Global Politics, According to Pope Francis

Abstract

Pope Francis conceptualizes the papacy’s and the Church’s theological, social, and political aspirations from a global perspective as seen from the periphery of society and politics, not from the centrist perspective of the international realm of a world of states. Mapping Francis’ conception of global politics has various benefits for international studies: First, it fills a part of the lacunae in the literature which has been tagged with a missing mapping of “ideological visions of global politics”. Second, it helps to better understand the Church’s international political engagement and the Holy See’s further course of foreign policy under this pontificate. Third, at the example of Francis’s conception of the global realm and the place of the Church therein, the paper contributes to a burgeoning literature that moves beyond topically recognizing religion in international politics by outlining the relational dimensions of religion and global politics. If international and global studies want to make bold claims about the Holy See and take it serious as the largest transnational religious actor, then it needs to take serious its principal’s conceptualization of global politics.