The testimony comes from one of the leading figures in the affair: the Frenchman Charles Lemaire, of the missionary society Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP), who was then rector of the diocesan seminary of Kirin. The promemoria , twelve pages written by hand, bears the date 16 June 1986 and was drafted by Monsignor Lemaire. The manuscript is one of the main documentary sources of the volume soon to be published, Santa Sede e Manciukuo 1932-1945, along with other unpublished documents kept in the Vatican Archives.
The French missionary affirms in a firm tone that the Vatican never recognized the legitimacy of the government of Manchukuo. The attribution of a new role to Gaspais served only to assure the missions the presence of someone to represent the central authority of the Church in that condition of emergency and, in the name of the local bishops, to conduct negotiations with the illegitimate government, even without recognizing it at the diplomatic level.
In the impossibility of having contact with the apostolic delegate in China, someone was needed who could be made aware of the spiritual and temporal difficulties of the ordinaries, and could in their name negotiate with the central authorities. Lemaire lists in detail the concrete difficulties that required the presence of a representative of the missions who could take decisions in the name of the Holy See, such as the authority to deliver dispensations, or to conduct preliminary enquiries into ecclesiastical nominations. And above all, the authority to confront local incidents, contestations, arbitrary acts, flagrant injustices on the part of the local authorities against which the ordinaries were helpless.
Lemaire documents with precision the details, also technical and having to do with protocol, that show the non-diplomatic nature of the relations that existed in those years between the representative nominated by the Vatican and the Manchukuoan government.
The investing of Gaspais with titles normally used by the Holy See to designate its representatives to States run by legitimate governments was carefully avoided.
The fact that it was the Congregation of Propaganda Fide that nominated Gaspais was also significant. Therefore not the Pope in person, nor the Secretary of State, but the body holding authority over the missions, a purely religious body that is, without the function of diplomatic relations with States. The choice also of attributing the new functions to an ecclesiastic already there served to emphasize that the Holy See had no intention of «sending from Rome» any representative. All of this, Lemaire sums up, leaves it clearly understood what the Holy See wanted: to be represented but without recognizing the legitimacy of the government, in order to be able to approach the government in a case of necessity. This, obviously, involved the recognition of the existence de facto of the puppet state. But «also those who were convinced of the usurpation, were obliged to recognize that this government existed de facto. The protests from China themselves implied that this tyrannical power existed.
The Japanese, Lemaire notes, “never formally declared that the Vatican had recognized the government of Manchukuo; in practice, they did everything to make it be thought so”. Gaspais was repeatedly invited to official receptions along with the Axis ambassadors. When he went on visits to the most remote communities of his ecclesiastical district, the regime propaganda reserved triumphant welcomes for him, with children who waved the little yellow and white Vatican flags, as if he were a fully ratified nuncio. At the beginning of every year, following diplomatic protocol, he went to present his greetings to the puppet emperor. The Japanese covered him with honors, including the medal of Grand Official of the Order of National Support. Through him all missionaries were granted small benefits, such as the 30 per cent discount on train tickets.
«On 10 July 1939,» recounts the French missionary who in the 50’s was to become superior of the Missions étrangères de Paris, «I was appointed titular bishop of Otro and coadjutor of Kirin, and consecrated on the following November 13». Whereas for contacts with the government, Gaspais willingly allowed space to the “mediation” of Japanese priests, sent from the motherland and with good access to the nomenclature of the puppet regime. Among these an increasing role was assumed by Paul Yoshigoro Taguchi, future archbishop of Osaka and cardinal. «The Monsignor», Lemaire notes, «never appeared, wrote nothing. Father Taguchi almost always succeeded in smoothing difficulties. There were never diplomatic questions dealt with between the Holy See and the government.
Father Jean Charbonner, one of the foremost living Catholic sinologists, noted during one of his teaching conferences on relations between the Vatican and Manchukuo held at the Catholic University of Taipei, “It is only to be regretted that the Church was ready to make a greater compromise with the Japanese aggressors rather than with the legitimate Chinese emperors of the past”. Only when the Vatican documents on this matter are published, will it be possible to assess in detail analogies and differences in the handling of the two different historical predicaments for Vatican diplomacy. Which, as with all diplomatic services in the world, relies on men, with their ambitions and their limitations.
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