ROME — To say the Holy See was caught unawares by the sudden implosion of the Assad regime in Syria the weekend of Dec. 7-8 is true, but uninformative — the whole world was surprised, so why should the Vatican be any different?
It’s a development that many in the Vatican, in tandem with Syria’s small but symbolically significant Christian minority, will view with a degree of ambivalence. Assad was a thug, sure, but at least he was our thug, they might say, arguing that he was a firebreak against ISIS and jihadism.
Despite that reaction, Pope Francis and his Vatican team nonetheless may have some surprising leverage to help shape the next act in the Syrian drama.
For the last 20 years, ever since the U.S. invaded Iraq over the objections of St. Pope John Paul II in 2003, the Vatican has feared that a similar scenario could play out in Syria — i.e., that external military intervention might dislodge a dictator but leave chaos in its wake, in which the country’s Christians would be especially hard-hit.
Such concerns were part of the reason why, soon after his election in 2013, Francis joined President Vladimir Putin of Russia in opposing a Western assault on Syria, at a time when President Barack Obama of the U.S. and Prime Minister David Cameron of the U.K. were both considering getting involved after Assad had deployed chemical weapons against his opposition.
The Vatican also has long opposed international sanctions against Assad, arguing that isolating Syria from the international community “benefits no one,” in the words of Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, in 2023.
Now that Assad has fallen, but to a domestic insurrection rather than an external intervention, the Vatican and local Christian leaders seem cautiously optimistic.
Although a major component of the rebel alliance, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham movement (HTS), has a history of links with both al-Qaeda and ISIS, the pope’s envoy to Damascus, Cardinal Mario Zenari, nevertheless struck reassuring notes in a Dec. 8 interview with Vatican News.
“The rebels met the bishops in Aleppo right away, in the early days, assuring them that they’ll respect the various religious confessions and respect the Christians,” Zenari said. “Let’s hope they keep that promise and move toward reconciliation.”
Bishop Hanna Jallouf, a member of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land and the Apostolic Vicar of Aleppo, was similarly sanguine, pointing out that the day Syrians woke up to a new world was also the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
“May the new Syria be reborn under the merciful mantle of Mary,” he said.
At the moment, the consensus among most international observers is that Turkey is the big winner from the regime change in Damascus. (Many also believe Israel has gained, but it’s unlikely to have much leverage with other regional players or the Syrians themselves in terms of what happens next.)
Turkey has significant motives for promoting stability and development in Syria, both to encourage the 3 million Syrian refugees inside Turkey to go home, thereby relieving the burden to provide for them, and also to keep its moral enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), from slicing off part of Syria to create an enclave on Turkey’s border.
As it happens, Francis and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, if not quite best friends, at least share a budding rapport that might position the Vatican to partner with Ankara in terms of helping to chart a post-Assad course for Syria.
Francis obviously takes Turkey seriously. He’s proposed Turkey as a possible mediator for the war in Ukraine, in part because Francis and Erdoğan broadly see eye to eye — both main open lines of communication with Moscow, both are personally on good terms with Putin, and both believe the West doesn’t have entirely clean hands in the situation either.
Francis and Erdoğan also have spoken over the phone often regarding the conflict in Gaza. Erdoğan repeatedly has termed the Israeli offensive a “genocide,” and in a new book devoted to the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year in 2025, Francis called for research to establish whether a “genocide” under international law is indeed underway.
So robust is Francis’ regard for Erdoğan that the Turkish leader even succeeded last August where a broad swath of the pontiff’s own bishops had failed, which was to persuade Francis to wade into the controversy over an apparent parody of the Last Supper at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.
Scores of Catholic bishops around the world objected immediately, but the Vatican maintained radio silence for a full week until Erdoğan called Francis to say that since even Muslim leaders are speaking out, it’s time for you to join the party.
Given that background, it’s plausible to believe that Francis and Erdoğan will speak about Syria too, among other things affording the pope the chance to raise the fate of the country’s beleaguered Christian minority, which is believed to have plummeted to 300,000 from roughly 1.5 million when the civil war broke out in 2011.
An early objective for an Ankara/Holy See partnership is likely to be persuading the international community to drop sanctions against Syria. Zenari suggested as much in his recent interview, terming the sanctions “a burden that falls especially upon the poor,” and calling on the international community to abolish them.
And should Russia, where Assad has taken refuge, attempt to reassert some of its traditional influence in Syria, Francis can draw upon his entrée with the Russian leader to engage that development too.
It would be impressive to think that Francis has cultivated his ties with figures such as Erdoğan and Putin knowingly, anticipating they would come in handy in just such situations as the Syrian revolution.
But whether it’s cunning, luck, providence, or some combination of the three, Francis has positioned himself to have a seat at the table … and for the head of the world’s smallest state, that’s already no mean feat.
