Modbert
Daydream Believer
- Sep 2, 2008
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WikiLeaks cables: Pope wanted Muslim Turkey kept out of EU | World news | The Guardian
These specific cables certainly offer a interesting glimpse behind the curtain of the Vatican when it comes to diplomacy.
The cable released by WikiLeaks shows that Ratzinger was the leading voice behind the Holy See's unsuccessful drive to secure a reference to Europe's "Christian roots" in the EU constitution. The US diplomat noted that Ratzinger "clearly understands that allowing a Muslim country into the EU would further weaken his case for Europe's Christian foundations".
But by 2006 Parolin was working for Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and his tone had distinctly chilled. "Neither the pope nor the Vatican have endorsed Turkey's EU membership per se," he told the American charge d'affaires, "rather, the Holy See has been consistently open to accession, emphasising only that Turkey needs to fulfil the EU's Copenhagen criteria to take its place in Europe."
In 2004 Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope, spoke out against letting a Muslim state join, although at the time the Vatican was formally neutral on the question.
Roman Catholicism is the only religion in the world with the status of a sovereign state, allowing the pope's most senior clerics to sit at the top table with world leaders. The cables reveal the Vatican routinely wielding influence through diplomatic channels while sometimes denying it is doing so. The Vatican has diplomatic relations with 177 countries and has used its diplomatic status to lobby the US, United Nations and European Union in a concerted bid to impose its moral agenda through national and international parliaments.
The cables also reveal that the Vatican planned to use Poland as a trojan horse to spread Catholic family values through the structures of the European Union in Brussels.
In 2001 another American diplomat to the Vatican stated: "The Holy See will continue to seek to play a role in the Middle East peace process while denying this intention." (1792)
These specific cables certainly offer a interesting glimpse behind the curtain of the Vatican when it comes to diplomacy.