“It went very well”. Matteo Salvini is satisfied when he leaves the Vatican, leaving behind, or at least trying to do so, years of mutual distrust. A few minutes ago, the meeting with Paul Richard Gallagher, the secretary for relations with the States, but above all the person who transmitted the verbal note with which the Holy See communicated to Italy the disappointment on the Zan bill for the League.
A fundamental meeting for the League, the first at a high level since Salvini was leader of the League, a way to reconnect with the Vatican and to show a more moderate face. Beyond the Tiber, however, there is a tendency to diminish the importance of the hearing, which lasted about fifty minutes, with the fear that it could be used in an electoral key by the leader of the League. The Vatican’s “foreign minister” would have been advised to “listen, let the guest speak and be prudent, to avoid transmitting international visions of the Holy See through Salvini”.
In the League, the meeting, although commented with great reserve, is read as a turning point: “It is a way to show appreciation for our positions on sensitive issues for the Church”, explains an authoritative source from the Northern League, who adds ” we are the only ones in Parliament who truly defend Catholic values and this has been noted “. Salvini himself, at the end of a meeting in the Portuense district of Rome in the presence of the former undersecretary Claudio Durigon, is keen to emphasize that Gallagher also spoke of Ddl Zan “as well as many other things” including the situation in Afghanistan, the official reason for the hearing, “there is full harmony on various issues, starting with the defense of life and freedom in Afghanistan and beyond”, they explain from the entourage of the Northern League leader.
Salvini’s satisfaction, however, is not found in the Vatican Sacred Chambers, much more excited about the Pope’s meeting tomorrow with another sovereignist, the Hungarian premier Viktor Orban. From the Vatican it transpires that the desire of the former Minister of the Interior, manifested in recent times, was to meet the Pontiff. Then he would have asked «for the secretary of state Pietro Parolin». But he had to “settle” for Gallagher. How far away is that February 2019 when the Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini – on positions light years away from the ecclesiastical hierarchies in various issues, starting with migration policies but also in the approach to religion – left a heavy void in Palazzo Borromeo, in the first bilateral Italy-Holy See summit in which the yellow-green government participated or when, a few months later, Pope Francis was booed loudly at one of its meetings in Piazza Duomo in Milan.
The senior prelates reiterate that “from a political point of view it was a conversation without particular implications, because it is fully part of the practice that Salvini, an Italian parliamentarian, following an official request is received at the Secretariat of State”. It is a “usual courtesy of Gallagher with the parliamentarians of every country”, confirms another prelate. Therefore, sobriety, a low profile air was breathed among the Sacred Walls, and now “a turning point in relations between the League and the Church” is not expected. And in fact, yesterday in the Terza Loggia, in the morning and afternoon councils and small groups among cassocks and monsignors, “while sipping coffee, I didn’t hear anyone talking about Salvini’s arrival,” assures a prelate.