The Talents of the Priest and Diplomat Fr. Pietro Parolin
By Gianni Valente
Fifty eight year old Pietro Parolin left Rome four years ago, was ordained Archbishop by Benedict XVI and appointed Nuncio of Venezuela after spending seven years as the Vatican’s “deputy foreign affairs minister”. Today Pope Francis appointed him Vatican Secretary of State, making him Francis’ first appointed collaborator. Parolin is the youngest figure “enrolled” to the position since Eugenio Pacelli. Parolin’s appointment offers fresh indications as to what path the Catholic Church will take in the coming years. One need only look at the crucial steps taken by the current Nuncio to Venezuela as part of his human and Christian mission, to imagine. The new Secretary of State was born in Schiavon, in the province and diocese of Vicenza in northern Italy, on 17 January 1955. His faith in Jesus blossomed at a very young age, immersed in the life of his local parish. His father, a devout church-going Catholic managed a hardware store and started selling agricultural vehicles too. His mother was an elementary school teacher. When Pietro was ten years old, the Parolin family was struck by tragedy: his father was killed instantly by a car which collided into the vehicle he was getting into. From that day on, Pietro, his sister and little brother who was only eight months old at the time, became witnesses to their mother’s little daily acts of heroism. She brought them up making sure they never left wanting. Pietro was an altar boy in his local parish. Fr. Augusto Fornasa, who was parish priest there at the time (he died in Schiavon in the early eighties), pointed Pietro towards and cultivated the priestly vocation, in a context marked by a history of great “social” pastors such as Fr. Giuseppe Arena and Fr. Elia Dalla Costa who was appointed Archbishop of Florence from 1931 to 1961. In 1969, at the age of 14, Pietro entered the Seminary of Vicenza. After obtaining his high school diploma with a specialisation in classical studies, he went on to study philosophy and theology. The deep concerns and the even more corrosive ones which emerged in the post-Council period shook the life of the Seminary as well. Pietro stayed out of the turbulent events of that period. He liked the pastoral line taken by the humble Bishop Arnoldo Onisto, his ability to listen, mediate and pay attention to workers’ problems. Right from his Seminary days, Pietro’s superiors could see he was doing well in his studies. After he was ordained a priest by Bishop Onisto in 1980 and after two years as deputy parish priest at the parish of the Holy Trinity in Schio, in northern Italy, he was sent to study Canonic Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University. The intention was to give him a position in the diocesan tribunal and in the field of family pastoral care. But someone in Rome – home to the Teutonic College in Via della Pace, where Fr. Pietro was living, asked the bishop to send the young, reserved and hard-working priest to the Holy See. As always, he agreed to go wherever he was sent. Thanks to the “anonymous” selection process used by the Holy See at the time, Pietro ended up – almost by chance – in the sphere of the Vatican diplomatic service, without a clue as to who his original talent scout had been. He entered the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in the summer of 1983,in 1986 he graduated in Canonic Law with a thesis on the Synod of Bishops and then he left for his first mission: three years as a diplomat in the Nunciature of Nigeria and another three (1989-1992) in the Nunciature of Mexico. In Nigeria he got involved in the pastoral activities of local communities and became familiar with the problems in Christian Muslim relations, In Mexico he contributed to the final phase of the extensive work begun by Nunzio Grolamo Prigione which led to the legal recognition of the Catholic Church in 1992 and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Mexico. These laborious negotiations led to Mexico officially shedding the country’s secular and anti-clerical imprint, which extended to its Constitution. In 1992 Parolin was called back to Rome to work in the second section of the Secretariat of State. These were the years in which Wojtylianism had a powerful geopolitical influence, the world was marked by the collapse of the communist bloc and the effects of the first Gulf War were being felt. Cardinal Angelo Sodano was head of the papal diplomatic corps at that time. He replaced Agostino Casaroli in December 1990. The young official, Paroli, who was just back from Mexico was given a hodgepodge of dossiers on African, Latin American, Spanish and Indonesian countries and Churches. In 2000 he was put in charge of the Italian section: he worked with the now cardinal Mgr. Attilio Nicora on open issues linked to the revision of the Concordat in 1984, for example the question of the military Ordinariate and religious assistance for prisoners and in hospitals. In 2002 Parolin was appointed under-secretary of the second section of the Secretariat of State, the section dedicated to relations with States. As the Vatican’s “deputy foreign affairs minister” he dealt with all the sensitive dossiers on the Holy See’s relations with Vietnam (he was partly responsible for paving the way to full diplomatic relations between the two) and the legal issues between the Vatican and Israel which remain open. At the start of Ratzinger’s pontificate in 2005, direct contact was re-established with China. In was in this context that Benedict XVI sent Chinese Catholics the June 2007 Letter which became one of the key texts of his pontificate. Those were the years in which Parolin was heading the Vatican delegation in the confidential negotiations with Chinese officials to solve the problems Christians still face in China. He flew to Beijing twice along with other members of the Vatican delegation. Those years seemed to mark the start of a real turning point in the troubled Sino-Vatican relations. Then, in summer 2009, Parolin was nominated Nuncio to Caracas where he had the tough task of dealing with Caudillo Chavez whose relations with the local Catholic hierarchy had always been stormy. On 12 September that year, Parolin was ordained bishop by Benedict XVI. The Boffo case had exploded about a week before that and the tragicomically ferocious quarrels between Church groups had reached a virulent stage. In the homily which Benedict XVI obviously wrote himself for Parolin and other newly appointed bishops’ Episcopal ordination mass, he referred to the “disputes” that have always existed in the Church, recalling that the priestly ministry “is not dominion but service” and that “in civil society and often also in the Church things suffer because many people on whom responsibility has been conferred work for themselves rather than for the community.” When he was transferred to Caracas some tried to link Parolin to the “current” of Casaroli’s followers, which was tied to Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, who was Secretary of the second section of the Secretariat of State from 1979 to 1988. In Parolin’s case, these moves proved immediately prejudiced. It seems evident that the image of Parolin as a loyal and competent official in the Secretariat of State was recognised from time to time by superiors with different ideas and sensititities. Parolin worked with Casaroli and Silvestrini, Sodano and Tauran, Lajolo, Bertone and Mamberti in an attentive and efficient manner. Under Bertone’s Secretariat, he managed dossiers as crucial as the China one. His direct and personal discussions with Casaroli took place when the great Secretary of State had retired. His relations with Silvestrini intensified in the mid 90’s whilst dealing with issues regarding the running of Villa Nazareth, not the Roman Curia. Villa Nazareth is a charitable institution established by Cardinal Domenico Tardini in 1946 to support the education of deserving but economically disadvantage young people. In 1996, Parolin agreed to head the organisation at Silvestrini’s request and moved to the university residence in Pineta Sacchetti. But four years later, the workload became too much for him so he left. Silvestrini was saddened by this although he retained his respect and fondness for Parolin. Parolin's temperament suggests that as Vatican Secretary of State he will try to take different ecclesiastical sensitivities into account, countering that self-referential aspect of the Church that Francis has always spoken out against. In the true spirit of Vatican diplomacy, Parolin has always been realistic, carefully studying contexts and problems that need to be solved and searching for possible solutions. In the face of the regional conflicts which continue to rock the world – starting with the Middle East – and the risk of new global clashes between old and new superpowers, the Holy See will once again be well placed to offer its wisdom and foresight in order to promote peace. Following Francis' path of pastoral conversion, Vatican diplomacy will be able to offer a creative contribution to Church action, inspired by the Bishop of Rome’s invitation to come out of itself and go out to men and women in the geographical and existential peripheries in which they live. Most importantly, Parolin should annihilate the insistent attempts made in recent years to create a contrast between diplomacy and the proclamation of the faith, realism that is open to dialogue and the defence of the Christian identity and values. The entire history of the Church suggests that Evangelical faith gives people foresight to act in an intelligent and prudent bearing in mind the real dynamics of the world and of power. For Parolin, serving the Holy See has always been a way to exercise his priestly spirituality. Parolin’s spirituality was expressed in the enthusiasm for the faith shown by Vietnam’s Montagnard neophytes and his joy at being immersed in the buzz Venezuelan Catholic life. His Episcopal motto is a rhetorical question contained in the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans: “What will separate us from the love of Christ?” It is easy to guess who Fr. Pietro will entrust the peace in his heart to.
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