On the eve of Pope Francis’ most anticipated bilateral meeting at the G7 in Borgo Egnazia, the one with United States President Joe Biden, the Vatican has published Francis’ Message for the World Day of the Poor, with a reminder that is a whip against war . Because it is war that Francesco comes to talk about in Puglia, ten face to face with heads of state and government, as well as giving a speech on the risks of artificial intelligence and its applications in the arms industry.
“The violence caused by wars – Francis wrote – clearly shows how much arrogance drives those who consider themselves powerful in the eyes of men, while they are miserable in the eyes of God. How many new poor people does this bad policy based on weapons produce, how many innocent victims!” . With these premises, the meeting with Biden promises to be very different from the one that took place in the Vatican on 29 October 2021 for the official visit of the Catholic president of America, one year after his election.
Francis’ honeymoon with Biden lasted only a few months. Then the rift of the war unleashed by Moscow in Ukraine opened. In an interview with Corriere della Sera, already on 3 May 2022, the Pontiff had made his thoughts clear and clear, namely that Russia had been provoked, that NATO was barking at Moscow’s gates. In the last two years the Vatican has appeared in Washington as too permeable to Russia. Certainly Francis never tired of remembering “the tormented Ukraine” in prayer, and the first head of state he will see today will be Volodymyr Zelensky. But the fluctuating relations with the Patriarchate of Moscow, and the strategic need for the Vatican to keep the door open with the Kremlin, after the almost complete opening with China which will be made official next October, have heavily influenced Vatican diplomacy, whose humanitarian commitment , with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, managed to bring home only a small number of Ukrainian children kidnapped by the Russians, out of the over 20,000 forcibly moved to Russia.
Precisely on the days of the second anniversary of the war, Francis took matters further, going so far as to ask that Kiev quickly raise the white flag in an interview on Italian-Swiss TV managed with truly problematic timing. Recorded on 2 February 2024, it was “launched” by the broadcaster more than a month later, on 9 March (despite the broadcast being scheduled for 20 March), published in full on Vatican News. We waited for the right moment which fit perfectly into the military, media and diplomatic pressure that was encircling Kiev in those days: coinciding with the advance of Putin’s military campaign which was proceeding at an accelerated pace, American military aid slowed down to unlikely by the Republican-led House, or rather led by Donald Trump who is now sure of the nomination to run for the presidential elections and equally sure of obtaining peace in Ukraine in a few minutes, on Moscow’s terms, of course. The Pope, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not, allowed himself to be “used” by the cultural program “Cliché” on Swiss TV. “Sometimes they use me,” Francesco confessed more than once.
An overall unsatisfactory situation for the United States. Meanwhile, on May 30, the American ambassador to the Holy See Joseph Donnelly announced that his assignment will end on July 8, leaving the embassy vacant to a charge d’affaires, well beyond the summer vacation period, right in most delicate moment of the transition in Washington and the November vote to elect the new president who, it must be remembered, will only take office on January 20, 2025.
It is an “insertion” in the American electoral campaign that Biden saw, as well as for the war in Ukraine, also in the case of the word “abortion” in the final declaration of the G7 under the Italian presidency of Giorgia Meloni, and which according to the minister Francesco Lollobrigida would have been withdrawn from the text out of respect for Francis. According to the Washington Post, Biden threatened to blow it up, putting the American veto. It does not seem coincidental that the matter was immediately commented on by the White House National Security Advisor, Jack Sullivan, who declared that the president would not back down on rights. Then the issue was resolved with lexical devices typical of diplomatic convergences, but the affair was seen in the White House not as a petition of principle, but rather as a new attempt at interference in the presidential campaign, so much so that at the stroke of midnight in Italy Biden himself had a comment launched on abortion nationwide. The stakes couldn’t be higher for women across America.” And the women’s vote could decide the elections.
“The Pontiff is happy that I am a good Catholic”, a Catholic “in good standing”, Biden said while speaking to the White House reporters who followed him to Rome on his visit to the Vatican. When asked if the issue of abortion had been discussed, the American president replied “no”, but reported that the Pope (in their record-breaking 90-minute “one to one” meeting) had told him that he should continue to receive communion. Not a devout atheist, therefore, (like the Italian and foreign personalities who crowded onto the Vatican scene at the time of Benedict XVI’s pontificate) nor what in Italy would be defined as an “adult”, centre-left Catholic. That is, he is presumptively accused of separating private faith and political action. An adjective which, moreover, never touched the very Catholic Giulio Andreotti, who even signed law 194 on the termination of pregnancy as President of the Italian Council (and no one ever thought of denying him the Communion which he received from the very hands of Saint John Paul II, the beloved Pope by Giorgia Meloni).
