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By Robert Mickens | Vatican City
Pope Francis obviously believes in miracles.
In the nine years he's been Bishop of Rome, he has canonized more saints (899) than the combined total of his previous eight predecessors and he'll canonize 10 more in May. He's also approved a record number of 1,475 beatifications.
Almost all these saints and some of these blesseds (except for the martyrs) were officially raised up as models of Christian faith only after it was proven that they worked at least one miracle.
That means Francis has officially recognized the validity of well over 1,000 miracles during his pontificate.
And now more than ever, he and his diplomatic aides need just one more. And quite urgently.
At least if they think there's any chance Russia would ever let them mediate the extremely worrying global crisis the Kremlin unleashed more than two weeks ago when it unjustifiably invaded Ukraine.
There is no question that the 85-year-old pope and the Vatican diplomats are as horrified as anyone by the terror Vladimir Putin has rained down on Russia's neighbor to the West.
And they have repeated over and over again that they are willing to do anything they can to stop the bloodshed and destruction in Ukraine.
Francis has even been willing to refrain from mentioning Russia or the word "invasion" in his public statements -- i.e. refrain from naming and shaming Putin -- in the vain hope that this might convince the Kremlin that the Vatican could be an honest broker in the crisis.
Cyril Hovorun, a leading Ukrainian-born Russian Orthodox theologian, this week reminded readers of La Croix that it's not likely to happen.
He pointed out that Putin distrusts leaders from the West, viewing them as "heretical, bad and liars, because they are Catholic or Protestant".
And Bernard Lecompte, a French journalist who has done extensive reporting on the Church in Eastern Europe and has written a book on John Paul II's role in the collapse of communism, agrees that there's slim chance that the Vatican can be involved in any sort of mediation.
He noted that Russia does not believe the Holy See could be impartial given the sizable Catholic population in Ukraine.
According to the Vatican-produced Statistical Yearbook of the Church, there are some 4.8 million Catholics among the 42 million residents in the country -- nearly 11.5% of all Ukrainians.
But many of them are Greek (Byzantine) Catholics. And their nearly indistinguishable Orthodox brethren and sistren in Russia -- and especially those in Ukraine -- consider them "Uniate" traitors because of their loyalty to the Roman pope.
So like the old R&B song goes, if there is any hope for the Vatican playing even a minuscule role in negotiations between these two countries, "it's gonna take a miracle".
Working from a crumbling paradigm
Yet probably most Catholics -- certainly those in the hierarchy and in the Roman Curia -- truly believe the Holy See continues to play a vital and necessary role in promoting peace, security and human dignity throughout the world, principally through its old and venerable diplomatic apparatus.
They are correct, at least partially. But they forget that the price for sitting at the table of the world's rich and powerful can be quite steep for the Church -- including the loss of its prophetic voice.
The Vatican's diplomatic apparatus is linked to a paradigm of the Roman Church what was shaped by Christendom and the ancien regime, a paradigm that has been collapsing at various speeds and in different degrees since the French Revolution and the Enlightenment.
Papal diplomacy was set up during "a phase in which (the Church's) temporal power still existed and the pope was first and foremost a sovereign", noted the late Jesuit scripture scholar and archbishop, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.
"That power, thanks be to God, is over and cannot be restored. It is fortunate that it is over," he said in a 2009 interview with La Repubblica.
"Vatican diplomatic structure could be dismantled"
The cardinal, who died three years later, questioned whether it was necessary and compatible with the Church's true mission to hold on to this last vestige of power, the diplomatic service.
Certainly there is a diplomatic structure of the Holy See, but it is still composed of priests whose ultimate goal is to witness the evangelical preaching and its prophetic content. I would add that the diplomatic structure, in my opinion, is far too redundant and expends far too much of the Church's energies.
This has not always been the case. In the history of the Church, for many, many centuries, this structure did not even exist and in the future it could be greatly reduced if not actually dismantled. The task of the Church is to bear witness to the word of God, to the Incarnate Word, to the life of the world to come. Everything else is secondary (Carlo Maria Martini SJ, interview in La Repubblica, June 18, 2009).
The Holy See enjoys the sui generis status of being a sovereign legal personality or entity in the international community, which includes the privilege of forging full diplomatic relations with states.
Through this unique arrangement it has jealously tried to preserve its gradually fading legacy as a world (or at least European) "power".
The Holy See today is a vestige of the old Papal States (Lo Stato Pontificio), which were dissolved in 1870. Its clerical leaders have always argued that by relinquishing its territorial statehood, the Holy See gave up its temporal power and focused on exerting a global moral authority.
But that authority has been badly eroded over the past century or more. It has been almost completely shattered in the past few decades alone by the clergy sexual abuse crisis and its cover-up by the hierarchy, including officials in the Vatican. And, worse, the abuse and the cover-up continue to this day.
The price for sitting at the table with world leaders is being paid right now during Russia's ongoing military assault on Ukraine.
Not only has the pope refused to publicly blame the Kremlin, his effort to position the Holy See as a neutral and non-partisan observer has reached absurd and embarrassing heights, thanks to some of his closest aides.
None was more shocking than Cardinal Pietro Parolin's public statement on Russia's bombing of a children's hospital.
The 67-year-old Italian, whom Francis appointed as his Secretary of State in 2013, called the action merely "unacceptable".
The Vatican's savviest diplomat was, perhaps, too savvy by half.
Unacceptable is when your son comes home three hours after his midnight curfew.
Unacceptable is when someone misses work four days in a row without a valid excuse.
And unacceptable is when a priest scolds people in the middle of Mass.
But bombing a children's hospital is not unacceptable. It is abominable. It is evil.
The online Catholic news aggregator "Il Sismografo" recalled -- with disbelief -- that Parolin had much stronger words in 2015 when a referendum in Ireland approved gay marriage.
"I believe this is not only a defeat for Christian principles, but a defeat for humanity," the cardinal said.
And, indeed, he and other Catholic hierarchs have used words and phrases just as strong, or even stronger, in describing all sort of other things the Church sees as sinful or criminal.
Obviously, the Vatican's approach in this moment -- which is being dictated by the pope -- is to avoid doing or saying anything that will further antagonize Putin. The megalomaniac Russian president does have a nuclear arsenal after all.
But at some point, Francis and his clerical diplomats must face the fact that there is no negotiating or mediating role for them here.
In fact, as Il Sismografo noted, the Holy See has successfully mediated a conflict between two nations only one time in the past several decades. That was the Beagle Channel conflict between Argentina and Chile in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
How best to be a force of good
"Since then the Vatican has facilitated processes of rapprochement -- often with failed interventions and with partial and momentary success," the site pointed out, citing places like the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Colombia and Cuba/United States.
Perhaps it is time for the Vatican and its supporters to abandon the idea that the Roman Pontiff and the Holy See are still major "players" on the global scene and admit that they carry much less weight in the geo-political sphere than they think.
Certainly, the intention is noble and praiseworthy -- to use whatever prestige and power the Church still possesses to act as a force of good.
But therein lies the problem.
Is being such a force of good predicated, as many in the Vatican seem to be convinced, on retaining and enhancing the prestige and power that comes with being a sovereign quasi-state-like entity? Or can this be achieved just as effectively by being a poor, missionary Church?
Perhaps some think it can be both, without relinquishing its seat at the table of the world's most powerful.
But is that possible without further diminishing the historical (yet waning) efficacy of the one or sacrificing the prophetic, evangelical mission of the other?
The voice of Carlo Maria Martini continues to beckon.
Follow me on Twitter @robinrome
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