The Holy See has the experience and the influence to play a role

Pope Francis as Castro-Obama Intermediary

by Roland Flamini

The day after the US-Cuban announcement of renewed relations, Pope Francis, by coincidence, received 13 new ambassadors to the Holy See and used the occasion to welcome the new agreement as a triumph of diplomacy. “Today we are all happy because we have seen how two peoples, distanced for so many years, make a step nearer to one another,” he said. “That was brought about by ambassadors, by diplomacy. Your job is noble work, very noble.”

“The work of ambassador lies in small steps, small things,” the pope told the ambassadors from Mongolia, the Bahamas, Dominica, Tanzania, Denmark, Malaysia, Rwanda, Finland, New Zealand, Mali, Togo, Bangladesh, and Qatar, “but they always end up making peace, bringing closer the hearts of people, sowing brotherhood among peoples. This is your job, but with little things, tiny things.”

Some might consider that view a trifle optimistic, but from all accounts it certainly worked in the situation that was at the heart of the pope’s satisfaction; and the Vatican has not been reticent in admitting the pope’s own role in bringing to a satisfactory conclusion the exchange of prisoners that opened the way for a “normalization” of relations between the United States and Cuba.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state of the Holy See, told Vatican Radio, “the role of the Holy Father was very significant” in reaching that conclusion, giving “help to the two parties, the United States and Cuba, writing to the two presidents, and stressing the importance of finding a solution to their historical differences.” The Holy See, said the cardinal, provided “a service of facilitating and of promoting the dialogue between the two parties.”

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