Centralized globalization: The Holy See and human mobility since World War II

Abstract

Through an examination of the official teaching of the Church I show how the increased mobility of large masses of Catholics since World War II has led to continuing efforts by the Holy See to follow and, to a certain extent, to control these fluxes of people. In turn, global human mobility has had an influence on institutional structures and on the self-understanding of the Church. While this evolution has contributed to the globalization of the Catholic Church, the trend towards centralization of power in Rome has hindered the development of more inclusive and democratic reforms and the participation of local churches in the decision-making process.

Keywords

Catholic Church globalization migration mobility papal teaching

Introduction

In recent decades, global human mobility has been a major factor in religious change. With the movement of their believers, religious organizations have become increasingly diasporic and transnational (Bowen, 2004; Levitt, 2004; Rudolph and Piscatori, 1997).¹ In this article I focus on the case of the Catholic Church. Through an examination of the official teaching of the Church I show how the increased mobility of large masses of Catholics since World War II has led to continuing efforts by the Holy See to follow and, to a certain extent, to control these fluxes of people. In designing a worldwide pastoral program, the Vatican has merged globalization and centralization. The Catholic hierarchy has gradually become aware of the interconnectedness of places and people in the contemporary world. This led to a new consciousness of the global reach of the Church and of the great diversity in the lives and needs of different groups of believers and of the various local churches. This move towards a more inclusive and heterogeneous Church conflicts, however, with the trends of Ultramontanism, i.e. the primacy of Rome over all other Catholic churches and organizations, which characterizes the contemporary history of the papacy. I claim that the centralizing forces of Ultramontanism, together with the resistance of the popes and of the Roman curia to submit to democratic forms of transparency, accountability, and gender equality in the decision-making process, have so far impeded a genuinely inclusive globalization of ecclesiastical structures and a redistribution of power within the Church.

Catholic migrations

Mass migrations of European Catholics towards North and South America and Australia began in the nineteenth century. From 1820 to 1920 the Catholic population in the USA increased from 195,000 to eighteen million people, largely as a result of migration (Dolan, 1985). The unprecedented scale of the phenomenon posed serious challenges to the Church. In the sending countries, parishes suffered the dispersion of their parishioners. In the receiving countries, the local churches lacked both facilities and clergy to cope with the settling of different communities speaking diverse languages. Worst of all, the immigrants ran the risk of falling prey to Protestant evangelization or of losing their faith as a result of their sudden separation from their religious environment. Zealous European priests and politicians launched initiatives to tackle the potentially disruptive effects of emigration on the religious practices of large masses of European workers. In some cases their efforts met with the resistance of the American bishops, who resented and denounced their interference to the Holy See. Only the pope had enough authority to settle disputes opposing different communities of believers and their leaders. As a consequence the role of Rome in coordinating world migrations of Catholics became urgent and irreplaceable (the first Office for Emigration was created by Pius X in 1912).

While the Church’s migratory politics up to World War II has been thoroughly examined by historians (Bernedo Pinto, 1993; Hennesey, 1981; Rosoli, 1996; Vecoli, 1969), the following period is understudied, despite the wealth of general literature on migrations and diaspora. Since the 1940s the institutional adjustment of ecclesiastical territorial structures (parishes and dioceses) to the changing landscape of mobility has prompted theological reflections that, in turn, have increased the symbolic and strategic relevance of the issue for the Church.²

In this article I will review the actions undertaken by different popes to tackle the problems of increased human mobility. Each stage was influenced by the historical context. The outstanding political and social questions of the moment had an impact on the agenda of the popes. In the aftermath of World War II, for example, the issue of war refugees was prominent. It is not surprising, then, that it has been central in the teaching and diplomacy of Pius XII. In the 1960s, the emergence of Third World countries on the international political scene has led Paul VI to advocate for the welfare of labor migrants travelling to industrialized countries. Likewise, humanitarian emergencies towards the end of the twentieth century prompted John Paul II to intervene in this field. On the whole, the Catholic hierarchy has become increasingly aware of the universal dimension of the Church and of the urgent need to devise a pastoral program for a globalized world. This is reflected in the growing mobility of popes themselves, as well as in their origin outside Italy and, in the end, outside Europe. Mobility has conquered the center of catholicity, although, as we will see, the relation between the center in Rome and the peripheries worldwide is far from being settled once for all.

A natural right to emigration

In 1941, in the midst of World War II, Pope Pius XII stated that families have a natural right to emigrate, deriving from their natural right to own a piece of land large enough to live on. His claim was founded on obsolete concepts of rural economics. But it was bold enough to formulate a Catholic option on the best worldwide distribution of people: “These are the principles, concepts and norms, beloved children, with which We should wish even now to share in the future organization of that new order which the world expects and hopes will arise from the seething ferment of the present struggle” (Koenig, 1943: 728).

The pope condemned any form of forced displacement. But he was also fearful that flows of Catholic migrants, whose predecessors had brought Catholicism to America and Australia, could be discriminated against or even denied the right to settle in the new lands.³ Fearing that secular migration policies inspired by political or economic goals could prove unfavorable to the Church, he proposed an alternative plan aimed at permitting the free circulation of Catholics.

The project aided the expansion of the Church and it was consistent with a theology of the unity of mankind. Throughout the war, the pope insisted on this point. In the encyclicals Summi Pontificatus (1939) and Mystici Corporis (1943) he suggested that hatred and conflict were the outcome of unjust ethnic, national, and political divisions. The Church proclaimed the substantial unity of humanity, all men and women being God’s creatures. Accordingly, in a discourse to the cardinals and bishops held on Christmas Eve 1945, the pope described the Church as a supranational agency eager to cross the borders and barriers that perpetuate divisions among peoples. He concluded by pleading for the rapid liberation of prisoners of war.⁴

The years 1944–1948 were indeed marked by a humanitarian crisis owing to the large numbers of prisoners of war and refugees. In 1944 Pius XII established the Pontifical Commission for Assistance to Refugees. In 1951 the Holy See was among the twenty-six states that promulgated and signed the Geneva Convention on the status of refugees. The collaboration with secular powers did not entail any acceptance by the pope of principles of equality and accountability. In 1945 he stated: “The members of the ecclesiastical Hierarchy have received and always receive their authority from on high and they do not need to account for the exercise of their mandate except directly to God, to whom alone the Roman Pontiff is subject, or, at other levels, to their hierarchical Superiors, but they have no account to make either to the people or to the civil powers” (Pius XII, 1945).⁵

The handling of populations

The pope’s general concern for the welfare of minorities and the movement of populations goes hand in hand with a concern for demography. In 1951 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) were going to make world population control a priority issue on the U.N. agenda (Connelly, 2008: 146). In an address to the delegates of an international conference on migration in October 1951, the pope seems to have acknowledged that population growth could lead to crisis when “the old nation cannot feed all of her children anymore and overpopulation forces them to emigrate” (De Lestapis, 1952: 293). The Church, he continues, “feels these distresses all the more as they affect in large part its own children.” Two weeks later, in an address to Italian midwives, he endorsed natural methods of birth control. It was the first time in history that a pope had approved birth limitation. Nevertheless he condemned artificial means of contraception and the interference of states in matters of reproduction (Noonan, 1965: 500ff.).

In that same year, through his pro-secretary of state, G. B. Montini (later pope Paul VI), he gave decisive support to the foundation in Geneva of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC). In 1952 the apostolic constitution Exsul Familia stated that the function of the ICMC was “to unite and organize existing Catholic associations and committees, and to promote, reinforce and coordinate their projects and activities on behalf of migrants and refugees.” Exsul Familia laid the basis of a fully-fledged system of centralized political control of migration. The document established a Supreme Council on Migration and an agency to direct the Apostolate of the Sea “to promote the spiritual and moral welfare of maritime people, that is, of both those who board ships as officers and those who go as crew members, together with those who are employed in ports.” The pope was also concerned with the discipline of the travelling and missionary clergy who had to follow mobile people. The bureaucratic norms regarding their affiliation, duties, capacity, and behavior are numerous and detailed.

In the early 1950s the address to Italian midwives and the constitution Exsul Familia set Catholic guidelines for dealing with the fecundity and mobility of populations. The ancient metaphors of the Church as a (mystical) body and of believers as a (spiritual) flock had gained unexpectedly material meaning. The Vatican had to deal with the sexuality and procreation of Catholics in order to maintain a grip on the demographic size of Catholic minorities all over the world. In that same period those communities were becoming increasingly mobile, crossing the oceans and changing continents.

It is not surprising, then, that the papal message for Christmas Eve 1952 had a section entitled “The issue of births and the problem of emigrants.” It attacks population restriction attained through birth control as well as immigration quotas. Pius XII is also wary of assimilation policies that may wipe out the religious belonging of migrants together with their linguistic and ethnic ties to their native countries. The Church had much to gain and much to lose from the challenge of migration. On the one hand, “humble colonies of Christian migrants may turn into a breeding ground of Christianity where it has never entered or where its meaning has been lost” (Pius XII, 1957). On the other hand, those same people are likely to convert to other faiths if the Catholic Church fails to stand at their side, following them in their travels, helping them with the everyday troubles of a migrant’s life, and acting on their behalf at diplomatic level.

The “global struggle for souls” (Agnew, 2010) among world religions manifests itself in the demographic policies of the Vatican, which are aimed at avoiding a ruinous fall in the fertility of Catholic couples, as well as in its attempt not to lose sight of the moving masses of believers. The management of populations of believers is a crucial function for the government of the universal Church. From this point of view, the pope exercises a mixed form of power. Michel Foucault (1979a, 1979b) described bio-power and pastoral power as independent forms of control. The former is the political regulation of biological life, while the latter is power exerted over a mobile group of people. Indeed, the case study at hand shows their historical relation. Twentieth-century popes have tried to influence the reproduction of Catholic people while at the same time tracking their mobility and establishing a doctrinal and institutional framework to cope with it. They have done so in an effort to maintain and, whenever possible, to increase the number of baptized. As Agnew (2010: 57) concludes, “it is evident that the Church does indeed practice geopolitics.”

The Church, exiled and migrant itself

In the following decades, concern for human mobility, once a specific task performed by discrete groups and congregations, became increasingly important for the ordinary functioning of the institution and was ever more centralized. In this respect the documents promulgated by the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) mark a distinctive evolution. The pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes acknowledges that “the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one” and remarks: “It is also noteworthy how many men are being induced to migrate on various counts, and are thereby changing their manner of life.” The dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium develops the metaphors of the Church in exile on this earth, away from the Lord, and of the pilgrim Church. Consequently, the community of believers is described as “the wandering people of God,” spiritual heirs to the people of Israel, “which wandered in exile in the desert.” Its members live “still as pilgrims in a strange land.”

Mobility brings with it interconnectedness. The bishops gathered at the council, recruited from all continents, hoped that the Church might follow this trend and act as a single, universal body transcending any difference of origin, language, nation, and race. In the past, Catholic communities were not always immune from nationalist and racist feelings. The traumatic experiences of the previous fifty years, with two world wars and the emergence of totalitarian regimes in Europe, had shown that nationalism and racism heavily impair the centralized action of the Church and the welfare of Catholic minorities. The historical lesson that the council fathers echoed was therefore the importance of a universal conception of the Church or, in other words, of its catholicity.

The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner provided a theological interpretation of Vatican II as “the Church’s first official self-actualization as a world Church” (Rahner, 1979: 717; emphasis in the text). Although the Counter-reformation Church was already global, as the ordination of indigenous bishops and the scope of the Jesuit missions both within and outside Europe witness, Rahner believed that these were only antecedents of Vatican II, where for the first time, albeit tentatively, “a world Church as such begins to act through the reciprocal influence exercised by all its components” (Rahner, 1979: 717).

This major trend affected the function of the clergy, particularly the bishops. Each bishop had to be at the service of the entire Church. They were “consecrated not just for one diocese, but for the salvation of the entire world” (Ad Gentes: 38).

In the nineteenth century Ultramontanism had already forged a global Catholic imagination. Ultramontane bishops were representatives of a centralized Roman hierarchy, and Catholics often thought of themselves as members of a global body and subjects of a universal papal authority (Viaene, 2008). Yet the principle of collegiality affirmed by Vatican II—that is, the authority of the college of bishops together with the pope over the whole Church—restored the authority of the local bishop as a leader in his own right rather than as a mere delegate of the papacy.

The principle, though, was never to be fully implemented. In 1968, a few years after its affirmation, the promulgation by Paul VI of the encyclical Humanae vitae on birth control represented a strong reassertion of papal will against the advice of a large commission composed of bishops, theologians, scientists, and Catholic couples (McClory, 1995). Later on, John Paul II made it clear that the local bishops’ conferences should work along dogmatic, moral, and disciplinary guidelines established by the pope (Marani, 2009: 196). According to him, the ecclesiology of Vatican II, including collegiality, was “foreign to the political-philosophical principle of democracy” (John Paul II, 1986).

As it became aware of its universality, the Church also acknowledged its condition of minority and dispersion. Karl Rahner (1963) and the influential spiritual writer Thomas Merton (1964) described the condition of Christians in the modern world as one of diaspora. Everywhere in the world, they observed, people of strong Christian faith lived in societies where the majority is indifferent to their message or follows a different religion. The complementary ideas of unity and dispersion contributed to shape the contemporary identity of the Church as a universal agency scattered all over the globe. Within it, migrants and itinerant people represent both a specific group entitled to special care and a powerful image of the whole Church, itself wandering in terrestrial exile.

Doctrine and structures evolved together. Behind the synthesis provided by the council there was the centuries-old experience of coping with migration and its problems. Since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, Rome encouraged the establishment of national parishes in the countries of immigration. National (or personal) parishes are ethnically or linguistically homogeneous communities whose priest usually has the same background. They cater for the needs of newcomers who find it hard to accommodate themselves to the mores and language of territorial parishes. Instead of supporting assimilation at any cost, the Vatican favors a pastoral policy that keeps alive ties to the mother country and “natural” belonging to the group of countrymen. As a consequence, institutions born in this new landscape of flux began to grow alongside traditional ones, which responded to the pre-existing model of territoriality.

Multiple mobility

In the aftermath of Vatican II the pope and the Roman curia worked to remold the pastoral care of mobile people under the auspices of the council. In 1967, Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio on the development of peoples strongly condemned racism and nationalism, and stressed “the duty of giving foreigners a hospitable reception.” In 1969 the motu proprio De Pastorali Migratorum Cura was the first thorough treatment of mobility since Exsul Familia. The next year Paul VI established the Pontifical commission for the pastoral care of emigration and tourism, charged with coordinating activities in the field of mobility. Its mission encompassed everyone from the apostolate to migrants, sailors, people of the air (i.e. working on airplanes and at airports), nomads (such as the Romani), and tourists. There emerged a new consciousness of the various forms of contemporary mobility and their specific demands. The post-council documents also witness a wider view of the phenomenon, extended to non-Catholic and non-religious people. The permeability of frontiers poses new challenges to the Church. With greater frequency, Catholics have the opportunity to meet people of different faiths. This raises, among other things, the delicate issue of mixed marriages. The Vatican also insisted on the right of married migrants to family reunion, in line with the concern for families, which had for the past century been central to Catholic teaching.

Every category of migrant has particular circumstances and problems. In caring for each of them the Church gains an opportunity to follow current social trends and to take a position on crucial questions relating to a globalized world. So, when it comes to helping sailors, the discourse emphasizes the exploitation of poor workers by transnational capital. The treatment of migrants becomes the place where issues of economic inequality are discussed. When exploring the apostolate of aviation, the Holy See takes into account the psychological consequences of frequent travel.⁶ The subject of nomadic lives provides the occasion to deal with the problems of ethnic stigmatization and collective—as opposed to individual—evangelization. Tourism is a field in which it should be relatively easy for the Church to reach young people. The “apostolate of the road” should be able to ensure the active presence of the Church on the highways and at crossing points where drivers and truckers stop and meet. Finally, students abroad are invited to contribute to the development of sending countries (Pontificia Commissio de Spirituali Migratorum atque Itinerantium Cura, 2001 [1978]).

Categorization is in itself an attempt at controlling the protean reality of contemporary mobility and at coordinating pastoral work. The pastoral care of human mobility grows in size and scope, and comes to represent an ambitious project for assuring the presence of the Church at the main crossroads of globalization. Seminars are expected to give the new generation of clergy training that fits the requirements of a world on the move. In the same vein the Vatican invites all religious people to think anew on the nature of territorial structures: parishes and dioceses are no longer defined “only in geographical terms; they are called to extend wherever else many of their members go or live.” Mobility itself pushes for “ultra-territorial” ideas and institutions (Pontificia Commissio de Spirituali Migratorum atque Itinerantium Cura, 2001 [1978]: 777). Paul VI summarized this as: “To contemporary mobility must correspond the pastoral mobility of the Church” (Paul VI, 1973).

In post-Council years the discourse on mobility is pervaded by optimism and open-mindedness. The old struggle for a religious re-conquest of the modern world, which in the nineteenth century animated much Catholic anti-liberal spirit, is completely refashioned. It has lost the anti-modern attitude and it is defined in terms of an amiable “accompanying” of the modern world by a caring Church desiring to make itself close to the manifold troubles of a pilgrim humanity, shuffled here and there by the forces of globalization. The way was then open for the action of John Paul II, whose pontificate would place the experience of global mobility at the core of the Church.

A very mobile pope

An indefatigable traveler, John Paul II revolutionized the symbols of papal power and dignity. In modern times the thousand-year-old tradition of the papacy was symbolized by the pope’s fixed residence in Rome. It had all the attributes of stability. Eugenio Pacelli and Angelo Roncalli had travelled widely as papal nuncios. Pius XII and John XXIII, though, just like their predecessors, almost never left Rome, except for holidays in the nearby Castel Gandolfo and, in the case of John XXIII, for a short trip to Assisi, about 150 km north of Rome. Paul VI was the first pope to travel by plane. During his fifteen-year pontificate he undertook a dozen trips on all five continents. Yet the mobility of Wojtyła, the first non-Italian pope in more than four centuries, was of unprecedented scale. In more than a hundred trips abroad he toured virtually every region of the world where Catholics lived (except, notably, parts of the Middle and Far East). Despite his widespread mobility, he was a fiery supporter of obedience to Rome. In his travels he made the Vatican authority physically present for all Catholic communities. This innovative instrument of government—papal visits—was part of a program of “restoration” of the authority of Rome, which had suffered greatly in the aftermath of Vatican II (Della Cava, 1992: 174–179), particularly after the promulgation in 1968 of Paul VI’s ill-fated encyclical Humanae Vitae (Hout and Greeley, 1987; Massa, 2010: chapter 3).

Visits provided John Paul II with the occasion to pursue political aims. His visit to Warsaw in 1979 “drained power from the Polish Communist Party, lighting up huge Catholic crowds with an enthusiasm that turned the Ave Maria into an anti-Communist chant” (Linden, 2009: 269). In other cases he seized the opportunity to settle conflicts with local churches, as in his famous reproach to Nicaraguan priest and politician Ernesto Cardenal, Minister of Culture in the Marxist Sandinista government, on his arrival at the airport of Managua in 1983 (Houtart, 1989). In the course of his stay he met political leaders and he would personally follow diplomatic relations between the Holy See and secular governments. Modern transportation technology allowed him to marry a solid central power with amazing and restless mobility. It comes as no surprise, then, that he was an advocate of human mobility.

Jean Paul II had a particular concern for refugees. The Vatican diplomacy collaborated with—and sometimes took issue with—international agencies working with refugees and displaced people. In his 1992 message for the Day of Migrants and Refugees, the pope observed: “Once people used to emigrate in order to find better conditions of life: from many countries today people emigrate to survive. Such a situation tends to erode the distinction between the concepts of migrant and refugee, making the two categories converge under the common state of necessity.” In the 1960s and 1970s migrant people had been described mainly as endowed with agency and as vehicles of social change. Since the end of the century the prevailing image has been that of people in need. The issue of undocumented foreigners has been high on the agenda of western democracies; at the same time, humanitarian and natural emergencies in various parts of the world have “created” large populations of refugees.

John Paul II was very active on the pilgrimage front, too. He launched the World Youth Days (WYD) and he drew attention to pilgrims and pilgrimage, particularly on the occasion of the Jubilee Year of 2000. The WYD began in 1986 as a follow-up to the U.N. International Year of Youth in 1985. Taking place in a different city each time, they gather many thousands of young people, who assemble to pray, to spend time together, and to listen to the pope.⁷ Indeed, the opportunity to see and hear the pope seems to be their most attractive feature. WYDs were paradigmatic of Wojtyła’s pontificate both for their focus on the person of the pope, who toured like a media celebrity, and for their restless mobility, changing continents every two or three years.

If the WYDs “bring the centre [of Catholicism] to the periphery” (Norman and Johnson, 2011: 380–381), then the opposite movement was set in motion with the proclamation of the Jubilee Year of 2000. On that occasion millions of pilgrims visited the Holy City of Rome and attended the numerous celebrations held throughout the year. These initiatives went beyond the pastoral care of mobile people. Indeed, the WYD and the Jubilee actively fostered the mobility of the global Church. All believers were invited to cross the territorial borders of their parishes and to join in world events in which a temporary transnational community is formed under the aegis of the pope.

The challenges of ecumenism and multiculturalism

Not all migrants are Catholics, of course. In the early twentieth century documents explicitly dealt with the pastoral care of Catholic migrants, and the Holy See acted on their behalf. The main reasons behind the Church’s involvement were twofold: first, ensuring that all baptized people should have access to the liturgy and sacraments that mobility could make difficult; and second, safeguarding the faithful from loss of faith. Its attitude changed after Vatican II, when the Church progressively endorsed the doctrine of human rights and began to talk in favor of all mankind (Casanova, 1999). John Paul II in particular emphasized this point. He praised the U.N. for its campaigns inspired by the Declaration of 1948 and he gave open support to the policy of extending human rights to all peoples and nations.

This merging of religious and secular ideology has entailed a certain ambiguity in the teaching of the Church. Sometimes its discourse is clearly religious and denominational. Often, though, it addresses all human beings and it stresses values like dignity and equality, which today bear no specific religious mark. On the one hand, this helps to bridge the gap between the Church and the modern world. On the other hand, though, it puts Catholic identity in jeopardy: the boundaries and specificity of its tradition are in danger of fading away and dissolving into a generic humanitarianism. The discourse on migration mirrors the ambiguity. While asserting its own status as a particular religious agency, the Church nevertheless advocates in favor of mobile people on the basis of dignity and rights common to all human beings. Indeed, most Catholic associations devote themselves to the assistance of migrants and refugees quite independently of their faith. In the last decade the Vatican has tried to make clear its position on this complex issue.

In fact, the issue of migration intersects that of ecumenism: recent migratory fluxes have brought many Orthodox and Muslim migrants to traditionally Catholic countries; conversely, Catholic people sometimes emigrate to Islamic countries. An accentuated religious pluralism emerges as a consequence of augmented mobility from all continents. The Holy See does not conceal its fears: “A particular danger to the faith comes from today’s religious pluralism, in the sense of relativism and syncretism in religious matters. To combat this danger it is necessary to prepare new pastoral initiatives that are capable of confronting this phenomenon, which, together with the proliferation of sects, is one of the most serious pastoral problems of today” (Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, 2004: 48).

Muslim migrants call for special attention. Catholic communities must learn to recognize their common values without losing sight of divergences. Among the latter the issue of human rights is prominent. Here the Church adopts a typically western discourse that sees Islam as a factor likely to hinder the acknowledgement of human rights. A prudent attitude is taken in the case of the marriage of a Catholic woman to a Muslim man. The baptism of children also raises strong concerns, since “it is well known that the norms of the two religions are in stark contrast. The problem must therefore be raised with absolute clarity during the preparation for marriage, and the Catholic party must take a firm stand on what the Church requires” (Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, 2004: 68). In the last century the Church has stressed the role that families play in transmitting faith to the next generation. Spouses are expected to be carriers and even, in some circumstances, defenders of the faith (Turina, 2013a). Women are therefore crucial as prospective mothers—particularly so in a context of religious pluralism.

Francis, the son of immigrants

In his first months as Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, child of Italian immigrants to Argentina and the first American pope, has shown particular concern for the cause of migrants. On his first papal trip he visited the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa—a gateway to Europe for thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers from North Africa. In the homily he held there he remembered the death at sea of hundreds of them and he vigorously criticized the indifference of host countries.⁸ “Migrants present a particular challenge for me, since I am the pastor of a Church without frontiers,” he states in the exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. While Benedict XVI was mainly concerned with the future of Christianity in Europe, Pope Francis seems more aware of the global challenges that await the Church in the twenty-first century.

Beyond the sense of place

The history I have traced underpins the claim that human mobility has had a decisive influence on the Catholic Church’s structure and teaching since the mid-twentieth century. The pastoral care of migrants has developed from below. It was initially devised and performed by single groups of lay Catholics and religious congregations who devoted themselves to this specific task.⁹ But since World War II the Holy See has been increasingly willing to devise its own definition of the political, diplomatic, and organizational frame within which the action of Catholics in the field of mobility should take place. This institutional shift has sparked theological developments that in turn have changed the self-understanding of the Church.

To begin with, the conception of traditionally territorial structures like the parish and the diocese has evolved. The principle of flux has gained relevance beside that of territory. Mobility “is transforming the parish communities from stable to ‘privileged places of transit and encounter limited in time’” (Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, 2006). The local mobility made possible by the diffusion of cars has also contributed to this trend. As Vincent Miller (2008: 417) has argued, “the ‘automobile scale’ of suburban life and the expectation of choice have transformed the Catholic parish from [a] geographical to a congregational model.”

In a global age mobility goes hand in hand with interconnectedness and, in the case of the Church, with a growing centralization of functions. In the twentieth century the Vatican managed to secure the election of bishops and therefore their obedience to the authority of Rome. The centralization of power and worldwide interconnectedness ushered in a globalized idea of the Church in which every single bishop is responsible for the whole Church. By stressing its universal character, the Church has somehow “internalized” the process of globalization. The same could not be said of other major trends of modernity, like democratization and gender equality, which did not trigger significant changes within the Catholic hierarchy. Indeed, the Vatican has not implemented systems of accountability and transparency in return for the growing centralization of its structures. The clergy abuse crises, with their heavy consequences for the reputation of the Church and for many dioceses all over the world, exposed the reluctance of the hierarchy to submit its decisions to public scrutiny. Similarly, women are prevented from taking part in the decision-making process in Rome, which still rests in the hands of a male hierarchy.

On a political level, the care of migrants and refugees has stimulated diplomatic relations between the Vatican and secular powers like governments and NGOs. The Holy See has ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees and has repeatedly invited all states to sign the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families.

The expansion of Catholicism in the southern hemisphere (though admittedly in Latin America it is on the retreat in relation to Pentecostalism) and its contraction in Europe have forced the reconsideration of another tenet of traditional Catholic geography, the distinction between Catholic lands and countries of mission. “In contemporary society, to which migration contributes by making it more and more multiethnic, intercultural and multireligious, Christians are called to face a substantially new and fundamental chapter in the missionary task: that of being missionary in countries of long Christian tradition” (Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, 2004: 100). In a sense, all clergy members today are missionaries, surrounded as they are by religiously pluralistic societies. New generations of priests from developing countries are increasingly called to emigrate in order to bring help to old European churches in need of clergy.

A global Church is also a Church which becomes aware of the peculiar features of each place. Pogorelc (2011) has made a case for the importance of local contexts in the development and growth of Catholic social movements. Indeed, even a traditional discipline like theology has undergone radical changes following the impact of contextual theologies in the second half of the twentieth century (Schreiter, 1997). Instead of making universal claims, contextual theologies like liberation theologies acknowledge the role of local conditions—power structures, historical development, ethnic traditions—in the making of theology. Exposing the Euro-centrism of traditional theology, Third World churches have been able—partly, at least—to challenge the cultural hegemony of western churches.

The latter have also profited from an ecclesiology that grants local churches an active role in the world. According to J. Bryan Hehir, the rise of U.S. bishops as actors in the public debate is the outcome of a post-conciliar theology—initiated by Paul VI—that “calls the local church to be not only a faithful student of papal teaching but also a creative source of theological insight and prudential judgments,” thereby acknowledging “the contingency and specificity of local situations and the need for shaping the conciliar call to engagement to meet concrete conditions” (Hehir, 1986: 60).

Recently, Pope Francis has given formal sanction to the need for cultural and regional diversity within the Church. In Evangelii gaudium he states: “We cannot demand that peoples of every continent, in expressing their Christian faith, imitate modes of expression which European nations developed at a particular moment of their history.”¹⁰

In any case, the asserted openness to cultural and regional diversity was often contradicted by repressive Vatican policies aimed at assuring ideological homogeneity in moral or political matters. One need only think of the thwarting of Latin American liberation theology, under accusation for its alleged affinities with Marxism (Forrester, 2006: 524–528). Another case in point is the struggle against African and Asian traditional forms of “marriage by stages”—accused of being “in contrast with human dignity, difficult to uproot” and of creating “a negative moral situation with a characteristic and well-defined social problem” (Pontifical Council for the Family, 2000).

Center and periphery

An interesting way to analyze the history I have recounted is through the frame of the relations between center and periphery. From this point of view the different popes have very different approaches. Pius XII, who was an international leader who sought contacts with international organizations and who spoke on world issues like the fate of war refugees, has been nevertheless an Italian pope, closely involved in the life and politics of his own country. Well into the 1950s the Vatican bureaucracy and the College of Cardinals were also overwhelmingly composed of Italian clergy. Firmly established in Rome, the pope represented the immobility of the symbolic and administrative center of the Church, rooted in the Western European tradition. Vatican II has changed the face of catholicity by bringing the periphery to the center. A century earlier Vatican I had sanctioned the triumph of Ultramontanism, that is, the primacy of Rome over local churches, as apparent in the dogma of papal infallibility. The world episcopacy gathered at Vatican II replaced Ultramontanism with the principle of collegiality, asserting the need for collaboration between center and periphery in the government of the Church. The practical opportunity for the exercise of collegiality was provided by the world synods of bishops in which the pope should meet the delegates of all the episcopates. One can raise doubts as to the actual degree of collaboration in the synods presided over by John Paul II. As John O’Malley observes, “it soon became clear that his mind was made up on most of the questions before the bishops had a chance to speak. National Episcopal conferences gradually lost what little margin they had for independent decision-making” (O’Malley, 2010: 320). Pope Wojtyła has indeed brought the center to the periphery through his frequent journeys. Yet, they have been more of a muscular reassertion of Ultramontanism than an authentic instance of center–periphery dialogue. The attitude of this pope suggests that globalization can be a conservative force when coupled with a strong centralizing will. Compared with John Paul II, the clear Europhile bias of Benedict XVI might have been less of a hindrance to reopening a dialogue between center and periphery. This, at least, seems to be the opinion of Gustavo Gutierrez, a reputed liberationist theologian silenced by the Vatican in the 1980s. In a recent interview to the National Catholic Reporter, he stated that “[t]he dialogue with [Ratzinger] was easier than with Wojtyła” (McElwee, 2014). Pope Francis’s first declaration after his election, that his brother cardinals had gone “to the ends of the earth” to give Rome a new bishop, sounds like an emphasis on his coming from the periphery, that is, from outside the European world where popes had so far been recruited. The relation between center and periphery is an evolving one and a relevant dimension for understanding the future of the global Church.

Theological adjustments

Besides issues of power, the Catholic Church’s engagement with global mobility has spurred significant theological reflection. Evangelical considerations with regard to helping vulnerable people have inspired the humanitarian activity of Catholic associations in favor of migrants and refugees. The value of hospitality has been invoked to counter the temptations of racism and xenophobia. The stranger, the pilgrim, the exiled, and the nomad have been praised as metaphors of “the wandering people of God,” the self-representation of the Church introduced by Vatican II.

Theologians and ecclesiastical authorities have come to appreciate the role of migrants as carriers of faith, even recognizing “the mysterious providentialness of the migratory phenomenon” (Pontificia Commissio de Spirituali Migratorum atque Itinerantium Cura, 2001 [1978]: 797) in spreading Christianity. They have also highlighted the mobile life of some of the most venerable figures in the tradition of the Church, from Abraham to the Holy Family, from Jesus himself to his apostles and Saint Paul. John Paul II, the most mobile pope ever, developed a fully-fledged teaching on the meaning and implications of mobility for the history—past, present, and future—of Christianity. Since the 1950s other theological speculations, for example on the unity of the human family and the Christian diaspora, have gone in the same direction.

This conception of the Church is consistent with a discourse on its universality and the universal mission of all clergy. The training of priests should prepare them for service to the whole Church, insisting on values encompassing all of humanity like human rights and the dignity of every human person (Congregation for Catholic Education, 1986). In the processes of global mobility, the Church has thus found a way to free itself from “the strait-jacket of the territorial sovereign nation-state” (Casanova, 2001: 433) that in the modern era has replaced medieval transnational Christianity. It has therefore emphasized its supranational character, as is apparent in the stance it has taken as a permanent observer at the U.N. (Chong and Troy, 2011).

Another point is worth mentioning. Nomads, migrants, and refugees have often been idealized for their attachment to traditional values like family and devotion. On this basis the Church has undertaken to “preserve” these people from the interference of new cults and secular ideologies (see, for example, Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, 2005). In the case of migrants, at least, this view retains elements of truth. The theorist of secularization Steve Bruce has suggested that the high number of immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Asia may be responsible for U.S. religious vitality. Not only have these people been raised in religious environments, but also religion “provides solutions to the anomie or sense of loss that many migrants suffer” (Bruce, 2002: 220; see also Hirschman, 2004). Migration, then, is likely to be in itself a counter-secularization factor, although its efficacy may decline in the coming generations.

Conclusion

In the late nineteenth century the still recent phenomenon of mass migration seemed more a problem than a resource from the point of view of the Holy See. Zealous politicians and religious congregations undertook initiatives in this field outside Rome. The Vatican had the embarrassing role of settling jurisdictional, liturgical and nationalist disputes that the movement of large groups of Catholics had aroused. In the following decades, though, it began to recognize the new opportunities for evangelization and social influence that migration also offered. Pastoral programs for migrants, sailors, flight personnel, and nomads all originated from below. But gradually—and overtly since Vatican II—the hierarchy, itself increasingly composed of non-European bishops, has intervened to set out guidelines for Catholic engagement in the matter of mobility. It has elaborated an official theology, established canonical norms, and instituted a central office to supervise and stimulate pastoral projects for mobile and itinerant people. Theology, ecclesiology, and institutional structures have thus coevolved towards a project of universality divulgated in moral, spiritual, diplomatic, or educational terms, depending on the contexts where it is announced.

In this way, the Catholic hierarchy, which resisted internal reforms related to democratization and gender equality, opened the doors of the Church to the process of globalization—although a peculiar kind of centralized globalization. Global mobility has indeed shaped the geopolitical face of the Church. The most striking example today is the migration of Hispanic Catholics. In the next decades the high fertility of this group could alter the religious landscape of the U.S., making Catholicism the largest religion among young people (Skirbekk et al., 2010).

Nevertheless, this somehow reassuring image needs some qualifications. A critical evaluation of the historical record is likely to reveal that the Church’s response to migrant populations does not always reflect its humanitarian rhetoric. I will give a couple of examples.

First, the policies adopted by the various Catholic organizations are not always based on the principles of care and inclusion asserted by the Vatican. At the world synod held in Rome in 2005, Nigerian archbishop Felix Job observed: “In these days of dwindling numbers of Religious in the old Church the desire for survival and for continuity has led to indiscriminate recruitment of young ladies from mission territories. These young ladies are uprooted from their culture and tradition and planted in Europe and America where the climate, culture and customs often overwhelm them and often they are thrown out of these institutions.” Therefore he urged his fellow bishops “to check uncontrolled recruitment of young ladies from outside [their] Diocese[s] that might lead to abuses” (Synodus Episcoporum, 2005).

Second, orthodoxy in sexual morals may take precedence over social doctrine. The Vatican upholds the rights of refugees but not when it comes to reproductive rights. For example, in 2001 the Holy See vehemently protested against the distribution of reproductive health kits in refugee camps sponsored by UNO agencies (Turina, 2013b).

Many Catholic institutions, though—from parishes to national bishop conferences to Caritas Internationalis, the international network of Catholic relief agencies on matters of migration and trafficking—have been deeply engaged in helping undocumented migrants, sheltering asylum-seekers, and fighting human trafficking (Linden, 2009: 269–276). The election in 2013 of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a pope born of immigrants, is likely to bring new vigor to this branch of pastoral care. There is still little research on the way the Catholic Church has been able to respond to the challenge of global mobility. The time seems favorable for a sociological and critical exploration of this field.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

I warmly thank Warren S Goldstein and three anonymous CRR reviewers for many helpful suggestions.

Notes

Author biography

Isacco Turina is a researcher in cultural sociology at the University of Bologna. He has authored two Italian books: on the new hermits in Italy (2007) and on the biopolitics of the Catholic Church (2013).

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