Diplomacy And Papacy: How Do The Twain Meet?

[The essay analyses the challenges that Pope Francis confronted during his recent trip in an effort to defuse the tensions created by the Rohingya crisis between Myanmar and Bangladesh and also to draw the attention of the world to this massive humanitarian crisis. He seemed unswayed by either praise or criticism, and he drew both. He was able to demonstrate that while, as Pope, he might not command any military divisions, as Stalin had disdainfully observed, he had the courage to attempt at more than what many other leaders who did.]

- Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Stalin was said to have queried, with a modicum of unjustifiable derision, as to how many military divisions the Pope commanded. This was reportedly a quip addressed at the French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval on May 13, 1935. It happened when the Frenchman had suggested that the Pope would appreciate it if the harassment of Catholics was stopped in the Soviet Union. Given Stalin’s own intensely amoral political predilections, he obviously had failed to take into account the Pope’s moral power, or so the received wisdom goes. Stalin’s assessment was that whatever strength the Pope possessed would cower under the pressure of Soviet tanks. His remarks have drawn much ire since then, and have been much criticized. Eighty three years down the line when the current Pope gave in, to a junta of a much lesser military entity in Myanmar whose treatment of minorities is seen to be no different from that of the Soviets at that time, by trying not to offend them through naming those being persecuted in the country, one could be forgiven for recalling the unfair utterances of the Communist dictator. Not to endorse, of course, but to understand! 

Oscar Wilde had once observed, through a character in his play, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, that if one isn’t a dentist one should eschew talking or behaving like one, because it unnecessarily created a false impression. No one would expect, of course, the Pope to gather wisdom through Wilde’s epigrams, however witty and famous. If he was acting like a diplomat without being one, it was perfectly understandable as, apart from being the Pontiff, he was also a Head of State, and one who might control a geographically tiny territory, but held sway spiritually over a billion people around the world.