Proud page in history

The China Times published a special report last Friday tracing the key moments over the past two decades when the Vatican seemed to be on the verge of switching recognition to the vast People’s Republic. In a plan called “The return of the prodigal son”, the Catholic Church in Taiwan already drafted plans to explain to the public the decision of the Vatican to break off relations when all seemed inevitable in 1999.

The severance never took place, for reasons not mentioned in the article, but the constant apprehension on the part of Taiwan over losing its only official ally in Europe revealed by the historical anecdote testifies to the tenuousness of this anchor in Taiwan’s diplomatic relations. Taiwan has no other ally with such global appeal.

The Taiwan-Vatican relationship was officially established in 1942. In the chaos resulting from the Chinese Civil War, the Vatican’s representatives were evicted from Beijing in 1951, and subsequently re-established relations with Taiwan. Despite repeated attempts by the two sides, the People’s Republic and the Holy See have not been able to agree on the power to appoint bishops that the People’s Republic wants to claim as its own.

President Ma Ying-jeou’s trip to Rome, and subsequently the Vatican for the inauguration of Pope Francis can be seen as a diplomatic success. The success of his engagement is as of yet largely symbolic, because opportunity to talk with other heads of state was limited to small talk on the sidelines of the ceremony.

Nonetheless, it is a diplomatic boon for Taiwan for the country’s leader to have met international heavyweights like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and US Vice President Joe Biden. On the moral plane, though, there is something greater that Taiwan has accomplished through the years of diplomatic retreats in the face of the People’s Republic.

In the China Times article, former Taiwan ambassador to the Vatican, Duh Zhu-sheng, emphasised that the Holy See’s diplomacy is aimed at guaranteeing the right to worship, in conjunction with spreading the gospel. It is the mission to build, to lift out of poverty and to educate and heal that motivate the members of the clergy of Rome. For the Vatican, people living in the mainland are desperately in need of the presence of its members. Du says that “for this reason, diplomatic relations of the Vatican should be viewed differently”.

Both Duh and Tai Rui-ming, Duh’s predecessor to the Holy See, see the Vatican as never abandoning the faithful in Taiwan. According to them, the only constant in the Churchs drive is that of its religious mission. Duh and Tai say that even in case of a future transfer of diplomatic relations, the Vatican “will not abandon the Taiwanese faithful”.

Taiwan can look back and proudly say that it has been a beacon for the Chinese-speaking communities throughout the world to have been able to host the Church and conduct education of the clergy to serve the very same community. When communism refused to provide religious freedom, Chinese in the mainland and elsewhere could look to Taiwan and find institutions and people who acted out the mission of the church.

Perhaps better relations between the People’s Republic and the Vatican carry significance for Taiwan in one important, positive way: the more that China accepts the Vatican, the greater degree of long-term societal openness can be expected to result.

Therefore, Taiwan's diplomatic vulnerability is yet a hopeful story. Were relations to warm between the People’s Republic and the Holy See, that would mean the possibility of a more religiously free mainland. That may become a virtuous cycle of cultural transformation that leads to greater tolerance in the People’s Republic.