The war in Yugoslavia (Vatican).

Rome--From the beginning of the bombing of Yugoslavia on March 24 the Vatican objected to the undeclared air war on Serbia. The Pope told the member of the Parliamentary Assembly of Europe at Vatican audience on March 29: "In response to violence, further violence is never a way for the future to exit from a crisis."

One day later, March 30, the Vatican's Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano in a meeting with ambassadors accredited to the Holy See insisted that "an end to the military operation is essential to the peace process." He told the Italian daily La Repubblica: "The bombing of Yugoslavia must be stopped immediately. It is impossible to speak of peace and negotiations during the nightmare of bombing and massacres."

On Easter Sunday, April 4, Pope John Paul called upon Serbia to halt the violence in Kosovo and to allow a humanitarian corridor to be opened for help to be brought to the mass of people gathered at the border of Kosovo. Shortly thereafter, he called upon NATO to halt the bombing for the week between the Western and Eastern dates of Easter. Meanwhile, both before March 24 and after, Vatican representatives pursued every diplomatic means for peace, as did Church leaders in other countries.

In the United States, on March 31, eight cardinals called for an end to the fighting in the Balkan region, although they did not mention an end to the air war.

In Canada, however, on April 13, delegates of Christian communities, including the Catholic bishops conference, pressed for a moratorium on the bombing campaign. They met with Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy two days later.

Two weeks earlier, March 31, Bishop Fancois Thibodeau, chairman of the bishops' Social Affairs Commission, had written Mr. Chretien that it worried the Canadian bishops that "diplomatic efforts appear to be given second place" in the search for the solution.

On March 23 the Anglican Primate, Archbishop Michael Peers, declared that NATO's military action, "even though motivated by high humanitarian ideals, fails to meet the tests...for a morally justifiable military engagement."

Non-compliance with "just war" criteria was also a concern of the Vatican's leading foreign affairs official, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, in an April 20 interview with the Paris daily Le Figaro. The Kosovo conflict, he noted, now faces the "delicate question of the proportion between the evil that is being combated and the evil caused by the means employed."

In a May 8 editorial published in The New York Times, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, spokesman for the Holy See, said the Vatican "is not neutral, it does not support one side, nor is it anti-American." What it seeks is to exert pressure to substitute arms with dialogue.

The Holy See is convinced that "sooner or later the Serbs, the people of Kosovo and NATO will meet around the negotiating table." So, Navarro-Valls asks, "why not meet sooner, rather than later, before destruction and death increase hatred and destroy reciprocal confidence?"

The Vatican's peace initiative "to which the U.S. media have given very little coverage," has as its objective to put an end to sufferings, massacres, and destruction, as well as to encourage the beginning of a new negotiation which will guarantee a just solution" to the conflict, Navarro-Valls said.

Comment

The failure to meet the test of "just war" criteria is the ground for Catholic Insight's editorial on page 3. Some Canadian opponents have based their opposition on the failure of the Alliance to meet the "just war" requirement of legality and proper authority (NATO had no authority to intervene).

Another just war criterion is the requirement that the evil caused by war must not be greater than the evil to be rectified. In the editor's view, by the end of April it had become clear that that standard had been discarded.