Europe, Headlines, Middle East & North Africa

IRAQ-ITALY: Activists Join Catholics in Fasting for Peace

Leonardo Sacchetti

MILAN, Italy, Mar 5 2003 (IPS) - While activists in Italy joined Catholics in fasting for peace and against a war in Iraq on Wednesday, the first day of Lent, in response to a call by Pope John Paul II, the pontiff’s peace campaign has begun to run up against limitations on the political front.

Catholic church-goers, the faithful of other religions and non- believers gathered in city squares in Italy to protest the prospect of a United States attack on Iraq, on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent – the 40-day period before Easter observed by Roman Catholics as a time of penitence and fasting.

A number of Italian politicians also joined in the fast, ranging from members of the leftist opposition parties to lawmakers from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing governing party, Forza Italia, who voted a week ago in favour of the use of air bases in Italy for an eventual attack on Iraq.

But ”More than a fast, what we need is a clear signal from (Iraqi President) Saddam” Hussein, said Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alfredo Luigi Mantica.

The wave of opposition to a war against Iraq has reached the Italian parliament, perhaps because opinion polls show that a majority of people in this European country are opposed to a conflict.

Mantica agreed that ”no one wants war.” But, he added, ”I would ask the pacifists what is the alternative for disarming Saddam?”

”Politics and not just a fast,” he answered, saying that what is needed is a ”common European position capable of convincing Baghdad.”

Berlusconi met Tuesday with the Pope in the last of a series of meetings on Iraq that John Paul has held with world leaders, including Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, and Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz.

”Hope against hope: with this strength the Pope continues calling for peace,” the assistant director of the Vatican press room, Ciro Benedettini, told IPS.

The Vatican has received a flood of e-mail messages in support of its initiative for peace, including ”nearly 7,000 from the United States. All of them say the Pope is the only one capable of stopping these winds of war,” said Benedettini.

But the messages represent a mere drop of water in the sea of Catholics in the United States, who total 65 million and comprise the single largest group of faithful in that country, although the total number of people of Protestant faiths is greater if the various denominations are all taken into account.

The front-page of L’Osservatore Romano, the official daily newspaper of the Vatican, blared out Wednesday that the ”weapons” of the ”Vatican troops” were ”fasting, prayer and the rosary.”

The media offensive for peace by the followers of the Pope continues to be waged in all of Italy’s newspapers. But the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts have reached a delicate juncture, after the pontiff addressed a personal letter appealing for peace to U.S. President George W. Bush, which was delivered by a ”peace envoy,” Cardinal Pio Laghi.

There were also reports that the Pope was considering speaking out for peace before the UN General Assembly in New York, in a last-ditch attempt to keep Washington from launching a unilateral attack on Baghdad.

”John Paul II to New York? A suggestive idea that will not happen,” because the Pope’s advisers ”will show him how futile it would be,” Piero Schiavazzi, one of the best-known faces on the Vatican TV station, Telepace, told IPS.

Why would the trip be futile? And how far will the Vatican’s campaign for peace go? Perhaps both questions have the same answer.

In first place, no one in the Vatican leadership wants to legitimise the global authority of the United Nations at the cost of delegitimising the Pope’s. In other words, the Roman Catholic Church has no desire for the Pope to propose something that the global forum will not support.

Furthermore, ”Bush could see such a trip by the Pope as a useless gesture and a waste of time,” said Schiavazzi, who added that the question of the morality of a war formed part of a ”special dispute” between Washington and the Vatican.

The U.S. administration ”feels it is in competition with the Vatican,” because ”Bush sees his presidency as a religious mission,” and wants to bring the ”Pax Americana” to the Gulf region, independently of his government’s interests in controlling the area’s oil supplies, he argued.

For that reason, Bush might even be willing to declare war against Iraq while the Pope was in New York, Schiavazzi added.

”If there are those who differ with the president on this,” he respects and listens to their opinions, ideas and thoughts, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Tuesday. But, he added, ”In the end, the president will make the judgment that he thinks is best needed to protect our country,”