Francis Reclaims Vatican's Role as Diplomatic Mediator

Vatican City: Perhaps the timing was purely coincidental. But a day after he was credited with helping broker the historic diplomatic breakthrough between Cuba and the United States, Pope Francis began his Thursday morning by greeting a new crop of Vatican diplomats and offering some advice.

"The work of an ambassador lies in small steps, small things, but they always end up making peace, bringing closer the hearts of people, sowing brotherhood among people," he said. "This is your job, but with little things, tiny things."

Yet if the Vatican has long practiced a methodical, discreet brand of diplomacy, what has changed under Francis - or has been restored - is a vision of diplomatic boldness, a willingness to take risks and insert the Vatican into diplomatic disputes, especially where it can act as an independent broker.

Even as the Vatican has spent decades building trust in Cuba, and working to steadily break down the impasse with the United States, it was Francis who took the fateful risks - writing secret letters to President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro of Cuba, and then offering the Vatican for a secret and critical meeting between both sides in October.

The comparison now cited by many analysts is with Pope John Paul II. If the two popes are not always simpatico on ideology, both men have understood how to use the papacy in a global media age and use the power of personal biography to help position the Vatican as a neutral broker.

Just as John Paul, the first Polish pope, had a unique credibility as a voice against Communism in Eastern Europe, so, too, does Francis - the first Latin American pope - now benefit from a unique credibility in the developing world.

"There are elements to Francis that are John Paul-esque," said Francis Campbell, a former British ambassador to the Holy See, adding that Francis has embraced the bully pulpit provided by the papacy. "The papacy is one of the world's great opinion formers.

Whether people agree with it, or disagree with it, it has a huge voice."

It is far too soon to know how much Francis can influence other contentious global issues. He hosted a June "prayer summit" with the Israeli and Palestinian presidents that provided a photo-op but seemingly brought few concrete results. Soon after, Israel ordered an assault in Gaza against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group.

Francis also has inherited long-standing Vatican standoffs, including with Saudi Arabia, and especially China, where the Holy See and the Chinese government are engaged in a decades-old diplomatic impasse over which side will control bishops in China's state-sanctioned Catholic churches.

The delicacy of the China issue was evident last week, when Francis refused to meet the Dalai Lama, apparently to avoid offending the Chinese, who regard the Tibetan spiritual leader as an enemy.

Yet, judging from his itinerary, Francis is pushing to establish the Vatican as a trusted diplomatic broker. In less than two years as pope, he has already traveled to the Middle East, Turkey, South Korea, Brazil, Albania, France and the Italian island of Lampedusa, where he called attention to the plight of migrants. Next month, he will travel to Sri Lanka and the Philippines, and next fall, he will make his first visit to the United States.

Francis inherited a Vatican bureaucracy in disarray and tainted with scandal after the unexpected resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Benedict was seen as an inattentive administrator and one of his senior aides, former Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, has been blamed for poor management and was later investigated for corruption.

Francis has revamped the bureaucracy, delegating financial tasks to a new economy ministry, while appointing diplomats to key posts elsewhere, most notably his second-in-command, Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, an Italian cardinal who has led delicate Vatican negotiations with Vietnam and served as apostolic nuncio, or ambassador, in Venezuela.

Unlike during the Benedict era, Francis and Parolin are seen as working in tandem - the charismatic pope and the methodical diplomat.

"This pope governs together with the secretary of state - he doesn't let him act separately and independently like before," said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert with La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper. He added that Francis also has quickly built a rapport with world leaders. "He establishes relationships very easily."

In the past, the Vatican was often regarded by the non-Western world as aligned with Europe or the United States. An Argentine, Francis has regularly sought to place himself in a more neutral position, often in subtle ways.

Speaking to journalists on the papal airplane after his trip to Turkey, Francis did not hesitate to criticize the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, yet he also spoke empathetically about the negative perceptions, linked to terrorism, that are often endured by Muslims.

"So many Muslims feel offended, they say: 'But that is not what we are. The Quran is a prophetic book of peace. This isn't Islam,'" he said. "I can understand this."

For his role in the Cuban diplomacy, Francis was following in the footsteps of John Paul, who visited the island in 1998 and called for the United States to lift the economic blockade. At the time, there had been speculation that John Paul's trip might break the U.S.-Cuba stalemate but it did not happen.

Even so, analysts say Catholic leaders continued to nudge the Cuban government for change. During the 1990s, several U.S. bishops made regular forays to Cuba, criticizing the blockade and placing attention on the difficulties faced by ordinary people.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the archbishop of Havana, is credited with adroitly navigating the difficult role of defending the church against government persecution, even as he kept contacts alive with the Cuban regime.

Ortega also happened to be in Rome on Oct. 3 and met with Francis, according to Vatican records, raising the possibility that he, too, attended the secret October meeting that is credited with sealing the diplomatic deal.

"Ortega has always pushed for a gradual reform of the regime, for opening up, but at the same time he has been a trustworthy partner for the government - and with the full support of John Paul II, Benedict and Francis," said Marco Politi, an author and veteran Vatican analyst.

In the end, though, it was Francis who helped engineer the final breakthrough. "Francis has brought back the Holy See on the international stage," Politi said.