Religion: Spiritual Diplomacy

Many a Protestant views with deep disapproval what he considers the worldly power-politicking of the Roman Catholic Church—the signing of concordats, the exchange of representatives, the whole machinery of diplomacy. Some Catholics, too, would rather see their church concentrate on spiritual leadership and keep out of world politics.

Last week Rome’s official Jesuit fortnightly, Civiltà Cattolica, printed a significant article to explain how mistaken this idea was. “There are many sincere believers, Catholics full of idealism, who look with disquietude and almost a secret anguish on the diplomatic activity of the vicar of Jesus Christ. They would prefer . . . that the Church should never appear to be conniving with this or that policy or with any particular regime.” Such notions, the article went on, grew out of ignorance of what Vatican diplomacy really is, or how much the spiritual good of Catholics can be benefited by the encouragement of “benevolent government respectful of Christian principles . . .”

Committee of Cardinals. Civiltà Cattolica’s article gave new impetus to Vatican rumors that the Pope is planning an important realignment and expansion of the Holy See’s diplomatic machinery. Having spent almost his entire priesthood in the diplomatic service (nine years of it as Secretary of State), Pius XII now serves as his own Secretary of State and is reputed to have accomplished some of the most skillful diplomatic egg-walking of modern times. But before long, Vatican observers report, the Pope may turn the job of directing the enlarged diplomatic service over to a committee of perhaps nine cardinals.

Supplying the personnel for an expanded staff of diplomatically trained clergy will be the task of an institution of learning that is 250 years old this year—the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. Though it has turned out four popes, 98 cardinals and 42 papal nuncios since it opened in 1701, the academy on the Piazza della Minerva has had a checkered career. Three times popes have seen fit to close it. In 1829 a contemporary chronicler wrote: “If in the city or in some fashionable salon you meet a young man wearing perfumed ecclesiastical garb and whose hair is much pomaded and who shows other outward signs of levity, you cannot be mistaken if you come to the conclusion that he either belongs to the Ecclesiastical Academy, or pretends to.”

Triumph of Truth. Not until the reign of Pius IX (1846-78) and his successor Leo XIII did the Ecclesiastical Academy begin to become the major source of church talent and brains that it is today. From all over the world promising young men are now brought there for two years of juridical and diplomatic study before going on for their practical training in the State Secretariat.

In a letter congratulating the academy on its recent anniversary, Pius XII, himself a teacher there for five years, stressed the spiritual nature of Vatican diplomacy. All students of the academy, he wrote, “must become convinced that there is no better nor more authoritative way of representing the Apostolic See in the diplomatic field, and at the present time even more than in all times past, than to bring about the triumph of truth, of justice and of unbounded charity.”