Vatican City, Jun 25, 2021 / 05:45 am
A senior Vatican official said Friday that he and many of his colleagues at the Secretariat of State have yet to be convinced that speaking out on the situation in Hong Kong “would make any difference whatever.”
When Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s equivalent of a foreign minister, was asked what made the civil unrest in Lebanon different to the Holy See than the protest movement in Hong Kong, he replied that the Secretariat of State did not see that it could make a positive contribution in Hong Kong.
“Obviously Hong Kong is the object of concern for us. Lebanon is a place where we perceive that we can make a positive contribution. We do not perceive that in Hong Kong,” Gallagher said at a Holy See press conference on June 25.
“One can say a lot of, shall we say, appropriate words that would be appreciated by the international press and by many parts of the world, but I -- and, I think, many of my colleagues -- have yet to be convinced that it would make any difference whatever.”