THE CATHOLIC HERALD NOVEMBER 4 2011 7 Features Editor: Ed West INTERVIEW Tel: 020 7448 3601 Fax: 020 7256 9728 Email: [email protected] ‘Gaddafi should have been put on trial’ Ed West meets Cardinal Renato Martino, the outspoken former Vatican official who still has a seat in the front row of history hen I meet for the release of Youcef Cardinal Nadarkhani, the Iranian Renato Christian pastor sentenced to Raffaele death for apostasy (even WMartino, president emeritus though he has never claimed of the Pontifical Council to be a Muslim), a matter for Justice and Peace, he which many feel the Catholic has just been in Westmin- Church has been silent over? ster Cathedral for the royal “Yes,” he says, and then investiture of the Order of smiles. “I had many of these St George’s grand master, cases during my 40 years as a Prince Carlo of Bourbon diplomat of the Holy See and Two Sicilies, Duke of eight years of the Pontifical Castro, and the sub-prior Council for Justice and Archbishop George Stack Peace. of Cardiff. The guest “I hope to have the time to speaker at the royal gala write some of my memories, dinner later on was Arch- of things that I have seen bishop Vincent Nichols of personally, because I think Westminster, to which that [an understanding of] Mary McAleese of Ireland some events in the world sent formal greetings. It would be helped if every- was a rather big event. body knows what happened. The order, or to give it is Like this particular case: its full title, the Sacred Mili- everybody agrees. The inter- tary Constantinian Order of est of the Holy See is nothing St George, was founded in else but for more peace. We the mid-16th century by the don’t have colonies. We don’t Angeli Comneni family, Ital- have any divisions, material ian descendants of Byzantine interests, products to promote Roman Emperors, under a here. That is why we inter- bull of Pope Clement VIII, vene only to promote peace and decrees from the King of and understanding.” Spain and later the Holy And after all these years of Roman Emperor. Today the working for peace, how is he 7,000-strong order is heavily enjoying is retirement? He involved in various projects laughs. “I’ll tell you what my supporting the Catholic faith, retirement is. Tomorrow I go and in helping charitable and back to Italy. Next week to humanitarian endeavours New York at the United around the world. Nations – Ban Ki-moon is The cardinal’s role, as good friend of mine – and I he puts it, is to “help the come back after a few days members of the order to and go to São Paulo, and then fulfil their duty as Catholics to Thailand and from Thai- and as members”, a fitting land to Myanmar [Burma]. position for this energetic, Cardinal Martino had to tell John Paul II that his efforts to avert the Gulf War had failed. ‘He was very serene,’ the cardinal recalls CNS photo by Chris Sheridan I’m almost 80 years old, but I well-connected and experi- don’t show that.” enced 78-year-old prelate. Environment in Rio de be the same? The cardinal During my 16 years at the Much of the Vatican’s including obtaining the Iranians in 2007 and set free At that, he smiles and And the order is in extremely Janeiro, and two years later gives a concerned shrug, in United Nations I have lobbying work, of course, release of 15 British service- just before Easter that year. prepares himself for the next good health at the moment, was prominent in demanding that rather Italian gesture worked a lot on that.” is done behind closed doors, men taken hostage by the Is the Holy See lobbying engagement. having just expanded to a safehaven for Tutsi suggesting resigned Argentina and growing in refugees in Rwanda. That pessimism. other parts of Latin America. year he also represented The whole Middle East, There are also requests, he Pope John Paul at the Inter- of course, is in an uncertain points out, to enter the order national Conference on state right now, with Tunisia all across Italy. Population and Develop- on the brink of an Islamist The cardinal was slightly ment, defending the government, Egypt being delayed for our meeting, and Church’s pro-life stance uncertainly ruled by the mili- I later find out it was because against largely hostile Amer- tary and Syria ripped apart he wished to visit the ican-European governments. by violent repression. How Passage, the homeless char- In October 2002 he was will the Christians fare as a ity in Victoria, one of the made president of the Pontif- result of the Arab Spring? Is many initiatives which the ical Council for Justice and it true that 100,000 Chris- group supports around the Peace, and became a tians have already fled Egypt world. member of the College of this year? Born in 1932 in Salerno cardinals the following year, “We cannot say what is in Campania (Italy’s shin), and later still put in charge of happening with the Copts,” Renato Martino was the Pontifical Council for the he says, “but I have been ordained in 1957 and, having Pastoral Care of Migrants many times in Syria when I studied canon law, entered and Itinerants. was in Lebanon in the 1960s. the diplomatic service of the Around that time the The problems there are for Holy See in 1962. And so Cardinal, as well as the rest everybody, not just for Chris- began a half-century career of the Holy See, was vigor- tians.” that would send him to coun- ously lobbying against the President Assad’s father, tries as diverse as Canada, second, larger invasion of Hafez Assad, dictator from Brazil, the Philippines, Iraq by the United States and 1971 to 2000, “was respect- Nicaragua, Laos, Thailand Great Britain. This time, of ful of the Christians”, Cardi- and the United States, course, the fall-out was far nal Martino says. Indeed, as where he was the Permanent greater, especially for the Alawites, a sect that cele- Observer to the United country’s Christian minority, brates Easter and drinks wine Nations from 1986. A which was soon driven out at their rituals, the family are speaker of five languages, by sectarian fighting. He also dismissed as “little Chris- he forms part of that polylin- campaigned against the tians” by Sunni Muslims. gual elite of the Holy See death sentence handed down But “every dictatorial regime that tries so hard to bring on Saddam, which was is the negation of freedom. humanity to the table to carried out in December This is something that must break bread, even if human- 2006, and which did nothing change.” ity often seems more intent to calm the cycle of violence The cardinal adds: “You on breaking legs. in the country. know in eastern Europe they Over a very interesting period, the second half of the Cold War and the start of the new era of civilisational conflict (or whatever this age will be called by posterity), the cardinal has been very much at the front row of history, if not on the stage itself. At the UN he was on duty during the 1989 US invasion of Panama, when the pockmarked dictator General Noriega took refuge in the Holy See embassy, and was driven out by American Cardinal Martino with Prince Carlo of Bourbon Two forces playing heavy metal Sicilies and his wife, and Archbishop Antonio Mennini music. Two years later, in what might be seen as the first war of the new era (it was the conflict that radi- The cardinal says his role is to help calised Osama bin Laden and led to the formation of members of the Constantinian Order al-Qaeda), Martino was ‘to fulfil their duty as Catholics’ heavily involved in Vatican efforts to prevent the Gulf War. That effort, alas, came to nothing. On the day we meet changed, thankfully without “John Paul II tried every- Libya’s hated dictator too much violence.” Alas, thing to avoid war,” he Muammar Gadaffi has just many fear that countries like recalls now. “He was calling suffered a far more brutal Syria will more closely me personally by telephone, and hot-blooded fate, and resemble Yugoslavia than in order to see what UN was while few mourned the pass- Czechoslovakia. doing. ing of his rule, how does this The Syrian crisis, of “I was going to see secre- make the cardinal feel? course, is ultimately less tary-general Pérez de Cuéllar “I regretted that they killed problematic than the neigh- at the time. The dramatic Gaddafi,” he says. bouring Israeli-Palestinian moment was when Pérez “I wanted to hope that this conflict. Cardinal Martino called me one day and told wouldn’t have been the end. was heavily criticised three me: ‘Sorry, archbishop, all He could have been judged years ago for comparing our efforts were in vain. at an international tribunal, Gaza to a concentration Tomorrow the war will start.’ for which I worked for many camp. All he will say today It was a Wednesday, I think. years. This would have been is that he supports the current So I had to tell the pope. I the right way to judge him.” campaign for the United called him, and said: The death penalty, he says, Nations to recognise Pales- ‘Tomorrow the war will is “a state crime”.