Consider This from NPR - The political power of the pope

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Unlike any other religious leader around the world, the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is also the leader of a sovereign nation. And Pope Francis hasn't been shy about using that political power.He's pushed for an end to the wars between Hamas and Israel, and Russia and Ukraine.And he's repeatedly tried to point the world's attention to two ongoing challenges: immigration and climate change. Much of the world has spent the last two weeks focused on Pope Francis' health. And the reason why has as much to do with the fact that he's a powerful geopolitical force as it does with the fact he's a key religious figure. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Fratelli e Sorelle, brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is risen. He alone has the power to roll away the stone that block the path of life. That's Pope Francis speaking last Easter from the St. Peter's balcony overlooking Vatican Square. He was delivering an Urbi et Orbi, his Easter blessing. The moment and the setting encapsulates the thousands of years of ritual and pageantry associated with the Catholic Church. Annuncio robis, Gaudium magnum, habemus papam. The balcony of the ornate St. Peter's Basilica is the same spot where some 12 years ago,

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was introduced to the world as Pope Francis I. Fratelli e sorelle, buonasera. But that setting also regularly showcases another aspect of the role Francis and his predecessors have played, world leader. In calling for respect for the principles of international law, I express my hope for a general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine, all for the sake of all. That's another moment from Francis' March 2024 Easter blessing, as war raged between

Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and Israel. I appeal once again access to humanitarian aid, be insured to Gaza, and call once more for the prompt release of the hostages seized on 7 October last and for an immediate ceasefire in the Strip. Francis hasn't just focused on war, though. He has repeatedly tried to point the world's attention to two ongoing challenges. Immigration. The exclusion of migrants is scandalous. Indeed, it's criminal. It makes them die in front of us. And so today the Mediterranean is the world's largest cemetery. The exclusion of migrants is disgusting. It is sinful.

And climate change. This requires us, all of us, to face a choice. The choice between continuing to ignore the suffering of the poorest and to abuse our common home, the planet, or engaging at every level to transform the way we act. And those statements echoed those of his predecessors on other issues. Pope John Paul II, a son of Poland, worked to bring an end to communism. A decisive factor in the success of those nonviolent revolutions was the experience of social solidarity in the face of regimes baked by the power of propaganda and terror, a beacon of hope and an enduring

reminder that it is possible for man's historical journey to follow a path which is true to the finest aspirations of the human spirit. And his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, regularly worked to reduce global inequality. Human rights are more often presented as a common language and the ethic underpinning of international relations. Consider this. Much of the world has spent the past two weeks focused on Pope Francis' failing health. The reason why has as much to do with the Pope's geopolitical power as it does with

his spiritual leadership. From NPR, I'm Scott Detro. It's Consider This from NPR. Unlike any other religious leader around the world, the leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics is also the leader of a sovereign nation. And Pope Francis has not been shy about using that political power. This pope, who has a great interest in migration, granted political asylum to 12 migrants a number of years ago and invited them to live within the confines of Vatican City of which he is the sort of absolute political head.

That's Timothy Burns. He's a professor of political science at Colgate University. And he stresses it's that combination of the Pope's political and religious power that has made him a powerful force on the world stage for generations. No one would listen to someone who was the sovereign leader of a 110 acre microstate in Italy. I mean, you know, nobody knows who the leadership of Andorra is. But when it comes to the pope as the head of the Holy See, the leader of a huge transnational

religious institution, that's where he gets his kind of political background, cachet, however you want to put it. The idea that people might listen to him as a moral authority is as the leader of the church. I spoke to Burns this week about the power of the papacy and the power of Pope Francis in particular. Looking at Pope Francis' papacy, what are the through lines you draw through of when he did decide to use this diplomatic power, this soapbox that he has? Yeah. Well, I think I would make a distinction if I could between the two in the sense that he uses his diplomatic powers formally and legally in certain ways that I'll get to in

a moment. But when it comes to his soft power, moral megaphone, leader of the Catholic Church and sort of religious spokesman, I think he's made it pretty clear over the course of his papacy that he wants to direct the interests of the Church and whatever authority he has as the Church's leader towards certain issues that he defines in certain ways. And the clearest one of those is his reaction to climate change. He defines climate change as a moral issue, where what he calls the marginalized of society, who suffer the most from the ravages of climate change,

have played the least role in bringing it about. So I think he wants to, in identifying himself in his church with what he calls the people at the margins, he looks for issues like climate change to say, this is not a scientific problem, this is a moral problem. And he really wants to put it at the foot of the industrialized world to say, you have caused this problem, these people are suffering because of it, what are you going to do about it? So then when I first asked the question, you said you wanted to take them separately.

Let's talk about specific diplomacy because there are also examples of Pope Francis acting in a diplomatic way, whether it was brokering deals between the United States and Cuba or other examples. Yeah. I think the example of Cuba is a very, very good one because it shows that only he, really only he, could play that kind of role in total secrecy and using formally the diplomatic pouch of the Holy See to communicate or to mediate communications between Raul Castro and Barack Obama. Not only in the kind of, well, we can trust the Pope not to reveal our secrets, but to

actually have diplomatic pouch and communication that could go through the Holy See. But that's only a kind of a most obvious example. When Julia Assange released WikiLeaks, there was a whole trench of documents that came to be called VataLeaks, where it showed that institutions like the US State Department across a number of presidential administrations were actually in far more constant and deep interaction with the Holy See than I think people like me thought they were. Just addressing all kinds of issues that was thought to be of shared interest between the church and the US government,

where the church could, as I think it was the Bush administration said, use their moral voice at the UN and in diplomatic terms, where we could be more sort of straightforwardly political about it. And so there weren't examples where, you know, this outcome was different than the outcome necessarily, because the Pope or the Holy See weighed in. But they're very much involved in things involving poverty, war and peace, what this Pope calls gender ideology, which would be sort of one of their conservative bents. They were very deeply involved in international UN conferences on women, on family planning,

etc. So they sort of have a seat at the table that no other religious institution or really no other NGO could even aspire to. How has Pope Francis's approach to global politics differed from the way that John Paul II approached this? Well, I think his emphases have been different. And I think the sort of shorthand and a way simplistic way would be to say that John Paul II was Carol Vortiella of Poland and Francis I is Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina. So they have different sort of political emphases. John Paul II much more interested in the Cold

War and Francis much more interested in this kind of identification of the church with the marginalized in the ways that I think he became famous for articulating in Argentina. The other thing that's different though, and it intersects, as I said before, with the leadership of the church, John Paul II was not only comfortable with,

but aggressively sought a kind of personal identification of the Catholic Church with him. Where Francis has expressed his kind of interest in synodality, as he calls it, where he calls these meetings to Rome and lay persons, clergy, bishops, etc., have been discussing with him issues facing the Church. It doesn't mean that he listens to them or that he changes church's practice based upon what they say, but he's not constantly traveling to other countries, constantly asserting himself as the leadership of the church in every one of his institutional contexts. Matthew 16 Let me go back to Pope Francis one more time.

We talked about a wide range of different approaches that he's taken to global politics, international relations. What to you of these last 12 years is the most significant thing that Pope Francis did in this field? Alan Russell For me, it's this idea that the church that he leads should be seen as what he calls a field hospital for the poor and the marginalized. Whether he's always succeeded in that, whether he's been able to successfully direct the entire church, both in Rome and outside of Rome in that direction, but this is where he gets his strong positions on climate change and migrants, that he believes that the church

ought to be associated with those people. The church ought to be using its resources, both financial, institutional, and this enormous soft power resource that he claims to be focused on the marginalized and the poor, and that every issue that comes along ought to be worked through that frame. I think that's what he decided the day he became Pope and I think that has been his agenda throughout. Now there have been problems with that, one being that he leads a very large complicated church with its own institutional resistance to him, so he finds himself in a kind of a particularly difficult position within the church and speaking

from the church, but I'd have no doubt that that's what he thinks that his legacy ought to be, that those have been his emphases. That's political science professor Tim Burns. Thanks so much for talking to us. Well, thank you for having me. This episode was produced by Tyler Bartleman and edited by Courtney Dornig. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR.

I'm Scott Detfra.