Despite risks, Iraqis want Pope Francis to go ahead with visit
- Mar 4, 2021
For believers, the ability to practice their faith and receive spiritual guidance are “the highest of essential services,” and pandemic practices over the past year have shown they are not automatically super-spreader events, the Vatican foreign minister said.
With a number of nations considering some form of a “Green New Deal” for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it is important that these efforts respect diverse cultures and economic policies, and avoid imposing a “uniform” model that ends up causing division, said Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister.
The most obvious conclusion is that the Vatican, in effect, made a deal with the devil: Allow Kondrusiewicz to return, and we’ll take his job away so that he has no official standing to challenge you anymore.
Opening a Vatican-sponsored webinar, Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, said that the Holy See aims to shine a light on the “catastrophic impact” of nuclear deterrence, mutually assured destruction and the arms race have in society, while renewing the pope’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons.
Two storylines are fighting it out to dominate Vatican coverage, and so far it’s no contest: A media frenzy over a few seconds of papal verbiage on civil unions has overwhelmed the Vatican and China renewing their deal on the appointment of bishops for another two years.
“We tried to argue that it was in the interests of everybody, church and state, that he be allowed to return to the country,” said British Archbishop Paul Gallagher. “They do not share that opinion, and I’m not overly optimistic that they’re going to move on that one.”
Archbishop Paul Gallagher also suggested the Vatican would be willing to reconsider its long-standing insistence on a two-state solution for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should all parties converge on some other outcome that’s both just and fair.
Part one of a three-part Crux interview with British Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, effectively the Vatican’s Foreign Minister, in which he says the Vatican expects its controversial deal with China to be renewed by the end of the month.