Nationalist leaders are weakening the world’s system of
multilateral diplomacy, Pope Francis warned on Monday in his annual
address to ambassadors to the Holy See.
Foto: POOL/AFP
The pope decried “the resurgence of
nationalistic tendencies at odds with the vocation of international
organisations to be a setting for dialogue and encounter for all
countries.”
The
Argentine pontiff highlighted “a certain inability of the multilateral
system to offer effective solutions to a number of long unresolved
situations, like certain protracted conflicts.”
Today’s rise to power of populist and
nationalist leaders mirrors what happened between the two world wars,
when the United Nations’ predecessor, the League of Nations, failed in
its efforts to prevent conflict, Francis said.
“The reappearance of these impulses today is
progressively weakening the multilateral system, resulting in a general
lack of trust, a crisis of credibility in international political life,
and a gradual marginalisation of the most vulnerable members of the
family of nations,” he said.