Vatican Diplomacy

For all his other papal duties, Pope Paul VI has always retained a fascination with world diplomacy. He spent 32 years in the Vatican's Secretariat of State, becoming in effect Foreign Minister under Pope Pius XII. One of his most cherished dreams since he stepped into the shoes of the fisherman nearly ten years ago has been to see the atrophied diplomatic muscle of the Holy See reinvigorated. He himself took the initiative with a series of historic journeys to Asia, Africa, and North and South America, becoming the most widely traveled Pope in history.

Now on the offensive again, he has summoned more than 80 Vatican "ambassadors" and heads of missions to Frascati in the Alban Hills near Rome. It will be the first plenary assembly of papal diplomats in Vatican history. The meeting, scheduled for early September, is expected to chart the Vatican's next moves toward better relations with Communist and non-Christian countries. Just how successful Pope Paul's past diplomatic overtures have been is underscored by the fact that the Holy See now has the right to name bishops in all Eastern European countries except Albania, and maintains diplomatic relations with eight Arab states. (It has pointedly avoided formal relations with Israel, since Rome refuses to acknowledge world Jewry's special relationship with its "homeland.")

Another leap forward was taken last July, when the Vatican was formally represented at the Helsinki conference on security and cooperation in Europe --the first international assembly in which the Vatican was an active participant, and not just an observer, since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. China has remained aloof. Despite a number of goodwill gestures by the Pope, the Chinese have shown little interest in dealing with the Vatican. How to establish such relations will clearly be one of the subjects on the agenda of the Alban Hills meeting.

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