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POPE FRANCIS I: (Through interpreter) Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is risen. He alone has the power to roll away the stone that blocks the path of life.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
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.
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CARDINAL JEAN-LOUIS TAURAN: (Non-English language spoken).
DETROW: 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.
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FRANCIS I: (Speaking Italian).
DETROW: But that setting also regularly showcases another aspect of the role Francis and his predecessors have played - world leader.
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FRANCIS I: (Through interpreter) In calling for respect for the principles of international law, I express my hope for general exchange of all prisons - prisoners between Russia and Ukraine. All for the sake of all.
DETROW: That's another moment from Francis' March 2024 Easter blessing, as war raged between Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and Israel.
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FRANCIS I: (Through interpreter) I appeal, once again, access to humanitarian aid be assured 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.
DETROW: Francis hasn't just focused on war, though. He has repeatedly tried to point the world's attention to two ongoing challenges - immigration...
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FRANCIS I: (Through interpreter) 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.
DETROW: ...And climate change.
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FRANCIS I: (Through interpreter) 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.
DETROW: 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.
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POPE JOHN PAUL II: The decisive factor in the success of those nonviolent revolutions was the experience of social solidarity in the face of regimes backed 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.
DETROW: And his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, regularly worked to reduce global inequality.
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POPE BENEDICT XVI: (Through interpreter) Human rights are more often presented as a common language and the ethic underpinning of international relations.
DETROW: Much of the world has spent the past two weeks focused on Pope Francis' health. And the reason why has as much to do with the fact that he is a powerful geopolitical force as it does with the fact he's a key religious figure. To dig into the reasons why, we spoke to Colgate political science professor, Tim Burns.
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?
TIM BURNS: Yeah. Well, I think I would make a distinction if I could between the two...
DETROW: OK.
BURNS: ...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 sort of 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 and 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?
DETROW: 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.
BURNS: 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 Julian Assange released WikiLeaks, there was a whole tranche of documents that came to be called Vatileaks, where it showed that institutions, like the U.S. 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 U.S. government, where the church could, as I think it was the Bush administration said, use their moral voice at the U.N. and, in diplomatic terms, where we could be more sort of straightforwardly political about it.
DETROW: Interesting (ph).
BURNS: So there weren't examples where, you know, this outcome was different than that 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 U.N. 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.
DETROW: How has Pope Francis' approach to global politics differed from the way that John Paul II approached this?
BURNS: 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 Karol Wojtyla 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 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, when 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 laypersons, 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.
DETROW: 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?
BURNS: 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.
DETROW: That's political science professor, Tim Burns. Thanks so much for talking to us.
BURNS: Well, thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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