ROME: The reopening of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba is the biggest success for the Vatican’s ultra-discreet diplomacy for at least 30 years.
As the leaders of both countries acknowledged in their statements, Pope Francis and his envoys had played key roles in healing the breach.
The only comparable success for papal mediation was in 1984 when Vatican diplomats helped to end a potentially explosive border dispute between Chile and Argentina over the possession of three strategically located islands in the Beagle channel at the southern tip of South America.
Whether by coincidence or design, news of the historic reconciliation emerged on the day Francis celebrated his 78th birthday.
All sides agreed that the contact between the two sides gained vital extra momentum from letters the pope sent to Presidents Obama and Castro last summer. The Vatican said the letters called on the two countries “to resolve humanitarian questions of common interest, including the situation of certain prisoners, in order to initiate a new phase in relations”.
The Vatican also hosted delegations from the two countries at what were said to have been the talks at which the breakthrough was made. Kenneth Hackett, the US ambassador to the Holy See, said a senior Vatican official had “played an important part in this historic moment by meeting with US and Cuban delegations in October to help bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion”.
The re-establishment of normal relations between the two countries has been a cause dear to the hearts of successive popes, but the issue took on greater importance after the election last year of the first Latin American leader of the Catholic church.
President Obama discussed Cuba with the pope during his visit to the Vatican in March and continued to work with the Holy See thereafter.
Sources in Rome and Washington said that the archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, had played a key role in brokering a deal. He too was in Rome in October and held a meeting with the pope on October 3. But it was not clear whether he was the official referred to by Hackett.
John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, met with his Vatican counterpart on Monday. But the official version of the talks, issued by the Vatican, said they had concentrated on efforts to close the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Diplomats in Rome were told that the issue of bilateral relations with Cuba had arisen, but that it was a minor part of Kerry’s discussions with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state. Kerry came to Rome on a European tour that was mainly about reviving peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian authority.
The pope is said by sources close to the Vatican to hold Ortega in high regard. Francis has had two meetings this year with the Cuban cardinal, the first being on April 5.
But most intriguing is a special appointment he conferred on the archbishop last summer. According to both Obama and Castro, Canada hosted talks between envoys of their two countries which led up to Wednesday’s announcement. On July 12, Ortega was named as the pope’s special envoy to the celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the first Roman Catholic parish in the Americas north of Mexico — that of Notre-Dame de Quebec.
The news of his mission was slipped out by the Vatican’s press office on a Saturday — the last in a list of appointments, below that of a new officer for the court of first instance for cases of matrimonial nullity in the Italian region of Lazio. The cardinal-archbishop thus had a perfect excuse for travelling to and from Canada during a crucial phase in the negotiations.
Ortega in any case has a special link to Canada — he studied in Quebec City with the Quebec Foreign Missionary Society. He celebrated a special, pontifical high mass at Notre Dame on September 14 and addressed the Canadian bishops’ annual conference two days later.
