SINOGRAPH China dragged into 'kill
the pope' plot By Francesco
Sisci
BEIJING - The story is only
marginally about China. It has more to do with the
many troubles inside the Catholic Church, the
largest and most widespread unitary religion in
the world, a faith strongly institutionalized and
very prominent even outside the large circle of
its over one billion followers - something that
makes the pope, if not the most powerful man on
Earth, certainly the most influential. On
February 10, an Italian left-wing daily, Il fatto
quotidiano, leaked an internal document, which
purportedly revealed a plot to kill Pope Benedict
XVI in November. The plan was reportedly hatched
by a senior cardinal, Paolo Romeo, during a short
trip to China in November, in cahoots with another
cardinal, Angelo Scola, a man widely considered
"papabile", likely to become the next pope.
The plan was revealed to the pope by yet
another cardinal, Dario
Castrillon Hojos, who had
been until recently prefect of the Congregation
for the Clergy, one of the most important
"ministries" of the Church. Castrillon revealed it
by passing the pope a letter "written in German".
Castrillon had been head of the bishops of
Colombia at the time when Romeo was nuncio
(Vatican ambassador) there.
The story was
so wild that after a few hours of shock even the
Italian press, often famished for unreasonable
scandals and secretive conspiracy theories,
dropped it. There was a grain of truth in the
story: Romeo did come to China in November, as he
admitted in a note. That grain is the only known
point in the alleged plot, which seems taken
straight from a Dan Brown novel or Machiavellian
theory. The rest is dusky.
It is not sure
whether Castrillon actually informed the pope.
Although the Italian daily claimed to possess the
original letter to the pope with all the relevant
stamps, it would not be the first time a forgery
was created all or in part to lend credence to
lies. But in theory, the letter is possible.
The rest is simply technically impossible.
Romeo could have not gone to China without
briefing the pope and Cardinal Tarciso Bertone,
the Vatican secretary of state, before and after
the trip. If during the trip he spoke of a plot to
the Chinese, as the daily wrote, he would have
reported it to the pope.
Or, as is far
more likely, he never talked of any plot with
anybody. If he didn't refer about something he
learned or talked about in China, Romeo would have
lied to the pope, a very serious thing for a
cardinal. But the pope still fully trusts Romeo,
as the pope has not in the least reprimanded him,
a sign that the pope believes the cardinal behaved
properly.
Moreover, if there were a plot,
why go to China to talk about it? Wouldn't it have
been more convenient to chat about it in Italy?
Unless somebody were to imply that the
Chinese may have a hand in this plot, just like
the Soviets were behind the attempt on Polish Pope
Karol Wojtyla in 1981. But that was during the
Cold War, when a Polish pope was something that
could de facto help to undermine the Soviet
empire, and therefore it was more than reasonable
to expect Soviet action.
In China, the
relative number of Catholics is decreasing, from
1% of the population in 1949 to about 0.6%
presently; they have caused no great trouble, and
the Chinese authorities can see that the Vatican
now is not confrontational with the government, as
proved by the 2007 letter to the Chinese from Pope
Benedict. Moreover, the Church showed it can work
with regimes that are still officially communist,
like those in Cuba or Vietnam.
The real
problem is that, while China is important to the
Vatican as the new frontier of the faith, the
Vatican is almost irrelevant to Chinese politics,
as Catholics in China are too few and too tame. So
there is no urge in Beijing to improve the
situation.
Conversely, there is the risk
that normalizing relations could encourage more
Chinese to convert to Catholicism. The Chinese
government still has a lot of moral authority over
the Chinese people, and the normalization of ties
would be seen as a government green light to
Catholic conversions, something that could bring
unpredictable consequences.
Then why
should Beijing meddle or even listen to wild
notions of a plot on the pope when the best
political solution would be to simply ignore the
issue?
But the alleged revelations
apparently created some real consequences. They
dragged China's name into a conspiracy theory
about a plot to kill the pope, something that
could further smear the Chinese image, adding to
depictions of China as a religious persecutor and
an offender of human rights.
Yet this is
almost collateral damage. The real heart of the
problem is that the revelations portrayed Romeo
and Scola as conspirators, Castrillon as a fool
ready to give credit to all sweeping rumors and
theories, and Bertone as incapable of keeping his
house in order, with documents leaking left and
right. In the middle, the pope seems some kind of
puppet, subject to all sorts of pushes and winds.
This scandal is the latest in a string of
events. According to other documents leaked to the
press in recent weeks, the Vatican's new
ambassador to the US, Carlo Maria Vigano, was at
the center of allegations of corruption at the
Holy See just before the pope sent him to
Washington. He possibly uncovered a scandal, and
for this was sent away.
The Vatican seems
a house of cards ready to be blown away. Its
leaders are incapable - either too smart or too
stupid - of keeping control, while the base is
rotting with the still-simmering scandal over
pedophile priests. The core difficulty is with the
pope, whose name was already dragged into the
pedophile scandal and now is in the middle of
this, with the letter written in German.
Conspiracy for conspiracy, one could
wonder who wants to undermine the church now - and
why? Definitely, it looks as if the grand
maneuvers ahead of the next conclave (the
traditional meeting electing the pope) are
underway, and someone is trying to remove some
powerful candidates, or in the meantime cut down
some commanding presences in the Holy See and put
the church and the papacy under heavy strain. This
week the pope elected 22 new cardinals who will
eventually elect his successor.
This is
the stuff of old history, for sure. For centuries
the Vatican, because of its importance, cradled
conspiracies, but now things are possibly even
more complicated as there are many new elements to
factor in - the world is changing very quickly,
and the church is trying to find a new dimension
to its global presence. Then naturally, because of
its immense influence, many forces may want to
have a hand in the future direction of this
institution. It would be strange otherwise.
This, in turn, underscores the centrality
of Rome, which has crucial ties with the many
faces of the West, the Muslim world, and the new
rising Asia. Then if so, at the end of it, the
villains of this story look like the real heroes,
trying to ferry the church into the future in very
choppy waters. It is perhaps the heart of it, and
why we could well see even more scandals, true or
false, welling up from Rome in the next months or
even weeks.
Francesco Sisci is a
columnist for the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore and
can be reached at fsisci@gmail.com
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