US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s September 30 – October 1 visit to the Vatican was a diplomatic profile in courage. Despite the Pope’s refusal to meet the U.S. Secretary of State, Pompeo repeated his warning to the Holy See that if it goes ahead with plans to renew the 2018 Sino-Vatican Agreement, it will compromise the Catholic Church’s moral authority. Pompeo also urged the Vatican to live up to its mission of defending human rights in China, where Catholics churches and shrines are being destroyed and priests imprisoned, and also urged the Pope to reconsider renewing the secret agreement with Beijing, which permits the Communist Party of China (CCP) to have a key role in appointing Catholic Bishops in China.
The Vatican has refrained from any condemnatory comment on the CCP’s persecution, incarceration, torture and forced labor of millions of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province, and has remained silent about Beijing’s contravening its pact with Hong Kong to honor “one country, two systems” until 2047. China has violated the civil rights of Hong Kong’s citizens.
Pompeo’s dose of reality came at a delicate moment for the Vatican. Italy’s Catholics in the diocese of Como in northern Italy were still mourning the September 15 knifing murder of Father Roberto Malgesini by an illegal Muslim immigrant from Tunisia. Pope Francis, while eulogizing Malgesini on September 27, the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, seemed to absolve the murderer of responsibility by describing him as a mentally deranged person, (malata di testa). The Pope has in the past failed clearly and categorically to condemn Koran-based justification of violated Islamic terrorism
The murder of Malgesini is tragically ironic: the priest was an advocate for migrants and an apostle to the homeless. It is possible that the murderer, Mohmoudi Ridha — quoted as saying, “The priest died like a dog, that was right.” — was motivated as well by violence-filled verses against “infidels.”
Pompeo disclosed his warning at a conference on religious freedom hosted by the American Embassy to the Vatican. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, and Bishop Paul Gallagher, the Holy See’s Minister of Relations with States, both disingenuously insisted that the Pope’s refusal to meet Pompeo was normal procedure as the “Pontiff refuses to meet with political officials prior to an election” — the U.S. presidential election was about a month away. The real reason for snubbing Pompeo was more likely the U.S. Secretary of State’s open criticism of the Pope’s pursuit of détente with the Chinese totalitarian regime despite the lack of any ostensible benefit resulting to or from the Holy See’s policy to date.
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