Four Essentials Pope Francis
On the day President Obama hosts Pope Francis at the White House, perhaps no one knows the behind-the-scenes of the men’s relationship better than Ken Hackett, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. The former president of Catholic Relief Services – the humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic church – sat down with the Post while he is in Washington for the visit. The conversation was edited for brevity.
Having been selected in the last weeks of Pope Benedict’s papacy, Hackett described being struck right away by the obvious change coming from the Vatican when Francis was named. It was clear, he said, once Francis summoned tens of thousands of people in the fall of 2013 for a prayer vigil on Syria.
KH: So I gulped hard and said: ‘Well, we’ll go from here!’
MB: Gulped hard because it seemed like he was putting himself more squarely into policy issues than the last pope?
KH: Exactly. So that was interesting and new and different..It was obvious by the time I got there: This is going to be a pope and a papacy that is engaged. At what level, we weren’t sure.
MB: Some people noticed that the post of ambassador to the Vatican had been left empty for a period and there was some criticism of President Obama. At the time the White House was in tension with the U.S. bishops over some issues health care and how abortion and contraception would be referenced.
KH: If you think about it, if you’re going into an election in the summer of 2012, or even spring of 2012, you’re not going to be making new ambassadorial appointments…Really serious people talked about it and they said: There was a little bit of a conflict going on between the Obama administration and the bishops, so all of that conspired.
MB: What is the relationship like now?
KH: It’s very good. Very good.
MB: You’ve mentioned Secretary of State John Kerry has been to the Vatican three times, and the president was there.
KH: Particularly as the Iran negotiations were going on.
MB: What role has the Vatican played in that?
KH: The Vatican has been watching from the very beginning. They sat in as observers in Geneva. [Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin] asked Secretary Kerry about a year and a half ago if the Vatican could have an observer in, I forget which round, it was an earlier round in Geneva. And Secretary Kerry said sure.
MB: Did their position on Iran evolve or was it clear from the start?
KH: No, everybody was trying to [learn what was going on]..The Vatican almost defaults to anything that looks like a movement toward peace, they support in dialogue, generally. I suppose there are exceptions but I’d have to search for them.
MB: What are other areas you have worked on with them?
KH: I brought the U.S. Ambassador [to Ukraine] to the Vatican to brief certain parties.. and then we had the Russian desk officer come over and brief them. So it’s trading and collecting information that is the bread and butter, really, of what we do..Also Cuba, Venezuela.
MB: Because of your work with CRS, a lot of people at the Vatican already knew you.
KH: The reception was warm and generous..And the icing on the cake was in March of 2014 when the president came. The interaction between Pope Francis and President Obama was something special to behold. They came out of that room smiling, joking, laughing — the two of them, as they walked out towards us coming in to get the picture. That was great. That was special. Nobody was sure how it was going to go.
MB: Why?
KH: Because Pope Francis was an unknown.…So that really, I think, soldered in a much clearer, positive relationship.
MB: Has the U.S. Vatican relationship changed?
KH: I think it’s changed for the positive. It wasn’t terrible under Benedict in terms of our foreign policy, if you take the Iraq War out of the picture.
[The sexual abuse crisis] made many people in the Vatican upset. Is it the media that are really exaggerating this crisis? Is it just the Americans and their way of life? Eventually they realized, no no no, This is big — in the Catholic Church, this is big in all institutions. Coaches for kids’ sports, teachers, we gotta deal with this… There was a denial [at the Vatican]
In so many areas, [the Vatican] links and harmonizes with our foreign policy. In some, it doesn’t. On issues of culture and morals and things like that, I think there were differences of opinion. I also have to believe that maybe there were those in our government who pulled away from the Catholic Church here in the United States over those years.
MB: What about now?
KH: I don’t see it the same way. I think there’s a deeper understanding. The people who are advising the pope understand the United States better.
MB: Are there diplomatic areas of tension between the U.S. and the Vatican?
KH: There actually aren’t. There’s frustration at the moment [about Israel-Palestine]. I think they would like us to do more. There’s a couple of little — they’re not really little if you live there, but — there’s the issue of the wall, and the wall is going through a certain area in a particular village wherein it isolates a school and a convent from the community..The Vatican would like us to do more on that.
MB: When they say do more — in general, they believe the U.S. could influence Israel more?
KH: I think it’s more of a hope than a belief. But going back to Iran, they’re hopeful there.
MB: Do they talk a lot about the status of Christians in the Holy Land?
KH: All the time.
MB: This visit is being treated as a national security event, very different from previous pope visits and other heads of state. Why is this?
KH: I don’t know. They see Francis as such a popular leader. And at this point in time when there are so many real threats — not that there is a real threat today against Francis — but ISIS has caught people totally off guard. They’re afraid of the lone wolf type of thing, which you didn’t hear about five years ago. They were worried about al-Qaeda and a plot. And now it’s send somebody a tweet in College Park, you know, “you could be part of the revolution — go down there and do something.”
MB: What’s it like preparing for a pope whose comments seem to be very present in our domestic issues. The last pope didn’t, did he?
KH: No, not those kinds of issues. Poverty, exclusion, migration, the economy working for people, the excesses of the economy. All of those things are things he’s talked about before and are things he’s going to bring home here in the canonization at the Basilica, probably to the bishops when he speaks to them at St. Matthews. We don’t cover speeches at the U.N. very often.
MB: Is this the pope’s desire to elevate the United Nations?
KH: Yes, or use it as a locus for what’s going to happen in Paris at the climate talk. He’s focusing more on the tension as no other leader is going to do. I believe he will discuss the bigger issues of migration at the U.N., and probably the persecution of Christians and other minorities as well.
MB: What will the president and he discuss?
KH: They’ve got 45 to 50 minutes together…So the first thing the president is going to say — “Holy Father, how was Cuba?” So that’s going to be 10 to 15 minutes of discussion, you’ve gotta believe that. And then they’re going to discuss — the president’s going to say well, I haven’t got much time yet, I would like to do something more on migration. I would like to do something on making sure the minimum wage is adequate for people across the country. I don’t think they’re going to get into criminal justice — it’s too complicated. They might talk about Russia, what more can be done with Russia — is there something that can connect the Russian Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church with peace in the world, in Syria, the Ukraine. I don’t know. I’m speculating, totally. I don’t truly know.
MB: We were told the Secret Service sent some people to Rome to shadow him.
KH: What [Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy] did was very wise. He said, ‘My people have to know how he functions.’ When he reaches down to take the baby, someone hands him a cup of mate and he drinks it, or switches his hat, stuff like that. So he put some of his people — a woman and two guys — a security detail in St. Peters, as practice. And they can come back and say no, no, no, we’re not going to do it that way. This is what he does when he comes here.
MB: Can they say: ‘This is what you can do or not do?’ Does it work that way?
KH: Everything is negotiable.
MB: Were you consulted about the talk at Congress and what did you say?
KH: I carried the invitation [to the pope] from Secretary Boehner. When I handed it over into the Vatican I didn’t think it was going to happen — most other people didn’t either. But they passed it to the Holy Father, and he said sure. So what I have done with the Vatican and those people who are preparing the first draft of the remarks is given them the profile of Congress, who they are, men, women, age, how long they’ve been in Congress, all that kind of stuff. Catholics, non-Catholics, who controls what committee, and what they’re likely to be interested in. And then I’ve given certain briefings on topics that Congress has either engaged or refused to engage.
MB: The Vatican is reasserting itself as a diplomatic player. What do you think?
KH: They have always engaged. Sometimes it was done more quietly than it is now. The team was different. The team [now] is strong over there, particularly on the foreign policy side — it’s strong.
MB: As a representative of the White House and a Catholic do you think it’s a good thing?
KH: If you go back as far as John Paul II, he was very specific. Particularly in Eastern Europe.
MB: Can you assess Francis as a political animal?
KH: It reminded me of — if you’ve ever seen Colin Powell’s PowerPoint they put out about Colin Powell, 15 points of a great leader, and he has something about follow-up, and I thought, that’s Francis. He gives you an assignment and says go ahead and see what you can do about it, and then three weeks later he comes — how are we doing on that?
MB: If you had to predict the impact of the trip what do you think it will be? We’ll get to know him a lot better?
KH: And he’ll get to know the United States a lot better..He’s not going to be sitting around musing with the people at Georgetown about what Catholic culture is like. He’s going to meet with some homeless people and prisoners, this that and the other. He’s going to pick up some stuff, because he’s one of those people with the ability to understand stuff that’s going on. He’s very intelligent and very smart. He sees what’s happening. And he uses the delegates to move along whatever his objective is. What I think is going to come out of the visit? It may be trite. I think it’s going to be kind of a legacy, that people will measure events in their life by “when did that Pope Francis come?”
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Michelle Boorstein is the Post’s religion reporter, where she reports on the busy marketplace of American religion.
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Essentials Pope Francis
