In a guest essay for The New York Times, David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, weighed in on Pope Leo’s approach to global politics.
“In his state of the world address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican on Friday, Leo delivered his most thoroughgoing defense of postwar multilateralism, calling the rule of law ‘the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.’
‘A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,’ the pope said. ‘The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.’
Leo obviously has no hard power to deploy and his is not a nostalgia for a durable yet flawed Pax Americana. But his voice, with its American accent, is filling a void. During Leo’s first international papal trip last fall, to Turkey and Lebanon, he showed himself to be a classic American internationalist speaking in a classically Christian register. La Croix’s Vatican reporter Mikael Corre noted that the trip was marked by ‘the exact opposite of the diplomacy we now associate with the United States: no hyper-personalization, no show of force, no shocking announcements or thunderous slogans,'” wrote Gibson.
