Robaird O’Cearbhaill
Hong Kong correspondent
According to the Italian newspaper Il Tempo, Pope Francis has recently been “negotiating with the Taliban through Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to open humanitarian corridors that would allow the thousands of refugees in Afghanistan to flee safely.”
The report added that “a reserved channel has unexpectedly been opened between the Holy See and the Taliban to create a human corridor” for negotiations between the Pope, The Congregation for Eastern Churches, Erdogan and Taliban officials.
When the Taliban took power, the Roman Pontiff prayed for the country during the Angelus, asked all to join in prayer, and pointedly said that dialogue is the way to solve Afghanistan’s crises.
“I join in the unanimous concern for the situation. I ask you to pray with me to the God of Peace so that the clamor of weapons might cease and solutions can be found at the table of dialogue.”
Before the Il Tempo report, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano urged for urgent negotiations in a front page editorial: “It will be necessary to negotiate with the Taliban on migration and human rights and fundamental freedoms, so that they grant those who don’t feel safe the possibility to leave Afghanistan,” and negotiations “must be done quickly.”
The editorial, headlined: “The Responsibility to Welcome – the Tragedy of Fleeing Afghanis,” urged international “action to ensure that the Afghan refugee situation does not turn into a new catastrophic humanitarian emergency.” Also it criticized the nations “who had a responsible role in Afghanistan” did not predict such a crisis; it was “surprising and nothing was done to avoid it.”
The origin of the report was a letter to the Il Tempo editor by journalist Luigi Bisignani. In the Crux coverage of the story by their Rome correspondent, Bisignani, formerly a senior government press officer, therefore an insider, was “quoting government and parliament sources to illustrate what is happening in the diplomatic back channels of the Italy-Holy See-Afghanistan axis.”
Crux noted, commenting on the Il Tempo report, that “Pope Francis has good ties with most of the Muslim world, [but] the Holy See has no diplomatic ties with Afghanistan.” Crux reported too that Bisignani, a long-time journalist, said that “the Vatican is better than the European Union and NATO to negotiate possible humanitarian corridors with the Taliban” and that the “Holy See’s Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Eastern Churches have been able to open a dialogue, with Erdogan as an intermediary.” (Photo: Pope Francis speaks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. File photo from Vatican News)
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