Every Pontiff receives an inheritance. Francis’ one, received by Leo, is the key to understanding the Pontiff’s timidity in the very delicate question of the confrontation between Israel and Iran, two non-Christian countries and yet heavyweights in the international relations of the Holy See. That is due not only to the fact that on the sidelines of this bloody question appear actors such as the United Stated and Europe, where the Church is indeed a very important social and economic force, but also to the fact that Bergoglio had established a subtle game both in relations with various Islamic powers and in the definition of the relationship between Christianity and Islam.
Leo moves in a minefield. He must save the difficult relations with parts of the Global South – entrusted to Cardinal Sarah, on a special mission – but he must redefine some delicate positions that Bergoglio had formalized in texts such as “Fratelli Tutti” or the Document on Human Fraternity and then materialized in his visit to Iraq of 2021. These are positions that have been defined as bordering on heterodoxy, of an exasperated ecumenism, politically useful but now dangerous. Touching the exposed threads of these relationships can cost a lot in the relations with a certain Islam. All this while having a flourishing relationship, now perhaps uncomfortable, with Iran. And having Russia under careful observation.
Bergoglio had received a funeral tribute from President Putin, who praised his proactivity in trying to find solutions in the conflict with Ukraine. Similar words had come from Iran. The Persian ambassador to the Holy See, Prof. Mokhtari, had expressed himself only a few months before Francis’ death hoping for a visit to Tehran: “he would be welcomed with open arms,” he said. And he was probably right. The skillful Persian diplomacy had relied on a man of intellect like Mokhtari, whose training is centered on inter-religious relations (he was Rector of the University of Islamic Denominations, that is an academic “clearing house” between Sunnis and Shiites, and he authored comparative studies between Christianity and Islam) to conduct relations between the Islamic Republic and a Holy See that had lived (to put it elegantly) a not exactly optimal period. Francis’ 2021 visit to Iraq had marked a minimum in the dialogue between Tehran and the Holy See: Francis had been hosted by Sistani (we had talked about it in http://localhost/francesco-in-iraq-giorno-2/), a Persian, head of the Najaf School, Shiite but a champion of a juridical-political reading opposite and alternative to that in force in Iran – namely the Velayat-e Faqih – elaborated by Khomeini, the theoretical basis of the current system of power in Persia. That same Sistani, appreciated by the Americans, the previous year had refused to meet with the then head of the Iranian judiciary, who was none other than Reisi. This, in Tehran, could be read in one sense only: the Pope dialogues with Shiite interpreters’ alternative to the system of the Islamic Republic – with which he had instead keeping formal diplomatic relations for almost seventy years – and therefore he bypasses us. The incident needed a solution, which would come helped by Bergoglio’s dynamism. This dynamism was often read as confusing and contradictory. Rather, it Jesuitically read the times to take opponents and allies by surprise: once the mission of approaching the Sunnis (al-Azhar, the Grand Mufti of Cairo, etc.) was over, having led them to the signing of the Document on Human Fraternity (a text ecumenic to the point of exhaustion, and blamed of gnostic tendencies – and which Sistani would refuse to sign), Bergoglio had then mended fences with Iran. This happens in a striking way, that is by elevating the Bishop of Tehran-Isfahan to the Cardinalate. It is – as Bergoglio himself said – a recognition of the country. Francis recognized that it was absolutely not true that the government in Iran was against Christians. Evidently, a political move, carried out in the context of the transformation of the institution of the Cardinalate from an elite college to a representation of the social trends of the Church in the world of the peripheries. It reads: we are also here, my man here is important because you are important to us. A move à la Pope Noir.
Mokhtari would later be appointed Ambassador to the Holy See by that very Reisi, rejected by Sistani and then became President of the Republic: the irony of history!
Now, Leo can only present himself in a very different style: he is Augustinian, not Jesuite. He can still use Francis’ push towards the peripheries (he presented himself as a missionary in Chiclayo, in his first speech he spoke in Italian and Spanish, he did not use a single word in English) but he cannot play in a role of playmaker that is not congenial to him.
It must also recover a certain orthodoxy in matters of faith, because the Global South is divided into two opposing parts:
- The one from which Bergoglio derived, the extreme left of Liberation Theology,
- That of conservation, of observance, of Africa, which cannot be lost but which risks schism.
For this reason, at the end of May 2025 Leo appointed the conservative Cardinal Sarah as special envoy for the Global South. And Sarah left for locations that are very distant from each other: Africa, South America, Southeast Asia.
He is in a very difficult task: he will have to report, analyze and present to the Pontiff a “state of situation” from which he can move. But how?
The relationship with Sunni Muslims cannot remain fixed – if Leo wants to come back to a stricter orthodoxy – to a vision of ecumenism as strong as the Bergoglio’s one. Losing them, however, would mean giving a hand to a process of confrontation, and “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. In the context of the current conflict, Leo inherits a bad relationship with Israel: the statements of the Israeli Ambassador in Rome are neutral towards the new Pope, while those addressed by Israel to Francis were contemptuous: Leo can therefore only propose himself as a mediator, using neutral words, full more of Christian-merciful lexicon than of key-words of political weight, something to suggest the counterparts there is political substance. But it does so, precisely, with great moderation, presenting itself in a context in which other mediators – of greater aggressiveness – have already presented themselves: first and foremost, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin.
