non-democratic countries, such as China, and the consciousness of differences (substantial for the doctrine of the Church itself) between established democracies and undemocratic regimes have not been well understood,” said Cecanti.
During the funeral of Pope Francis, Trump and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy conversed in a chapel of the Saint-Pierre basilica. They did it next to a section of the old sarcophagus of the Hadrian and Otto emperors which was transformed into a baptismal police at the end of the 17th century, a period of political triumph for the Jesuit tradition in which the deceased pope belonged to a political and cultural influence on the major land of European and distant lands in the world which exposed a political and cultural influence on the two European lands and world.
There were also ephemeral appearances during discrete discussions in the United States-Ukraine in St Peter's by Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, while a third president was left vacant.
ADVERTISEMENTSome commentators joked by saying that the seat was not really empty, but occupied by the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian entity which supposedly inspires the cardinals during the election of the popes. Perhaps the art of agreement would extend to a joint venture with the Holy Spirit for the control of the future papacy.
The Secretary of State, the Cardinal Electoral and among the papal candidates, Pietro Parolin, will have favored a meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy in a relaxed atmosphere. But Trump had already revised some of his positions towards Russia by Vladimir Putin.
Diplomacy and decentralization
In the case of the Russian War in Ukraine, Cardinal Paroline and British arch Richard Gallegher have always clarified that Moscow is the aggressor and said kyiv's right to defend himself, says Cecanti, who points out that “the council works with the concept of legitimate defense”, a more restrictive idea than “war”.
With regard to the invasion of Russia on a large scale of Ukraine, the two cardinals have effectively realized the Vatican policy with the positions of the European Union and the United Kingdom.
ADVERTISEMENTHowever, the growing importance of the so-called periphery of the Catholic Church is also important for the revitalization of Rome and Europe, the traditional center of its historical and spiritual action.
Cecanti concludes that as the internationalization of the Church develops, respect for local diversity must also develop. “We will have to get used to solutions on certain questions that are a little more decentralized and diversified,” he said.
A large question oscillates on the conclave: will the future approach of the pontiff on the international order pursue the reforms initiated by Pope Francis, or will he take a step back and focus on traditional political relations with Western powers as in the time of Benoît XVI and John Paul II?
The latter was just as active as Pope Francis in international politics, and is even recognized as one of the architects of the end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
ADVERTISEMENTCardinal Parolin, one of those who were a new potential pontiff, has laid the foundations of a new international Vatican policy. But many observers believe that the new composition of the conclave, with many cardinals of games previously far from the world, could offer many surprises.
