Unfortunately, when someone in the Vatican talks about the Church’s “soft power”, they still mean it in a political (worldly) sense. The gentlemen of the Vatican delude themselves if they think they are still among the “big players” in world politics.
First of all, let’s see if Ostpolitik was successful in the Church in Europe, as some claim.
When John XXIII and Paul VI allowed the Holy See to try this approach, the situation was impossible. The hermetically sealed “Iron Curtain” did not allow any information to leak out. Mgr Agostino Casaroli was wandering in the dark. The commission of cardinals was not able to provide him with any actual orientation; it gave him carte blanche.
At the same time, the Vatican was full of spies: from Poland, East Germany and the Soviet Union. Casaroli was a saintly man, but he was no miracle worker. He humbly said that he sought only a modus non moriendi (“a way of not dying”). The Church did not die because Ostpolitik saved it, but because of the faith of those peoples (this is what Pope Benedict wrote to me one day).
