CORSICA, CONSALVI, CHINA . . . AND FRANCIS

 

Corsica, Consalvi, China. . .and Francis

Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

Saturday, December 14, 2024

 

From his first trip as pope to Lampedusa, the travel destinations of Pope Francis have been idiosyncratic. But none quite as much as this week when, after declining the invitation for the reopening of Notre Dame in Paris, he is visiting Corsica on Sunday.

Pope Francis has decided not to visit the major European capitals, except if obliged by necessity, as when he visited Krakow and Lisbon for World Youth Day. So his European visits are off the usual papal track.

Corsica will be his third visit to France. He visited Strasbourg in 2014 to address the European Parliament, but declined to visit Notre Dame de Strasbourg, even though the cathedral was celebrating its millennium! He was in and out of the city in a matter of hours. He visited Marseille in 2023 for a conference on Mediterranean migration, but insisted: “I’ll go to Marseille, but not to France.” And now Corsica – which is a “region” of France – a week after not going to Paris for Notre Dame.

The headline at Jesuit-run America was blunt on the juxtaposition: “Pope Francis will visit Corsica Dec. 15 after skipping Paris reopening of Notre Dame.” The Corsica papal Mass will be in a square that includes a large statue of Napoleon, the most infamous of all Corsicans.

Napoleon also figures prominently in the history of Notre Dame de Paris, where he arranged to have himself crowned emperor in the presence of Pope Pius VII.

All the recent attention to the history of Notre Dame meant attention too for Napoleon who, after the Terror, seized power and moderated some of the bloody extremism of revolutionary France. He concluded a concordat with the Holy See, negotiated by Pius VII’s secretary of state, Ercole Consalvi.

Those negotiations are most remembered for the exchange between Napoleon and Consalvi. Inflated with a sense of his own power, Napoleon tried to intimidate Consalvi, threatening to destroy the Church Cardinal Consalvi replied that no emperor could accomplish what eighteen centuries of French clergy could not do. It was a reminder of the limits of state power, and that the greater danger to the Church is always from within.

This year marks the bicentennial of Consalvi’s death, and it was marked in Rome by a celebratory conference. Consalvi is a legend in Vatican diplomacy, not only for the concordat with Napoleon but, post-Napoleon, for winning back the papal states in Italy at the Congress of Vienna.

The praise is deserved. In 1798, Napoleon’s troops invaded Rome, kidnapped Pope Pius VI and eventually conveyed him to France as a prisoner, where he died in 1799. That two years later Napoleon would sign a concordat with the Holy See is evidence of Napoleon’s willingness to make enemies and allies as needed, as well of Consalvi’s skill.

 

Ercole Cardinal Consalvi by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1819 [Royal Trust Collection, Windsor Castle]

 

When Pope Francis sees Napoleon’s statue in Corsica, he might think about whether Consalvi has lessons for papal diplomacy today. He was a model of realistic engagement with hostile powers. He negotiated with tyrants. He made compromises to gain a measure of breathing room for the Church after the bloodletting of the revolution.

At the same time, Consalvi did have lines he would not cross. Having found the experience of kidnapping Pius VI bracing, Napoleon repeated it again with Pius VII, notwithstanding the latter’s traveling to Notre Dame for Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. Napoleon took Pius VII prisoner in France from 1809 to 1814. Consalvi was taken to Paris, despoiled of all his property and was imprisoned for five years. His engagement had limits.

Consalvi was lavishly praised by Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the current Vatican foreign minister, at the 200th anniversary commemorations early this year.

“Consalvi lived in very difficult times – difficult times for the papacy, the loss of the papal states. Europe was in turmoil,” said Archbishop Gallagher in an interview with Vatican News. “Of course, we also live in challenging times. So, to see somebody then who was trying to serve the Pope and was convinced that the Pope’s action was really focused on the common good, I think I find that encouraging.”

What lessons are to be drawn from Consalvi’s dealings with Napoleon? The concordat of 1801 was painful; the Church conceded that most of her properties would not be returned. But the “constitutional church” set up by the French republic disappeared and the governance of the Church by the pope was secured.

The prominent parallel today is with China, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls its own constitutional church, as it were, the “Patriotic Association.” In 2018, Consalvi’s successors negotiated not a concordat, but a “secret agreement” – the text of which has never been released – concerning the appointment of bishops in China. Renewed in 2020 and 2022, it was renewed this autumn for another four years.

The agreement has not led to the dissolution of the Patriotic Association. To the contrary, it has grown in strength, with the CCP – which has direct control over religion in the People’s Republic of China – transferring a compliant bishop to Shanghai, the most important diocese in China, without even notifying Rome. Pope Francis accepted the theological offense, canonical illegality and political humiliation, giving his approval after the fact.

Shanghai is the diocese once held by the heroic Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei, who spent thirty years in Communist prisons before being exiled. St. John Paul the Great had his own secret regarding China; he made Kung a cardinal in pectore at his first consistory in 1979, making it public in 1991.

Whatever concessions Pius VII and Consalvi had to make, they also won concrete gains, which is rather the point of diplomacy. The current Vatican-CCP agreement has no apparent gains, compromises the mandate given to Peter by Christ Himself, and betrays the witness of the martyrs. Such a withering assessment comes from none other than Nancy Pelosi, who concluded her speakership by visiting Taiwan in defiance of the CCP.

“I’m not too happy about [the agreement], and I don’t know what they have achieved,” Pelosi told the National Catholic Reporter in an interview where she “appeared incensed” over the Vatican’s China agreement. “Do you know of any success? We have, for decades, seen the suffering of Catholics in China. I have a completely different view [from Pope Francis’ approach]. Why should the Chinese government be having a say in the appointment of bishops?”

“Let me say it this way, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’ Every bishop has sprung from that rock. And now, the Chinese government?” Pelosi said. “We showed [the nuncio in Washington] what our concerns were, what had been said and written by Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate. This brings a lot of us together, because over time, even bishops were killed. I mean, this is [about] martyrs.”

Pelosi sounds rather more Consalvi-like than his successors in Vatican diplomacy. And Pelosi knows that a Church that does not keep faith with her own martyrs is doing more to destroy herself than any civil power can do.

Pope Francis chose to go to Mass under the gaze of Napoleon rather than Notre Dame under its reconstructed roof. Perhaps new wisdom will come in Corsica about how to deal with tyrants.

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