Pope Francis set out his diplomatic priorities for 2025 Thursday, in his annual “state of the world” address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See.
The pope only read out the first few pages of his address before excusing himself due to a cold. Msgr. Filippo Ciampanelli, undersecretary of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, read the rest of the speech.
In the context of the 2025 Jubilee, the pope urged diplomats to avoid a “logic of confrontation,” embracing instead a “logic of encounter, so that the future does not find us hopelessly adrift, but pressing forward as pilgrims of hope, individuals, and communities on the move, committed to building a future of peace.”
His almost 5,000-word address highlighted the diplomatic issues the Holy See is likely to focus on over the next 12 months – and the topics seemingly relegated down the Vatican’s agenda.
Papal health
After a year filled with speculation about his health due to various medical procedures, the pope enjoyed relatively good health during a busy 2024, which included the second session of the synod on synodality and the longest trip of his pontificate so far.
But at the end of 2024, the pope’s health was the subject of renewed speculation, as he excused himself from speeches citing a cold and appeared with a bad bruise on his chin at a consistory for the creation of new cardinals.
Thursday’s address suggests that 2025, with its demanding Jubilee Year program, could be another year filled with papal health speculation. About two minutes into his speech, the pope handed over his speech to Msgr. Ciampanelli, saying he continued to suffer from “a bit of a cold,” which he first mentioned before Christmas.
Ukraine and Gaza
Pope Francis predictably dedicated part of his speech to Ukraine and Gaza, asking the international community to end both wars.
Concerning Gaza, he called for an end to the “shameful” humanitarian crisis in the region and appealed for the return of Israeli hostages.
The pope also strongly condemned the global surge in antisemitism. His remarks came at a sensitive time for Catholic-Jewish relations, with the Israeli government and Jewish organizations expressing alarm at recent papal comments on Gaza.
On Christmas Eve, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar summoned the apostolic nuncio to Israel, Archbishop Adolfo Tito Yllana, to express his “strong displeasure” at the pope’s remarks in his Dec. 21 address to the Roman curia.
The pope said the deaths of children amid bombings were “cruelty,” which many in Israel interpreted as the pope saying that the Israeli military was deliberately targeting children.
Observers suggest the Vatican’s relationship with the Jewish community is at one of its lowest points since Vatican Council II. How Vatican diplomacy addresses this challenge will be a story to watch this year.
Venezuela and Nicaragua
Two countries likely to continue to prove a diplomatic challenge for the Vatican in 2025 are Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Pope Francis told diplomats that the crisis in Venezuela could only be overcome “by adhering sincerely to the values of truth, justice, and freedom, and the respect of life, dignity, and rights of each person.”
Regarding Nicaragua, where the Church has suffered severe repression, the pope said “the Holy See is always available for a respectful and constructive dialogue, and follows with concern the measures taken against people and institutions of the Church.” He added that “there cannot be true peace if religious freedom is not guaranteed.”
Venezuela and Nicaragua have been two long-standing diplomatic blind spots for the Vatican. Many in the two countries, and abroad, have accused the Holy See of passivity and the pope of failing to speak out loudly enough.
Moreover, the Vatican has sometimes erred in its public statements. Amid massive protests that were violently repressed in 2019, for example, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Vatican had a position of “positive neutrality” in the Venezuelan crisis. The statement was widely criticized in the country.
But recently the pope dedicated a pastoral letter to the people of Nicaragua and, regarding Venezuela, said that “dictatorships never end well.”
On the day the pope spoke to diplomats, nationwide protests erupted again in Venezuela. Meanwhile, the Church in Nicaragua began 2025 without its bishops’ conference president, who was exiled in November 2024.
The pope may have to speak more about these crises in 2025 — or likely be subject to further criticism.
Hong Kong
Perhaps the most glaring omission from the pope’s speech was Hong Kong. Since 2019, the territory has suffered a crackdown as China strengthens its grip on Hong Kong society.
The agreement on bishops’ appointments between the Chinese government and the Vatican was renewed in 2024 amid widespread criticism, which might mean the pope’s silence on the erosion of democracy in Hong Kong is an attempt not to raise tensions with Beijing.
In December, the Catholic publisher Jimmy Lai returned to court in Hong Kong to give testimony in his trial under the territory’s controversial National Security Law.
Lai, who has been in prison since 2020, is accused of colluding with foreign powers and publishing seditious materials. If convicted, he faces life in prison.
Lai is not the only Catholic to face legal issues in Hong Kong due to the National Security Law.
In 2022, Cardinal Joseph Zen, was found guilty alongside five other people connected with the now-defunct 612 Humanitarian Fund.
In 2023, Bobo Yip, former chairwoman of the Diocese of Hong Kong’s Justice and Peace Commission, was also arrested on national security grounds.
In December 2023, Agnes Chow, the Catholic pro-democracy activist released from jail in 2021, announced she had fled into exile in Canada.
While the pope did not refer to Hong Kong in his address to diplomats, he did highlight the renewal in October of the Vatican-China deal for a further four years.
He described the renewed pact as “a sign of the desire to continue a respectful and constructive dialogue in view of the good of the Catholic Church in the country and of all the Chinese people.”
Dignitas infinita
The address seemed to be inspired to a great extent by the Vatican’s 2024 declaration on human dignity, Dignitas infinita. Many of the concerns and condemnations in the speech paralleled those in the document.
For example, the pope deplored the reinterpretation of human rights treaties in what he called a form of “ideological colonization.”
“It represents a form of genuine ideological colonization that attempts, in accordance with carefully planned agendas, to uproot the traditions, history and religious bonds of peoples,” he said, condemning attempts to establish “an alleged ‘right to abortion’.”
“All life must be protected, at every moment, from conception to natural death, because no child is a mistake or guilty of existing, just as no elderly or sick person may be deprived of hope and discarded,” the pope insisted.
He also called for a “diplomacy of freedom, truth and justice,” to put an end to human trafficking and other forms of modern slavery, and to care for migrants.
And he appealed again for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty, “since it finds no justification today among the instruments capable of restoring justice.”
Trump assassination attempts
Interestingly, the pope made a brief mention of the assassination attempts targeting President-elect Donald Trump, linking them to political polarization and the propagation of fake news.
“We see increasingly polarized societies marked by a general sense of fear and distrust of others and of the future, which is aggravated by the continuous creation and spread of fake news, which not only distorts facts but also perceptions,” the pope said.
“Tragic examples of this are the attacks on the Chairman of the Government of the Slovak Republic [Robert Fico, in May 2024] and the President-elect of the United States of America,” he added.
The mention comes just three days after Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy as Archbishop of Washington, a move widely seen as a response to Trump’s nomination of Brian Burch as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
Burch is the president of the political advocacy group CatholicVote. He and his organization have occasionally been sharp critics of the Vatican and Pope Francis, and especially critical of the Catholic Church’s work with immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Meanwhile, McElroy is considered one of Trump’s most strident ecclesiastical critics, especially on immigration and the environment.
Thus, it is quite likely that the second Trump administration and the Holy See will clash, perhaps in both similar and different ways to the first time around, while possibly working together in search of peace in Ukraine.
Undoubtedly, the relationship between the upcoming Trump administration and the Vatican will be one of the stories to watch in 2025.
