32ND Corbishley Lecture

delivered on 15 June 2010 in Heythrop College, London

by

HE FRANCIS CAMPBELLUK Ambassador to the Holy See

“FAITH AND FOREIGN POLICY a perspective from the Vatican”

Guy WilkinsonPerhaps I can begin by introducing myself. I am Guy Wilkinson, chair of the Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust. The Trust has been in existence for about forty years now in different configurations. And I’m very pleased tonight to be able to welcome you to the 32nd Corbishley Lecture. The Corbishley Lectures began in memory of Thomas Corbishley SJ who was Master of Campion Hall amongst many other accomplishments and it’s a particular pleasure tonight to be able to welcome members of his family here to this lecture and afterwards I expect this evening. Also a special welcome today to Michael Lethbridge who – you won’t mind me saying so! - is I think our oldest member of the Trust in at least two senses. So welcome to you here Michael. And welcome to all of you here this evening: I’m delighted that you’ve been able to join us.

The Corbishley Lecture along with the Charlemagne Lecture are the two key ways in which we in the Trust seek to carry out our mission. Our mission is a very modest one in a way, it is to contribute to a healthy civil society in this country by stimulating discussion and debate and enquiry around issues which are to do with the European context within which we live, the religious and non-religious values context in which we have our being, and to encourage really that ability of people to be somewhat better informed than they might otherwise have been if they had not been able to take part in this or many of the other ways in which debate and discussion are encouraged within a healthy society.

Now we are very privileged, I think I can say, to have the UK’s ambassador to the Holy See, Francis Campbell, with us tonight. I have a sheaf of papers that have been researched for me about him! Beginning of course with the inevitable Wikipedia entry, then The Tablet which is another informed source of information, which has an article “A man with a mission” – worth reading – and also an excellent article on “Diplomacy, the Vatican and the FCO”. Frances has a long and distinguished history within the Foreign Office, the civil service, having worked in Downing

Street, having worked with the former Prime Minister, and most latterly of course as I say as Ambassador to the Holy See. And although as you yourself said Frances, it’s one of the smallest in numerical staffing terms, of our embassies, I think that at the present time few would doubt that it is amongst those that carry the heaviest burdens at the moment. We hope of course that the burdens that you are carrying at the moment will translate into a tremendously successful visit of His Holiness in the autumn. That is of course something that rests substantially – I hope I don’t put it too strongly! – on your shoulders.

But Frances is going to speak to us about a rather broader matter this evening which we’ve titled “Faith and Foreign Policy”, and this possible relationship between faith and foreign policy is a matter that has grown in attention and interest and significance in recent years. It wouldn’t have been so long ago I suppose, indeed we were discussing it in our Council this afternoon, that the notion of there being any particular connection between faith and diplomacy, religion and diplomacy, might have not rung any bells at all. I think probably that’s not the case now and Francis – I’m looking forward as we all are to what you have to say to us about that now. A very warm welcome to you!

Francis CampbellThank you Canon Guy for that very kind introduction. Indeed at times the Embassy does seem a very small – and at times the profile of this embassy and the profile of this relationship - and sometimes the hand one is dealt by certain parts of the administration one would prefer not to have had dealt! So the profile that we have is not always one that we want.But just to say to you at the outset, my sincere thanks for this kind invitation and also for your perseverance, because when Canon Guy issued the invitation, I think he issued the invitation before we were informed that the Pope would be visiting the United Kingdom this coming September and the work of the Embassy has gone up by about 230% since then. So Canon Guy deserves an award for his perseverance and for holding out and for holding me to a date, so thank you Canon Guy for that. To the Corbishley family, I would like to say it’s a tremendous honour to be invited to give this 32nd address on Faith and Foreign Policy and thank you for your presence here this evening.

This evening I’ve been asked to talk about Faith and Foreign Policy and to give a perspective from my current standpoint at the Vatican. I want to speak to two areas – the first area which will set the context, will look at foreign policy and religion more generally; why religion was often ignored in foreign policy considerations; and why it now deserves to be taken seriously and in a balanced perspective. The second area of the talk will give application by focusing on aspects of the UK’s diplomacy at the Holy

See which I hope will be of particular interest as we approach the first official visit of a Pope to the United Kingdom this coming September.

The views expressed here this evening are done so in a personal capacity and should not be taken as the official position of Her Majesty’s Government.

Why was religion ignored in foreign policy? Let us begin by considering this question and look at some shifting perspectives in the last ten years. The July 2007 report by the Washington based Centre for Strategic and International Studies said “Religious leaders, organisations, institutions and communities can mobilise religion to sanction violence, draw on religion to resolve conflicts, or invoke religion to provide humanitarian and development aid.”1 Reinforcing that point, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in a groundbreaking report published earlier this year said, ‘Religious communities are central players in the counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, development assistance, the promotion of human rights, stewardship of the environment, and the pursuit of peace in troubled parts of the world.’2

Yet for much of the 20th century religion was ignored in foreign policy. In all the strategic reports at the time of the Millennium on the next decade, century, etc I don’t recall one which identified religion as a serious issue. Indeed “Time” in 1966 and “The Economist” in 2000 repeated Nietzsche’s prediction of the ‘Death of God’ (or at least the demise of God).

Professor Scott Thomas (who is here this evening and whom I’ve quoted extensively in speeches but hadn’t met until this evening) writes that the ignoring of religion started with the Enlightenment and was pushed along by thinkers such as Max Weber. He describes elements of the mindset which wanted to marginalise religion by presenting it as little more than a form of reassurance – a psychological compensation for people in societies or countries with low levels of human development or poorly developed welfare states.3 You are familiar with the idea that over time, societies would develop themselves out of religion; and therefore, it was a passing phase not worthy of consideration. The Political Scientist Bernard Lewis wrote in 1977 “Westerners, with few exceptions, have ceased to give religion a central place among their concerns, and therefore have been unwilling to concede that anyone else could do so. For the progressive modern mind, it is simply not admissible that people would fight and die over mere differences of religion”.4

1 Mixed Blessings: US Government Engagement with Religion in Conflict Prone Settings, Centre for Strategic Studies, Washington DC, July 2007, page 12 Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for US Foreign Policy, The Chicago Global Affairs Council, 2010, page 13 Scott Thomas, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page 314 Bernard Lewis, ‘From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004, page 285

A former US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, when reminiscing about her own diplomatic career, had the honesty to admit that religion was often ignored or left out of the equation. She wrote, “I found it incredible, as the twenty-first century approached, that Catholics and Protestants were still quarrelling in Northern Ireland and that Hindus and Muslims were still quarrelling off against each other in south Asia; surely, I thought, these rivalries were the echoes of earlier, less enlightened times, not a sign of the battles to come”. But she continues later in the same paragraph; “since the terror attacks of 9/11, I have come to realize that it may be I who was stuck in an earlier time. Like many other foreign policy professionals, I have had to adjust the lens through which I view the world.”5

She gives a practical example. In the mid 1970s the CIA dismissed an internal proposal to study religious leaders in pre-revolutionary Iran as useless sociology.6 Of this, Albright says “Because we underestimated the importance of tradition and faith to Iranian Muslims, we made enemies that we did not intend to make….Even in Vietnam, from the outset the anti-communist cause was undermined because the government in Saigon repressed Buddhism, the largest non-communist institution in the country.”7 As recently as 2006, we hear from Bob Woodward that former President Bush was asking at internal White House strategy meetings on the deteriorating situation in Iraq ‘if Iraqi nationalism trumped religious identity?’.8

And the consequences of ignoring religion? Albright writes “We were caught off guard by the revolution in Iran for the simple reason that we had never seen anything like it. As a political force, Islam was thought to be waning, not rising. Everyone in the region was presumed to be pre-occupied with the practical problems of economics and modernisation. A revolution in Iran based on a religious backlash against America and the West? Other than a few fanatics who would support such a thing?”9

This begs the question why or how did a sort of ‘group think’ manage to ignore religion as an issue in international affairs? To address this we have to broaden the cultural context beyond foreign policy. While no doubt the marginalising of religion started with the Enlightenment, it was more likely fuelled in recent decades by secularisation/modernisation theory. As you know that broadly holds that as societies modernise they secularise.10 The theory is broadly based on empirical data from north Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It was commonly

5 Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 96 James A Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).7 Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 438 Woodward Bob, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, Simon & Schuster, 20089 ibid, pages 39-4010 The secularization thesis is advocated by Steve Bruce. David Martin accepts secularization, but that it takes place in very different contexts and Grace Davie advocates the notion of the European exception.

assumed that the world was following a trajectory set off in north Western Europe at the time of the Industrial Revolution. For much of the 20th

century the theory went unchallenged.

However, about 20 years ago it became clear that the statistics were telling a different story. Professor Peter Berger, the eminent American sociologist and expert on religions, was long an advocate of the secularisation theory, but he changed his view on the basis of the empirical data.

So, those who predicted the ‘Death of God’ were they simply wrong? Those who extrapolated the European experience to the rest of the world – were they too wrong? Those who said there was a correlation between economic, social and political modernity to decreasing religious practice were they also wrong? The evidence from the United States, Africa, Latin America, Asia and parts of Eastern Europe points to religious practice either walking hand in hand with progress, and in some cases actually being the spur, or at least being a neutral variable.

Berger said recently ‘We don't live in an age of secularity; we live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity.’11

Scott Thomas writes “Many scholars and policymakers are still committed to the modernization mythology of the 20th century and believe that the global resurgence of religion is the result of incomplete modernisation.”12

But to be fair to the advocates of secularization theory, it is easy to look back equipped with data and disprove a theory. The advocates of the secularisation theory were right in part, but only in part. Secularisation theory described a particular pattern in a particular region, namely industrialised and post industrialised Europe, where there was a dramatic drop in church attendance from agrarian societies to industrial and post-industrial societies.

Religion is now one of the key issues in International Affairs and Foreign Policy. There is scarcely a week without a religious story on the front pages of our newspapers. We have seen in these first nine years of the millennium stories about the Saffron revolution in Burma, a debate on Europe’s Christian roots, debates on the nature of Europe’s migration, a re-examination of the parameters between the secular and the religious realms, not to mention those using religion as a justification for their terror.

Bill Clinton said “In the wrong hands, religion becomes a lever used to pry one group of people away from another….Does this mean that policy-makers should try to keep religion walled off from public life? The answer to that question is a resounding no. Not only shouldn’t we do that; we 11 Peter Berger, Pew Forum on Religion 12 Scott Thomas, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page 40

couldn’t succeed if we tried. Religious convictions, if they are convictions, can’t be pulled on and off like a pair of boots.”13

Albright, reminiscing about her own time as Secretary of State, says that when travelling round the world she is always asked “Why can’t we just keep religion out of foreign policy?” She responded “my answer now is that we can’t and shouldn’t. Religion is a large part of what motivates people and shapes their views of justice and right behaviour. It must be taken into account.”14

Certainly from a purely evidential base Albright is right - let us look at some of the facts we know about religion in the contemporary world.

In a 2005 Gallup poll, two thirds of the world’s population claimed to be religious.15

The proportion of people attached to the world’s four biggest religions, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism – rose from 67% in 1900 to 73% in 2005 and may exceed 80% by 2050. In terms of sheer number of adherents, the world’s largest religions have expanded at a rate that exceeds that of global population growth. At the beginning of the 20th century, a bare majority of the world’s population (50%) were Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Hindu. At the beginning of the 21st century, however, nearly 64% of the world’s people belonged to those four religious groups.16 In 1900, Africa had 10 million Christians representing 10% of the population; by 2000, that was up to 360 million, to 46 percent of the population. That is the largest quantitative change that has ever occurred in the history of religion. “Most Nigerians identify themselves by their religion first. In a recent Pew survey, 91% of Muslims and 76% of Christians said that religion is more important to them than their identity as Africans, Nigerians, or members of an ethnic group.”17

So Religion Counts

So “Is God Dead” as asserted by Nietzsche, Time and The Economist?18 Perhaps it is more accurate to talk, as Giles Kepel did in 1994 about the ‘Revenge of God’ rather than the death of God!19

13 William J Clinton, quoted in Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page xi14 Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 28515 Gallup, ‘Voices of the People’, 16 November 200516 World Christian Encyclopaedia, cited in Timothy Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, ‘God is Winning’ (awaiting publication), but longer version of a piece in Foreign Policy, ‘Why God is Winning”, July/August 2006 pages 39-4317 The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, March 21, 2007, cited in Mixed Blessings: US Government Engagement with Religion in Conflict Prone Settings, Centre for Strategic Studies, Washington DC, July 2007, page 2918 Time Magazine, April 8, 196619 Giles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994

Let’s look at some key dates and examples. Some have said that 1967 marked the beginning of the end of the hegemony of the belief that religion did not matter in foreign policy. Tim Shah of the Council of Foreign Relations in New York writes “In that year, the leader of secular Arab nationalism, Nasser, suffered defeat in the Six Days War”. Shah says that “By the 1970s, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, “born again” President Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II had dramatically demonstrated the increasing political clout of religious movements and their leaders.”20

The signs of the power of religion in foreign policy were evident throughout the period, but often religious considerations were ignored or marginalised as coincidental. The title of a recently published book ‘God is Back’ illustrates the point.21 I would argue that God was never gone; it was the research methodology and the selection bias that ignored the variable. Tim Shah writes “a combination of rosary-wielding Solidarity workers in Poland and Kalishnikov-wielding mujahideen in Afghanistan helped defeat atheistic Soviet communism. Albright says “In Poland, John Paul II helped construct a bridge that would ultimately restore the connection between Europe’s East and West.”22 The Pope’s visits (the first of which was in June 1979) sparked a revolution of the spirit that liberated Poland, brought down the Berlin Wall, reunited Europe, and transformed the face of the world.”23

But it was not just in Poland or Afghanistan that religion mattered. The late Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington argued that some of the religious movements helped to usher in the ‘third wave’ of democracy in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Sub Saharan Africa and Asia from the 1970s to the early 1990s.24 For example in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Christian Churches played a prominent role within the reformist and revolutionary movements of the 1980s. In the 1990s, religion, ethnicity and nationalism collided with devastating force in the Balkans.25 In the Philippines, Cardinal Sin and Catholic organisations openly condemned the Marcos regime throughout the 1980s.26

Obviously, religion, like ethnicity continues to be a major source of identity. And often the clash of identities can lead to conflict. A recent study found that “the majority of contemporary conflicts are not between nation states; rather they involve state and non-state actors and are often based on identity.”27 There is also significant scholarship which documents the positive role of the mainline Christian churches in helping the 20 Timothy Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, ‘God is Winning’ (awaiting publication), but longer version of a piece in Foreign Policy, ‘Why God is Winning”, July/August 2006 pages 39-4321 John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge ‘God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World’, Penguin Press HC, 200922 Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 6723 ibid, page 6824 Samuel P Huntington, ‘Religion and the Third Wave’, The National Interest, Summer 1991, pages 29-4225 Sheherazade Jafari, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page 11426 Timothy Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, ‘God is Winning’ (awaiting publication), but longer version of a piece in Foreign Policy, ‘Why God is Winning”, July/August 2006 pages 39-4327 Sheherazade Jafari, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page 111

democratising process in Africa or the positive role that Pentecostal Churches are having on political reform in Latin America.28 The US Council of Foreign Relations cites more than 30 of the 80 countries that became freer in the period 1972-2000, owed some of that improvement to religion.

So religion matters in the world and if foreign policy is to be effective it too must address religion as an issue.

What is the purpose of foreign policy and thus diplomacy? Put simply: the purpose of foreign policy has been described as “persuading other countries to do what we want.”29 Now if Diplomacy is captured as “the art of persuading others to act as we would wish, effective foreign policy requires that we comprehend why others act as they do.”30 That, it could be argued, leads to the need for a greater appreciation and understanding of religion.

For a diplomat it is crucial to understand deeply the society you are in. How you do this is not as easy as it sounds. Religion can pose a serious challenge for many western Diplomats. Much of that is cultural. It is difficult to act as a bridge between the society one represents and one’s host state. The temptation is to see the world through the prism of one’s own domestic society; and perhaps be favourable towards that which is familiar. But this may lead to miscalculation which can result in serious strategic errors.

In July 2007, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies produced a report on religion and foreign policy. The CSIS report states that “miscalculating religion’s role has sometimes led to failure to anticipate conflict or has actually been counterproductive to policy goals. It has kept officials from properly engaging influential leaders, interfered with the provision of effective development assistance and at times harmed national security.”31 Professor Bryan Hehir of Harvard says “there is an assumption that you do not have to understand religion in order to understand the world. You need to understand politics, strategy, economics and law, but you do not need to understand religion. If you look at standard textbooks of international relations or the way we organise our foreign ministries, there’s no place where a sophisticated understanding of religion as a public force in the world is dealt with.”32 Hehir says that “policy makers must learn as much as possible about

28 Paul Gifford, The Christian Churches and the Democratisation of Africa, 1995, Leiden, Brill and African Christianity: its public role, London Hurst & Co.29 Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 1130 ibid, page 7531 Mixed Blessings: US Government Engagement with Religion in Conflict Prone Settings, Centre for Strategic Studies, Washington DC, July 2007, page 232 Bryan Hehir cited in Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 66

religion and incorporate that knowledge into their strategies. It’s like brain surgery – a necessary task – but fatal if not done well.”33

So where to from here? How do we arrive at a situation where foreign policy is better equipped to deal with religion? How do we implement the call in President Obama’s speech last June in Cairo when he spoke of the importance of engaging religious communities alongside influential political and economic actors?34 It must start with two things. First, we must sensitise ourselves to a world in which religion is alive and well; not the world in which we might feel more comfortable. Secondly, we must begin to see religion as much as a source of healing as we now see it as a source of division.

Getting the Perspective right.Now that religion is on the agenda, is the perspective right? One could simply catalogue the negative by-products or uses of religion. Such a negative focus would naturally raise questions about the foundations which would produce such negative results, in this case God or religion. We are aware of some authors who have done this. Those questions would be justified. But simply cataloguing a series of negatives while ignoring any counter prevailing evidence would fail the most elementary scrutiny.

So religion is back on the agenda. But how is foreign policy to approach religion? For a start you can’t get away from it. Centres for the study of religion are springing up everywhere. But what of the approach? And what of this new paradigm in foreign policy and faith?

There is also another major risk apart from ignoring the elephant in the room and that is seeing the ‘elephant’ in every room. The risk now is that we go too early to the other extreme and see a religious cause or base to issues and problems which are essentially about race, ethnicity, or some other factor. That major risk is casting religion exclusively in a negative frame of reference.

The 2007 CSIS Report found that “The tendency to see religion as a problem prevents fuller engagements with religion as a solution, and the over emphasis on Islam prevents more holistic approaches to religion and faith based analysis…Despite the fact that religion is seen as powerful enough to fuel conflict, policymakers less often engage with its peacemaking potential.”35 But that is changing. President Obama, speaking at the UN General Assembly in September 2009 said, ‘The religious convictions that we hold in our hearts can forge new bonds among people, or they can tear us apart.’36 Ultimately, our task is to take 33 Bryan Hehir cited in Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 7434 http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/presidents-speech-cairo-a-new-beginning35 Mixed Blessings: US Government Engagement with Religion in Conflict Prone Settings, Centre for Strategic Studies, Washington DC, July 2007, page 4136 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-united-nations-general-assembly

religion seriously as an issue in foreign policy, yes; to recognise that it can be a source of good or evil, of course; but not to allow a situation to arise where it is presented exclusively as the determining negative variable.

Some say that the reason people reject religion especially here in Europe, is because in the past it was so often tied to war, violence and power. Today, the association of religion and violence is once more to the fore. But not all associations are justified. There can be a tendency to identify conflicts as religious when they are more accurately geo-political conflicts. Labelling a conflict as “religious” can be a lazy way to reduce complex struggles into simplistic frameworks.

Increasingly today religion is perceived as a threat because of its association with terrorism. The Chicago Report says that a ‘focus on religion through the lens of terrorism and counterterrorism strategy is too narrow.’37 A major challenge is to bring it back to a situation where we have a more balanced perspective and see it as much as a vehicle for peace and helping resolve conflicts. There are powerful practical illustrations to be made which show that the picture is more nuanced than simply condemning religion out of hand as a source of terror or conflicts.

Let’s draw an analogy with politics. Some would say that we do not condemn politics because it has sometimes in the past delivered us tyrannies or dictatorships. This is broadly one of the points explored in the work of the historian Michael Burleigh who describes the political ideologies of the 20th century, namely National Socialism, fascism and communism among other things, political ideologies which have led, throughout the 20th century to the murder and bloodshed of tens of millions of human beings. Yet politics still governs our life. We have the ability to appreciate the good of the concept, while recognising its capacity to be manipulated for violent ends.

The same is true of religion. Albright writes “We know what a globe plagued by religious strife is like, we do not know what it would be like to live in a world where religious faith is absent. We have, however, had clues from Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Nazism”. She continued “it is easy to blame religion – or more fairly, what some people do in the name of religion – for all our troubles, but that is too simple. Religion is a powerful force, but its impact depends entirely on what it inspires people to do. The challenge for policy makers is to harness the unifying potential of faith, while containing its capacity to divide.”38

I am not contesting that people, states, or faiths themselves have not used religion to foster violence or hatred. Such a view would fly in the face of history. Rather my contention is to try to re-balance our view of religion in foreign policy. Let’s change the perspective. We can see in

37 Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for US Foreign Policy, The Chicago Global Affairs Council, 2010, page 538 Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, page 66

certain contexts where faith has not served to fuel a conflict, but has acted as a restraint on ethnic or religious violence, etc. Monica Toft has shown that “from the 1940s to the 1960s, religious conflicts represented no more than a quarter of civil wars, but in the 1970s, they jumped to 36%, then to 41% in the 1980s, and up to 43% in the 1990s. Since 2000, 47% of Civil Wars have had strong religious influences.39 At the same time, religion has mobilized millions of people to oppose authoritarian regimes, inaugurate democratic transitions, support respect for human rights, and relieve human suffering. It is also a growing source of ethnic and national identity. Religion contains an immense capacity to define and mobilise people within and across state boundaries, both for good and for ill.”40

There is though often little examination of the successes which are in part down to religion or what might be termed ‘faith based diplomacy’. For example the actions in the Philippines which brought down the Marcos regime or the role of the Buddhist Monks in their peaceful protest against the Burmese Junta or closer to home the witness and action of countless people motivated by faith who helped to bring about the ceasefire in Northern Ireland.

According to the Journal of International Affairs, “Religion can be one of the most powerful healers in post conflict situations. It can play a significant role in establishing peace in the present and also dealing with the past.”41 The Political Scientist Paul Martin wrote “when conflict has ceased, only a few agencies are equipped to address the specific religious values, attitudes and loyalties that underlie ongoing tensions, let alone use them as tools in peace-building. The above factors pose a challenge for policy makers seeking to improve relations among religious groups. The very same elements of social capital that can be conducive to alleviating poverty, such as group loyalty, empathy and trust, can just as easily reinforce animosities.”42 Albright writes “There are people who are willing to die – and kill – for their faith. This was true a thousand years ago and it is no less true today. But also religion at its best teaches forgiveness and reconciliation, not only when those acts are relatively easy, but also when they are almost unbelievably difficult.”43

There are many faith-based agencies involved in conflict prevention and resolution. One is the International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy which was founded by Doug Johnson - a former US Diplomat.44 His organisation has played a central role in Sudan, Pakistan and other parts of the world. Johnson in a seminal work published in 1994 says a faith-

39 cited in Timothy Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, ‘God is Winning’ (awaiting publication), but longer version of a piece in Foreign Policy, ‘Why God is Winning”, July/August 2006 pages 39-4340 Timothy Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, ‘God is Winning’ (awaiting publication), but longer version of a piece in Foreign Policy, ‘Why God is Winning”, July/August 2006 pages 39-4341 Editors’ Forward, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page vi42 Paul Martin, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page 8343 Madeline Albright ‘The Mighty and the Almighty, Harper-Collins, New York, 2006, pages 69-7044 Douglas M Johnson and Cynthia Sampson, eds, Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994

based mediator has means that a conventional diplomat lacks. One illustration of that could be the international agreement which the Holy See brokered between Chile and Argentina some 31 years ago. Or the role played by the Organisation of Islamic Conference in brokering a settlement between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front. There is also the Rome based Sant’Egidio community which takes its inspiration from the Second Vatican Council. Its crowning moment was the successful brokering of the ceasefire which ended the Mozambique Civil War. Today it is active in over twenty trouble spots across the world and has recently helped to broker a breakthrough in Guinea leading to new elections. What this shows is that religion can be as much a force for peace as a source of violence.

Why is religion’s conflict resolution capacity not more positively perceived in foreign policy circles? Scott Thomas writes that some studies of religion get it wrong. He says they equate serious religiosity with fundamentalism.45 “Like the concept of Fascism, fundamentalism simply becomes a sweeping term of abuse used to denigrate any social or political groups assumed by the West to be a threat to peace, democracy, progress and social order.”46 In the recent Centre for Strategic and International Studies report, it was said that “when government and military intelligence communities acknowledge religion, their analysis is limited to terrorism and, in particular the misuse of Islam.”47

There is a risk in all of this that I too am engaging in selection bias and over-stressing a positive emphasis. But my point is to arrive at a balanced perspective on the role of religion in foreign policy, it is not to deny that religion, like politics, can lead to bad ends, but it is simply to present another critique to the one we often hear. I want to approach religion and faith in foreign policy, not from the prism of violence or terror, as I feel that has been sufficiently covered elsewhere, but I want to approach it rather from a more neutral prism.

This brings me to the final part of tonight’s speech – the practical application of religion and foreign policy at the Vatican. And I hope that the occasion of questions following this presentation will give the opportunity to go into more detail on this part of the speech.

Diplomacy and the Holy SeeThe embassy to the Holy See is not like other bi-lateral embassies which the United Kingdom has. We don’t have sections dealing with trade, defence, consular affairs, etc. The Holy See is actually closer to one of our multi-lateral diplomatic missions than one of our bi-lateral missions in terms of the work that it does. You can look at it in two ways: as a small micro mission or as a sovereign entity with significant global reach.

45 Scott Thomas, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page 2246 ibid, page 3347 Sheherazade Jafari, Journal of International Affairs, Volume 61, Number 1, page 114

While the Vatican, which is the headquarters of the Holy See, is exceedingly small in physical size, the Holy See is a sovereign entity with an unusually large global reach which touches around one sixth of the world’s population and many more beyond. The Papacy as a result is one of the world’s key opinion formers.

The Catholic Church is a force on the world stage: it is a global religious institution with over 1.1 billion adherents (17.5% of the world’s population and around 10% of the UK’s population); it reaches into every corner of the planet through its 500,000 priests, 800,000 sisters/nuns, 219,655 parishes48; serious influence in as many countries as are in the Commonwealth, a privileged status as interlocutor with the two other Abrahamic faiths – Islam and Judaism – and two generations of intense experience in inter-faith dialogue and many centuries of co-existence. The global diplomatic spread of the Holy See has increased dramatically in the 20th century in particular. In 1936, there were 34 states with diplomatic ties to the Holy See: today that stands at 178. Pope John Paul II’s funeral brought together the single largest gathering of Heads of State in history. The Holy See has a highly respected diplomatic corps with sharp eyes and ears, not only in those 178 countries, but they also get far closer to the ground than any ordinary diplomatic corps through using its network of bishops in each region and clergy in each locality. The Holy See knows what is going on in the world at governmental and grass roots level, has extraordinary access at the highest political level in most Catholic countries, and knows who’s who in the world’s faith communities.

Such global weight is of importance to the UK. Today we do not maintain an embassy to the Holy See for sentimental reasons even if it is our oldest overseas post dating from when the Crown first sent an ambassador overseas in 1479. At the Holy See today we are focused on climate change, international development, disarmament, interfaith dialogue, community cohesion, migration, conflict resolution and prevention, human rights, in addition to the regular bi-lateral and third country reporting. The Holy See is simply one of the world’s oldest, largest, and what some might say one of the few truly global organizations. As such, they know what is going on in the world and it is a very valuable listening post for the UK.

Our time together this evening only permits us to look briefly at three priority areas for our work in 2010; international development, climate change and disarmament, but I hope we can explore some of the tangible foreign policy issues in the discussion following.  International DevelopmentOn international development, the Holy See is a crucial partner to the international community if we are to deliver on the MDGs by 2015. Not only for the moral imperative it brings but for the practical capacity it brings to the developing world with the bulk of health and education infrastructure. As the Chicago Report pointed out, ‘In much of the world, 48 Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2006

particularly Latin America, Africa, and South East Asia, many schools, hospitals, social services, relief and development, and human rights programmes are sponsored by religious institutions.’49 The Catholic Church alone is reckoned to be the world’s second largest international development body after the UN.  More than 50% of the hospitals in Africa are operated under the auspices of faith-based organisations.50 The Catholic Church in Africa is responsible for nearly one quarter of health care provision, including over 25% of HIV care worldwide. In education too the Catholic Church is a huge provider. It provides places in school to some 12 million children each year in sub-Saharan Africa.  The UK has worked with the Holy See to develop the IFF - the International Finance Facility. It is a novel way to use the capital markets to front load development spending. Pope John Paul II gave it his full moral support.  In November 2006, Pope Benedict XVI went one step further and gave it his full practical support.  He bought the first Immunisation Bond.  The Bond raised over $1.6 billion dollars.  IFF has been designed to accelerate the availability of funds to be used for health and immunisation programmes in 70 of the poorest countries around the world. It is expected to help prevent five million child deaths between 2006 and 2015, and more than five million future adult deaths by protecting more than 500 million children in campaigns against measles, tetanus, and yellow fever. There are few more practical illustrations of what we do at the Vatican than the immunisation Bond and Pope Benedict’s participation helped spread the global message about the Bond and the mechanism.   Climate Change and the EnvironmentOn Climate Change too – a theological and ecological dimension to stewardship - we have a strong record of working with the Holy See. The Vatican City State is on track to be one of the world’s first carbon neutral state of the world through offsetting its emissions and installing solar panels. I sent my very first cable back to London saying “Vatican City State is the first state to become carbon neutral” and someone sent a cable back saying they are too small, that’s cheating! It also recently announced plans to build Europe’s largest solar farm on 740 hectares to the north of Rome. That solar farm will produce enough energy to power over 40,000 houses and exceed the EU's renewable energy targets of 20 percent of demand by 2020. The UK is also working with the Holy See as part of our South America Climate Change Network which aims to raise awareness of climate change between the most recent summit at Copenhagen and the next gathering at Cancun.  But it is not just the Holy See’s practical elements on climate change which are important to us. Climate change is a curious mix of moral cause and strategic interest. The moral dimension is crucial in addressing climate change.  We saw that moral dimension emerge very clearly in the 49 Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for US Foreign Policy, The Chicago Global Affairs Council, 2010, page 1150  Mixed Blessings: US Government Engagement with Religion in Conflict Prone Settings, Centre for Strategic Studies, Washington DC, July 2007, page 9

Pope’s latest Encyclical ‘Caritas in Veritate’ when he called for the development of an integral human life with greater emphasis on human responsibility to creation.

DisarmamentI did say we didn’t have a defence section in the Embassy and that is something that we have worked on not because we looking for the Swiss Guards to decommission their weapons but actually to do things like the Cluster Munitions Treaty where we would not have the breakthrough that we have got with the Wellington preparatory conference in 2008 on the Cluster Munitions Treat if it wasn’t for the Holy See delegation working with the United Kingdom. We were in our respective camps – the Holy See being more with the NGOs and more with the neutral states, the United Kingdom was more with those countries that have significant arms industries. But our two delegations came together and actually built that diplomatic bridge that allowed a negotiation to be reached which then led to the final breakthrough at the Dublin meeting and our disarmament ambassador in Geneva credits the Holy See’s work in Wellington as actually providing that breakthrough in getting agreement between the different camps. Without that help it is unlikely that we would have been able to sign the Cluster Munitions Treaty last December. Again today we are working on the Arms Trade Treaty and the UK is actively working together with the Holy See at the UN to deliver an Arms Trade Treaty which would aim to introduce a more responsible global framework for the arms trade. So those are three strands of our activity – there are others and we can go into greater detail during the questions, but just to give you a taster.  

ConclusionIn summary, ‘religion matters’ as much in foreign policy as domestic. ‘God is neither back nor dead’ because religion was always there. Rather it was the dominant western perspective that was too narrow and deterministic and did not pick it up or ignored it. What I hope I have shown this evening is that to understand the world in which we live, we have to comprehend religion as a source of influence and motivation in peoples’ real lives. Religious motivations simply do not disappear because they are not mentioned. Simplistic and catch-all sentiments rarely if ever convey the complexity of our world, so too when talking about religion and foreign policy. It is not sufficient to see our faiths as being alien to our cultures or being exclusively associated with negative frameworks such as violence or terror. Nor is it the case that we should move from a position which ignores religion as an issue in foreign policy to seeing it as ‘The’ issue in foreign policy. That too would be flawed.

For many people religion is a source of fundamental values and principles which underpin our civilisations. Faith is a feature of modern life, including our foreign policy. But when viewed exclusively through a

negative prism we are selling our societies short and abandoning a valuable asset which can help us address many contemporary challenges.

As we have seen here this evening – indeed as we have seen in our own country over the past 40 years of turmoil in Northern Ireland - religion has played a much-needed positive role in bringing peace and stability to many situations. Now, the challenge is to see the bigger canvas: it is to realise that religion can serve to propel us forward to achieve some of the key foreign and domestic interests that underpin our foreign policy. In all of those tasks, the Holy See is a vital partner for the United Kingdom.

Thank You 

Guy WilkinsonWell, I think we’ve been treated to something rather special both in analysis and the experience that lies behind it: a very broad ranging analysis that is commensurate with a very broad ranging experience. I think what Francis has done for us is to try to present a corrected and balanced picture: corrected in the sense that as we know, both of the way that religion has been discounted as a factor but also in the way in which currently religion is rightly or wrongly – wrongly we might say perceived as the source of conflict and division. And I think you’ve tried to help us and others to redress that perception. There will be I think many questions to be raised. I can think of some already from my own arena of inter-religious relations: the question of what can religions themselves do to advance the perception that they are not about division and conflict but about healing and possibility. But I’ll leave questions to the audience. We have 45 minutes or so for what I hope will be a stimulating discussion. What I’m going to do if I may is to take questions in groups of about 4 together; they don’t have to be questions, they can be points for consideration. If you could just say who you are before you put your point or question, and if you could keep your remarks or questions reasonably short and coherent.

How would you gauge future relations between the Vatican and China?

I wonder whether you have anything to do with domestic policy?

What is the role possibly played by the Vatican in the release of marines and other military personnel in the context of the Iran seizure; and secondly more generally in relation to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policies?

Francis CampbellThe first question in relation to China and the Vatican: it’s a fascinating relationship for any number of reasons, because how China deals with religious freedom gives you an indication of where it is on the continuum in the relation to political freedom, the attitude to the outsider, in many

respects one could say it is the modern day equivalent of the investiture crisis as to who appoints Bishops. So there are about 12 million Catholics in China between the Patriotic Church and the underground Church but the pattern is mixed from what we can see from pundits in Rome and from commentators. It depends a lot on the region. There have been a number of breakthroughs recently in that agreed candidates have been put forward for Episcopal sees and it seems to be going on a certain positive direction. But it is a relationship that we watch very carefully for a number of reasons as I’ve said – human rights, religious freedom – all that tells us something about the internal Chinese society. Your question is very broad but I hope that’s touching it a little bit. In relation to the question about domestic policy, the relationship between the government and religion: I’d say that my comments in my text are about government and policy makers across the board pertaining to the British government. I made this observation in general as to what I found roughly in the last four and a half years in this post and indeed beyond, working in and around religion and politics and religion and the civil service. I often find that politicians and ministers have a far better grasp of religion than a lot of officials. I try and ask myself why is that? And I think it is because ministers and politicians are grounded in constituencies – it’s back to that thing of the lived experience of religion. You come at religion and the study of religion in a number of ways. The Soviet Union had many centres for the study of religion but they didn’t understand them, they saw some distant species that had to be examined in some way. They never came at it with lived experience and I think my experience is that politicians and ministers actually do get into religion but I’m not going to venture into domestic relations because dealing with religion and foreign policy is complicated enough and I would like to finish off my term! In relation to Iran: a very good question. I will have to plead mum upon that simply because – whilst we do our best to be open and transparent there are some areas of our diplomacy that I can’t go into because it would perhaps close down certain discussions. So we might have certain areas of our diplomatic relationship that might have to remain discreet. So if you’ll allow me that – a very good question but I’d like to abstain on that one.

What would you like the Pope to say on his visit to Britain that would be of political benefit to Britain?

One of the poorest parts of the world is Gaza in Palestine. Do you think our religious communities here could unite to put some effective pressure on to improve things there?

Do you think the different conceptions of church/state relations between European countries make collaboration between European governments on religious issues more difficult precisely because all these issues inform the political culture?

Francis CampbellLet me take – three very easy questions! The first one: what would I like the Pope to say? It will be a matter for the Pope to decide what he says in this country! In terms of that dynamic I have to worry more about what our representatives say in the context of the Papal visit but that is perhaps too minimalist a response. You look for areas of collaboration: my focus will be on the foreign policy side. I think that we would hope to see that both sides will want to reinforce the very positive international relationship that is there. I am very conscious that this is a minority Catholic country; I’m also very conscious that a lot of those other 177 states that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See watch our relationship. They watch the exchange of prime ministerial visits, of cabinet minister visits and they watch it intensely. It’s not a sentimental relationship: it’s focused on UK foreign policy interests. If you look at our strategic priorities, our Embassy in the Holy See is not some offshoot, it is central there to a lot of our key foreign policy objectives. So I hope that that state-to-state thing comes out because I think that will say something about the positive approach between the Holy See and the United Kingdom and how far relations have come. I’m very conscious of the historical baggage that this relationship has had in previous centuries. We’re in a very different place now. But even on a domestic front I think something like Catholic social teaching is a potential reservoir for people to look into. You know if you examine subsidiarity – it’s already of use in the European Union - and if you’re looking at issues about the role of government, the relationship between government and society and the very role of society, then something like subsidiarity and the whole Catholic federalist political thought is potentially something that the Pope could bring to the debate. But there will also be speeches here and hopefully there will be an interaction: that’s what happens on other state visits or official visits and I am sure it will happen in this case as well.In relation to Gaza – the Foreign Secretary has outlined the government’s position in relation to the Middle East peace process. I’m not going to repeat that but I am going to take up your very last question, the last sentence about the role of religions here – can they do more in the Middle East peace process. Actually I think you can ask religious communities in this country do to more. Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop’s House sends a delegation off every January to the Holy Land, with a lot of other religious groupings together, and it’s a joint Anglican, Roman Catholic, I think the Methodists are included as well – to really highlight the efforts that religious groups are doing in the Holy Land and to show solidarity with the different faith groups in the Holy Land to try to have an impact on the peace process particularly at the grass roots level. And when they come home they don’t ignore what they’ve been doing over there but they bring the message back and they keep the process going throughout the months of January to the following January. In the time I’ve been in this job they often call through Rome to relay to the Vatican what they’ve

picked up at the grass roots basis. But you mentioned Gaza very specifically and I’m very conscious that there are two Catholic schools in Gaza and there are a number of Catholic social infrastructure projects in Gaza and I think their presence there – there is a very very very small Christian population in Gaza – but their presence says something very strong about inter-faith dialogue. And I think they need to stay there, but it’s not always easy in terms of their security. At one stage one of those schools was attacked but I think it is important and it is a tremendous sign and a tremendous signal that that presence remains there. So I think that comes back to that text in the speech about that grass-roots activity where a micro-activity works through to some kind of stronger macro-message.That third question is more like a lifetime’s research project but I think there is something there. There would be a lot could be said. You will be familiar with “Paths to Modernity” it is called - the English edition, or the US edition, it has two different names - but Gertrud Himmelfahrt comes at this in the way she talks about the difference in the United States to the Enlightenment – it’s because the Enlightenment in the United States was based upon Scottish and English Enlightenment and it’s a freedom for religion; the French Enlightenment she would say was a completely different construct when it came to religion, but it was not a freedom for religion, it was a freedom from religion. So I think there is something in that. But I am struck – you know, in this job I have seen President Sarkozy come to the Vatican and the French separation of Church and State is probably one of the strictest constitutional separations of Church and State you can find in the Western world. But to witness President Sarkozy taking his canon’s throne in the Basilica of St John in Rome! We had conversations about this with the French ambassador and he just said, you people just don’t understand French laicité! It’s one of those fascinating things that French society has some very strict separations but then you have symbols like this where this relationship, this tradition has continued where the French President takes on the offices of the French king and one of these is honorary canon to the Basilica of St John in Rome which is under the protection of France.

Throughout your lecture you have used the words “dominant Western thought” and in the Enlightenment “dominant Western thought” has systematically portrayed religion in a negative way. Well of course it is not just religion that dominant Western thought has portrayed in a negative way. Other peoples, other cultures, other traditions, other languages are depicted in a negative as well. Would you say the real threat to faith is the “dominant Western thought”? And the second question I’d like to ask is, do you foresee the time when you will be replaced by a young British Muslim diplomat?

There was an initiative, I think about three years ago, by a number of very prominent Muslim scholars who approached the Vatican with the King of Saudi Arabia to start talks about getting to know each other a bit better: I

was wondering what has become of that? I was also going to ask you does your staff have a diversity of religious background?

You mentioned a minute ago state-to-state communication between the UK and the Holy See. I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about backdoor diplomacy and how the Holy See can be useful to the UK in influencing how things get done?

Francis CampbellDominant western thought: is it the main threat? I don’t think it is and I don’t think secularism is a threat to religion. In fact Charles Taylor’s book, “The Secular Age”, which won the Templeton Prize, is a fantastic illustration of where secularism came from. Secularism is not possible unless it is part of religion – it’s come of that trajectory. I think intolerant secularism – as much as intolerant religion – that’s the threat. Now I don’t want to pit the two – you know, these two ideologies, religion and secular ideology against each other. There is a fascinating, possibly one of the most fascinating encounter written up in a book - I can’t say I could understand everything in the book but it was fascinating the bits I could understand! - that dialogue between Joseph Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas, I think it was in April 2004 in Munich, and it was published. Here was someone in the shape of Jürgen Habermas, the leader of the Frankfurt School, sitting down and saying – he describes himself as tone-deaf to religion but he can see the value to faith and the value of that dialogue, and Joseph Ratzinger sitting down with him. Now, if I have a fear, my fear is that the ability to have that conversation is lost because you have a growing divide and people pass in the night having parallel conversations: that’s the biggest threat. You know, secularism has existed as long as religion has existed and there always has to be that ability to have a conversation, and to discover a grammar. The beautiful thing about Ratzinger and Habermas in that dialogue is that that’s what it’s about, it’s about a grammar.In relation to – I’m going to take these two questions together – the young British Muslims and the staff diversity in the diplomatic service. The Foreign Office doesn’t monitor the religion of its staff. It’s not an issue on appointment. Anyone of any religion can be British ambassador to the Holy See. We did have a convention until 2005 that a Roman Catholic could not become ambassador to the Holy See. This was the only religious proviso the Foreign Office had in its service. Now I’ve been asked this question often – should my successor be a Catholic? My view on that is this, that I would be very uncomfortable, and I say this also with my accent - I would be very uncomfortable going from a situation where a Catholic could not apply to a situation where only a Catholic could apply. That too would be wrong. So the answer to your question: Can anyone from any religion do this job? The answer is yes! That is there. In relation to the question about the religious diversity of the Embassy, I say again our office is tiny! For the first four years I was the only UK-based

diplomat and we had one-and-a-half local staff who were Italian. But again it is not something in our recruitment, it is not something that we would be asking questions about or trying to determine. What we would hope when somebody applies for a job to work at the Holy See – we would only look to see that there is some degree of familiarity or understanding of religion because it is quite a complicated sort of world to get to grips with, and I think a certain background or disposition towards understanding faith and politics would help.You asked a question about inter-faith relations – you are rightly referring to the letter called “A Common Word” or it was called the “Letter of the 138” and it followed on a year after the Pope’s address in Regensburg. And then the Saudi Initiative was different, the Saudi King came to see the Pope in 2007 and then in 2009 – or perhaps it was 2008 - I think there was a follow-up meeting in Madrid when the Saudi King hosted a meeting with different faith leaders in Madrid. And then you have a separate dialogue again which is with Shia Islam, between Shia Islam and the Vatican. So there are a number of different strands. But the 138 process of “A Common Word” came to the Vatican, came to the Gregorian University last year, and I think had the third in their series of meetings – the first I think was in Yale, the second was in Cambridge, and the third was in Rome. Now that dialogue continues and it goes on. The Saudi dialogue continues as well as does the Shia dialogue as does the dialogue with Al Hazaar. One of the things that Pope Benedict has said – I don’t want to jump the gun on the papal visit but he usually on a papal visit there is an interfaith encounter, but there is a desire on the part of the Vatican in dealing with interfaith that actually there is a discussion of practical issues that affect real people’s lives, that shows faith in action, because otherwise the risk is that it seeps into a very narrow theological discussion which doesn’t encapsulate the wider public. It’s important to have that theological discussion but I think it is also important to try to get agreement on certain ethical and social issues that pertain towards real life. And that’s where those discussions are going. With the 138 – I sat in on some of their sessions and they were having quite a rich discussion on some of those points.In relation to state-to-state communications, I’m back to the world of diplomacy. I’ll go a little bit further - it’s very similar to this question down here which was about a particular relationship, but I will try to say something more general. You’re involved in practical diplomacy. One of the most challenging things I find in this job is that you are stretched, you are jumping all over the place because you are following about 32 or 33 countries and it’s fine for our Embassy in country X to know who the shadow defence spokesperson is, but you know you’re sitting with one person and you don’t really know who is the shadow defence person and sometimes I go into a meeting in the Vatican and they start referring to this person’s name and you start thinking, “thank God for Google”! You may hear them talking about a particular radio station in some rural parts where the Catholic Church is active and you’re really stretched to know what it’s all about. And it brings home to you the grass-roots nature of this organisation: it touches 17.5% of the world’s population. Now that’s a

huge resource for us and you may find that our embassy in country X has a huge appetite for reporting on that radio station because that might be the only independent radio station in that regime and the regime is trying to close it - but you have this practical limitation that you cannot know that country in the way that the ambassador and diplomats in that country would know it. But yet sometimes you are doing detailed reporting. So, in terms of stretch I would have to say to you that this will probably be the most stretching job that I’ve ever had to do because you’re jumping from one minute to the Middle East, to a very specific issue in the Middle East talking about presidential nominations, you’re jumping to the Caribbean about some human rights case and then you’re jumping to some ethnic conflict situation. And if you were doing that in the United Nations, the United Nations Security Council, our representation in New York, you can understand it – we are covering all the different regions of the world. I’m not saying that we should have an Embassy the size of that in the Holy See, I think we shouldn’t, I think we’ve got about the right size. But it’s just illustrating to you the stretch that goes on there. But it also reinforces the point you’re making in your question which is this high-level diplomacy and also this listening post which mean we get an immense amount of information. And sometimes it’s very difficult to process what you’re hearing because you don’t have sufficient the depth in a particular country which probably our ambassador accredited to that country would have.

Our diplomats are trained to do the basics of economics, they are trained to speak languages well and they need these days to do things like climate change and disarmament and poverty and other such global issues. If you were devising a training course for our diplomatic corps so that we could mainstream this “God is back” tendency into all our posts and not just the very specialist post that you run. If you had a day of all these senior diplomats’ time what would you put into it? How to get this empathy with religious communities around the world and with political systems that are infused with religion in a way that we just don’t have in this country?

The Churches of course - both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England are very involved in education and the same would be true in many other countries. Do you see that as a kind of separate area or do you regard it as part of what we are talking about?

When you talked about the experiences of how faith and religion have influenced change – in the Philippines, in Nicaragua, South Africa – these are all instances where the hierarchy can be said to have had fingers in those pie;, what you also see in terms of that dynamic is quite a difference between the church of the grass-roots and the churches up here, the hierarchy. Can I put it to you in the most diplomatic way: how do you navigate your way between all of that, what are some of the challenges you have faced?

Francis CampbellThe first question: I think that you’ll find that the Foreign Office diplomacy reflects society, reflects British society. One of the things I would do is perhaps try to encourage people who are in these departments to be a little bit more forthcoming with their insight of this concept of religion. If you have a colleague who is practicing their faith and you know this person, then it’s more difficult to marginalise them or to dismiss where they’re coming from. And it’s the challenge – how do you challenge that modernisation theory that somehow we’re on some sort of trajectory where we are just going to secularise ourselves without a religion? In actual fact that is going to create greater problems for us because if the rest of the world is getting more religious and we’re getting less religious how do we have that grammar to have the conversation? I quoted Clinton on this notion that you can compartmentalise religion between 9 and 5 and then you can be religious again – well it just doesn’t function like that. So I think it’s perhaps that lived religion - and I think that’s what a lot of politicians and ministers get – that they appreciate the role that religion plays in an individual’s life as opposed to it being something remote that you study from a book.

Catholic schools? Aside from the schools in Gaza I have stayed away from education. I touched on it a little bit in relation to the Millennium Development Goals but by and large in the conduct of this relationship between the UK and the Holy See there is a domestic dimension to it which is dealt with by the Catholic Church in this country in its contact with the government. Now it’s not a strict separation but you would be completely overwhelmed if you started getting involved in domestic issues. From time to time of course domestic issues do come onto your table but by and large I tend to leave issues of domestic legislation, that’s between the government and the local Catholic Church as opposed to the Holy See and the United Kingdom government, and education would be one of those areas that by and large we would leave to that level.Finding one’s way between the hierarchy and the grassroots church? Every organisation has this dynamic, and I don’t know an organisation that doesn’t have it. Years ago, I studied political science - I didn’t study business administration, but I studied in the United States and the group I stayed with were business school students and they were all preparing for Wall Street but they were interested in two things: How do you get market share and how do you achieve longevity in business? And they were looking at Warren Buffet and all these characters. And there’s something about the structure – you know, to be an Italian Catholic is something very different from an Ethiopian Catholic or to be an Anglican in Nigeria is very different from being an Episcopalian, or being a Shia Muslim in Iran or being a Shia Muslim in Toronto. But yet there’s something that keeps the thing together. I’ve watched it over the last four and a half years. I mentioned subsidiarity before and I was

fascinated that you can have this global structure harbouring so much diversity. Now there’s tension in there and there’d be tension in any structure. I tried to figure out how has this been achieved? – actually the governance model is fascinating because it’s centralised in very very few areas. It’s centralised to appoint the bishops, doctrine and the office of the Papacy and nearly everything else is decentralised and sometimes really right down to parish level and yet how do you keep all that together despite the culture and things that go on? So – I’d say I’d agree with your point about the different areas of the world and the different roles the churches play in it and what the Vatican is. But somehow it’s a comfortable model with that tension, at some times it’s perhaps rather less comfortable than at others but for some reason I’d say if I were tempted at a certain stage to look to do a research project, I think it would be on the governance model of Catholicism and how it has survived and how it has adapted - because it has adapted, there have been huge adaptations over the years and yet it’s managed to survive and become in the 20th century truly global. It’s one of the things you notice now with the three countries that have the largest Catholic populations, they are in the Americas, they are not in Europe: it’s Brazil followed by Mexico followed by the United States and the second largest number of cardinals is the Americans, just after the Italians – so it’s a changing picture yet the structures adapt.

Guy WilkinsonWe’ve probably got time just for a couple more rounds if we can manage that.

I was interested a few months ago in the reactions of the Pope to the prospect of new equalities legislation in this country and I suppose I wondered to myself, is this what you would consider a domestic issue or would that come into the realm of an issue that you deal with in a diplomatic context since it’s an observation on the possible interpretation of British legislation. I was also very interested in your reflections on “freedom from” and “freedom to” because in a sense that comment, if I understood it correctly, touched on the fact that we are moving in this country in some ways towards defining relationships with religion in terms of “freedom from” in the equalities context and I think that’s precisely what that observation related to in some ways. I would like to hear your reflections on how in diplomatic contexts one deals with the evolving tussle or interaction (put more neutrally) between religious rights, rights to practice, rights for employers etc. And implementation of European directives in ways which could be seen as extending the realm of secularism in a particular way that could be experienced as removing rights of religion.

I just want to go back to something you said very early on in your talk about the ease with which people will sometimes say religion is a cause of conflict and then the answer to that for those who want to defend religion is to say well no it’s actually just politics and religion has somehow got hooked on to it or is used as an excuse. And I just want you to say a bit more about that. To what extent is it simply a cover for political ambition or could you give examples of where the nature of the religion is very much identified with the political struggles and ambition that are going on?

You were talking about examples of where the Church had been able to act rather usefully in conciliating – you mentioned Egidio here and other cases; and an issue I was discussing here earlier this evening involved trying to do some conciliation between the population of the Falklands and their neighbours in Argentine.

Francis CampbellI’m going to start with the last question! The memories of the last Papal visit in 1982 that was nearly cancelled at the last moment because the first visit of a Pope to Britain in 1982 occurred right in the middle of the Falklands War and so a mention of the Falklands two and a half months before ...! Touch wood and pray that everything will be OK! But just let me say to you: the Vatican’s doors are open to mediation. They set one principle and that is that both parties must request them to mediate. That’s what happened with Chile and Argentina.In relation to the question about the equality legislation. My role in that would be to ensure that the government has the accurate record and the context in which the Pope spoke. And it never ceases to amaze me how inaccurate parts of the press are. And I have read headlines, when I have been at the speech, and I have read headlines in the press where I cannot figure out how they ended up with the headline from the text. And that means something collectively to us as ambassadors because it comes back at us because of the fluid nature of communication. We have to report very quickly and accurately because the worst thing would be for somebody to respond to the press about something the press reported the Pope as having said when he hadn’t said it. But on the Equality legislation here was the Bishop of Rome speaking to the Bishops of England, on an ad limina visit. There was nothing new in what he said but that was the position of the English bishops articulated publicly in this country. And the misinterpretation was that he was referring to the act – the legislation was going through Parliament at that point of time and in fact it had been written in the past tense. What’s important in a diplomat’s job in any context is to ensure that an accurate record has been presented back to the government and that forms the basis for a discussion. Well by and large with things of that nature, it comes back to the question of education. You would be completely overwhelmed if you started to get involved in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the government of this country – I would see that as domestic rather than

foreign. If you are instructed to do something or if you are asked by the Vatican – you could well be asked by the Vatican, what’s going on over some key domestic issue, you would then ask the respective Whitehall department for a briefing paper or encourage the relevant official to come over or a minister to come over because none of our embassies can represent the whole of government. But I think in order to be able to conduct business here, this is a very complicated relationship because 10% of the British population are Catholic and there are very serious stakeholders here in the Catholic Church in direct contact with the government. And as well the relationship with Lambeth Palace: I do not concern myself with the ecumenical relationship between the Vatican and Lambeth Palace. I report on it, but the last thing they need is a troublesome ambassador interfering and similarly between the Catholic leadership in this country and the government. So I’d say it came down to accurate reporting. What you say about what I quoted earlier from Gertrud Himmelfahrt: she wrote the “Paths to Modernity” and she used that phrase about freedom from religion and freedom for religion contrasting the Scottish/English Enlightenment rather than the French Enlightenment which had a very very different historical trajectory because the Church was one of the instruments of power whereas she would argue that the Pilgrim Fathers were looking for religious freedom.And then the question about the religious cause of conflict, or to what extent it is a cover for political ambition. At the risk of falling into broad generalities about religion and social interaction – I suppose the backcloth here is of Christianity and particularly of Catholicism. I’m conscious that the distinctions between secular and religious are not there in other faiths to the same extent. Let me ground it in one example for you – let me ground it in an example quite close to home which is Northern Ireland. Some people will very quickly step forward and say that’s nothing to do with religion – I’m not sure that I could agree with that. I’d say that was not the primary issue, there is a correlation with sectarianism, and of course there are people who are engaging in sectarian behaviour who are not attending any church on Sunday, but I don’t think you can then say that is not religion – religion is a key ingredient - two competing forms of nationalism are also there and criss-crossing. So it’s very difficult to construct it or deconstruct it: to what extent religion provides a vehicle for political ambition. I think the example of the Balkans in the 1990s would show what happens if you take Milosevic, the manipulation of a religious issue, to harbour some deep-seated animosities – these are how these vehicles get used.

Guy WilkinsonWell I think we can say we’ve tested our Ambassador - I won’t quite say to destruction, he’s looking very healthy! But he has given us apart from anything else real grounds for confidence in our diplomatic service! The ability not only to answer or should I say avoid answering questions with style as well as with relative ease I think has been a marvellous thing to listen to but of course by far and away the greatest part of what you have

responded to has been indeed to give us answers and to give us insights into the sort of questions that are being posed. I think we have posed you about thirty questions so we have indeed tested you!

Before I move formally to ask you to thank our Ambassador I’d like just to say two little things. One – those who have not yet contributed to this event would you please do so. There are always costs to these events so if you haven’t had a chance to contribute, would you please do so. But more importantly I just want to say a quick word about the Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust. These events depend upon – an organisation like ours – having a certain membership, a certain subscribing membership. It isn’t anything very onerous but it does mean that you are able to contribute to the possibility of these kinds of what I think are really significant and important opportunities we’re able to have. So I’m just saying to you if you’re not a subscribing member of the Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust – which is a non-religious body – please do see Win, do consider being a member because I think that is an important part of the way in which we can individually contribute to a healthier civil society in which these kinds of contributions can be heard not only by us here but also through our website and through the ways in which Francis’ text will be made available. So that’s that little plea. And that’s to conclude that.

And I’ll conclude with a real warm thanks to you for all you have given us this evening both in your talk but also of course in the questions, the way that you’ve answered those questions just now. So thank you very much indeed.