Pope Francis receives Antony Blinken
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken first met Pope Francis during a visit to Rome.
Antony Blinken (left) spoke for about 40 minutes with Pope Francis in Rome.
KEYSTONE/AP/Andrew Harnik
Pope Francis received US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Vatican on Monday. This is the first high-level meeting with Joe Biden’s presidential team, which should mean diplomatic appeasement.
This tête-à-tête nevertheless takes place in the context of an offensive front in the very ranks of the American Bishops’ Conference, which is considering depriving of communion (an essential rite of the Catholic faith) the political leaders supporting abortion, such as the devout Catholic Joe Biden.
On June 18, the Conference of American Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted by a large majority on a proposal in this direction. A divisive debate with political tones that had displeased the Vatican, reacting upstream with a letter sent to the episcopate.
The issue must now be discussed in the American dioceses and the text will be debated at the next bishops’ conference in November.
Forty minute interview
Antony Blinken had arrived at the Apostolic Palace very early for a private fourteen-minute tour of the Sistine Chapel and its antechamber, the Sala Regia, accompanied by a guide.
After a meeting with Vatican number two, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, in charge of relations with other states, he joined Pope Francis for a forty-minute interview. Antony Blinken, of Jewish origin but not practicing, is married to a Catholic who, however, was not on the trip.
The spokesman for the Holy See, Matteo Bruni, spoke on Monday of the “cordial climate” of the meeting, during which the Pope spoke of his trip to the United States in 2015 and expressed “his affection and attention to the people of United States”.
Criticism of Trump
Pope Francis, a staunch defender of migrants, sharply criticized Donald Trump just before his election to the presidency for his plan to build a wall. Donald Trump had nevertheless visited him in 2017 in the Vatican, a necessary step for heads of state.
At the end of September 2020, in the midst of the electoral campaign, the outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during a conference organized in Rome, had asked the Pope to show “courage” to fight religious persecution in Communist China.
The Vatican, which had freshly welcomed this attack, had in the process renewed a historic agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops. The ex-chief of American diplomacy, a very practicing evangelist, had not met Francis, the Vatican preferring not to receive him due to the proximity of the American elections.
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