Should U.S. Be Meddling in Pope’s Religious Trips?

Quietly and persistently, the Clinton administration has tried to dissuade Pope John Paul II from making a planned pilgrimage to a religious site in Iraq later this year, to no avail. As recently as last week, under the personal direction of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, the United States was still trying to shame the pope out of visiting Ur in the Mesopotamian desert, where the patriarch Abraham was born, as part of millennium celebrations.

Washington worries that the pope will be “manipulated” by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and that his brief stay on Iraqi soil will “legitimize” the dictator. The Vatican finds this worry absurd and insulting to the pope, who, say Holy See officials, is sufficiently sophisticated and experienced in diplomacy to avoid being “used” by Hussein.

The administration also fears that the pope’s presence in Iraq, planned for early December, will undermine the U.S. and U.N. policy of economic sanctions again Hussein. The pope opposes all such sanctions. Vatican officials insist this is an unfounded fear, too, because the pope has no intention of speaking about sanctions or any other aspect of Iraq’s political life while in the country.

Both sides have kept this diplomatic confrontation private. Washington doesn’t want to be caught attempting to pressure this most independent-minded of pontiffs. The Holy See has been equally silent, not desiring to embarrass the Clinton administration by going public with the dispute.

But this is at least the third time that a U.S. administration has sought to influence the pope’s behavior and activities. In September 1982, the United States protested, unsuccessfully, the pontiff’s decision to receive then-Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The pope reasoned, correctly, it turns out, that contacts with Arafat might hasten peace in the Middle East.

The pope’s trip to Communist Cuba and meeting with Fidel Castro in January 1998 came despite another U.S. effort to change John Paul II’s mind. Again, Washington feared that the pope’s presence would “legitimize” Castro’s repressive regime. Again, the pope believed that the trip would foster a climate for a peaceful transition, when the time comes, from the septuagenarian Castro to a modicum of democracy. The jury is still out on whether the pope accomplished his goal.

When it comes to the Iraqi problem, Washington, so far, has repeated the error of underestimating the pope’s determination to achieve what he sets out to do, quite apart from the broader consideration of whether it is wise for the United States to interfere with papal diplomacy and religious obligations. To make matters worse, the State Department and the White House were a half year late in learning that the pope planned to pray at Ur, although it was hardly a secret in Rome.

That idea harks back to the early 1990s, when the pope was contemplating a millennial journey retracing Abraham’s path, from Ur, then across today’s Syria and Israel, stopping in Jerusalem and Hebron, and finally proceeding to Mt. Sinai, where he would pray with Jewish and Muslim religious leaders. Abraham, he pointed out, is the father of the three monotheistic religions. But the pope’s deteriorating health and persistent security problems forced him to abandon most of the planned journey.

About 18 months ago, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, a close associate of the pope and chairman of the Jubilee Committee preparing millennium events worldwide, flew to Baghdad and drove 350 miles across the desert to Ur to scout the papal trip. Etchegaray gladly described to friends the utter isolation and emptiness of the place.

Albright, however, was unaware of the pope’s Ur plans until a routine visit to Washington last March by Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican’s foreign minister. Tauran alluded to the Ur trip during conversations with the secretary of state and was surprised that it was news to her.

Albright reacted with what officials described as “shock.” She immediately criticized the trip, emphasizing that Hussein’s human rights violations should not be rewarded with a pontifical visit. Tauran countered that the pope would make it clear to Hussein that he was coming on a purely religious pilgrimage, would spend minimal time at the Baghdad airport in connection with helicopter flights to Ur and engage in no politics or diplomacy. Tauran acknowledged that if Hussein attempted to greet the pope, as one head of state to another, the pontiff obviously would not turn his back as a matter of politeness. These assurances, however, did not satisfy Albright.

A special U.S. briefing team was subsequently dispatched to the Vatican to apprise senior Holy See officials of Hussein’s violations of human rights and religious freedoms, as well as with intelligence on Iraqi nuclear arms and chemical and bacterial weapons. Vatican officials responded that they were familiar with this material through their own diplomatic and intelligence channels.

The briefing was followed in April by a visit to the Vatican by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas R. Pickering, traveling in Europe at that time, who met with his Holy See counterpart and again argued against the Ur journey. Making no headway, U.S. officials say, Pickering informed Albright that nothing further could be accomplished through direct pressure on the Vatican. The policy, it was agreed, was to concentrate on damage control and protect the economic sanctions against Hussein.

To that end, the State Department released a special report last Monday charging that Hussein was using his oil dollars to construct a lavish resort for his top supporters at Saddamiat al Tharthar, west of Baghdad, instead of feeding his starving people. Diplomats here suggested that the release of the report was not only timed to coincide with the opening this week of the annual session of the U.N. General Assembly, where Iraqi sanctions are certain to be debated, but also to help discourage the pope’s trip to Ur. Simultaneously, the administration asked New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor to use his influence to change the pope’s mind; the two men are quite close.

In defending the pope’s commitment to human rights, a Vatican official pointed out that the pontiff was the first and thus far the only world leader to visit East Timor, which is under the control of lawless militias and elements of the Indonesian army. The pope’s visit took place in 1989, 10 years before East Timor’s Aug. 30 vote on separation from Indonesia. It should be recalled that when President Bill Clinton journeyed to Indonesia, he did not request to be taken to East Timor, where the Suharto regime was guilty of widespread rights violations.

The Vatican official suggested gently that “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”