New Delhi : Even the Pope can’t escape the shadow of India-Pakistan tensions.
The Narendra Modi government is planning to formally invite Pope Francis to India, prodded by the country’s Catholic leadership, in a move that the BJP-led administration hopes will help blunt criticism that it is insensitive to minorities, senior officials said.
But sections within the government are keen to nudge the Pope away from also visiting Pakistan on the same trip after Islamabad beat New Delhi in inviting the leader of the Catholic Church earlier this month, complicating a papal itinerary the Vatican is trying to streamline.
The pontiff has declared the period from December 8, 2015 to November 20, 2016 an “extraordinary jubilee of mercy” – a period seen by the Church as a time for remission of sins and extraordinary pardon.
For the Catholic Church in India, which has also sent its invitation to the Vatican, a visit by the Pope before November would be ideal. But for the Indian government, the fourth papal visit must ideally be de-linked from any trip to Pakistan.
“I sent the invitation on behalf of the Indian Catholic Church last week, and the Pope has received it,” Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), told The Telegraph. “But whenever the Pope can make the visit, it will be a special occasion.”
The Pope is both the leader of the Catholic Church and the head of the state of Vatican City, and needs invitations both from the Church and the government of a country to contemplate visiting it, diplomats familiar with papal protocol said.
The CBCI, officials said, had formally also asked Prime Minister Modi last week to invite the Pope, The Telegraph reported.
Theoretically, keeping the pontiff’s visits to India and Pakistan separate is entirely possible for the Vatican – and has precedent.
When Pope John Paul II visited Pakistan in 1981 – the only papal visit to the country so far – he clubbed that stopover with trips to the Philippines, Japan, the US and Guam.
He visited India on a standalone, 10-day trip five years later in 1986. In November 1999, Pope John Paul II again visited India – this time, he also travelled to Georgia. Pope Paul VI visited what was then Bombay in 1964.
A “hyphenated” visit to India and Pakistan would be problematic, two officials said, because of the perception that could create of a shared thrust by the Pope in both nations.
The population of Pakistan’s Christian community has shrunk to just 1.6 per cent of the nation’s citizens. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan bombed churches.
Christians in Pakistan have faced repeated arrests and convictions under a controversial blasphemy law.
Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan Punjab who questioned the implementation of the blasphemy law in 2010 when it was used against Aasiya Bibi, a Christian woman, was assassinated by his police guard.
The Pope, if he visits Pakistan, would be expected to address concerns of that country’s Christian community – of which roughly half are Catholic. India can’t afford any equivalence – even in terms of perception – with Pakistan, the officials said.
But the competing pulls on the pontiff from the Indian subcontinent have already complicated the Vatican’s scheduling of visits.
The CBCI wanted to host the Pope in India in September 2016 for the canonisation of Mother Teresa, after which she will be referred to as a saint.
Pakistan sent two ministers – Muhammed Yousef, in charge of religious affairs, and Kamran Michael, in charge of ports and the only Christian in the Nawaz Sharif cabinet – to invite the Pope earlier this month.
But amid rumours and reports that the pontiff had accepted the Pakistan invitation and would also visit India, the Vatican clarified he had no such plans for the moment.
“No trip by the Pope to Pakistan is currently being planned, and the same can be said about the rumours of a trip by Pope Francis to India,” Father Federico Lombardi, spokesperson for the Vatican, had said in a statement on March 4.
Yesterday, while announcing Mother Teresa’s canonisation, the Vatican said sainthood would be conferred in Rome.
The Apostolic Nunciature – the Vatican’s embassy here today did not respond officially to queries from The Telegraph.
But the Vatican has increasingly tried to increase the gap between the 79-year-old Pope’s overseas trips and to try and cover as many nations as possible on one trip to avoid unnecessary travel, which he finds tiring.
“Obviously, with a trip like this, it’s very engaging, a lot of work, fatigue,” Lombardi had said in September in Philadelphia, on the last leg of a US tour. “We can understand if he is a little tired physically.”
In January 2015, the pontiff cancelled a meeting with bishops in Colombo to recover from his long flight from Rome, and the hour-long drive from the airport to his hotel.