Stefano Caprio*

The collapse of Soviet communism gave reason to the Vatican political choices in opening up to Russia and Eastern Europe. The new Ostpolitik announces a new world without geographic or confessional delineations. Pope Francis pushes the Church towards the peripheries and towards the high sea, as St. John Paul II had hoped. Part III of an expert analysis.

Paul VI consistently defended Vatican overtures to the USSR, although they scandalized many in the Church. Benevolent politics did not stop persecutions, which instead intensified. But a form of ecumenical and cultural resistance was born and was lived by Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox in the concentration camps. Part Two of an expert analysis.

The Vatican’s latest openings to China resemble the path traced by the old Ostpolitik of Card. Agostino Casaroli. Then as now, the Holy See’s moves have provoked and provoke disagreements, criticism and charges of forgetting the persecuted Church and human rights violations. Casaroli himself had doubts about his effectiveness, although he was eager to implement the dimension of dialogue, rediscovered with the Second Vatican Council. Part One.