Nobel Peace Prize.
Kansas – Once again, the Nobel Peace Prize was announced and once again a pope was not awarded.
This year's honor goes to human rights campaigners in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, what many see as tacit condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin and both his war in Ukraine and his anti-democratic tendencies. he is in Russia.
Memorial, the Memorial Foundation of Russia, the Center for Civil Liberties of Ukraine and Ales Bialiatski of Belarus will share the prize money of 10 million Swedish krona, approximately $900,000, and will receive the prize during a ceremony on 9 May. 12 was held in Oslo, Norway.
While four US presidents have been awarded the award (Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama), along with a number of prime ministers and statesmen from other countries, no popes have been honored. since the award began in 1901.
Popes are frequent nominees, as this year Francis was nominated again by Dag Inge Ulstein, Norway's minister of international development, citing "efforts to help solve the gas crisis as well as his work towards peace and reconciliation”.
Before the announcement on Friday, October 7, online bookmakers had bet Pope Francis 15-1, more or less the same odds as Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and the United Nations Refugee Agency. . Over the years, I have sometimes been asked to be available on television somewhere on the day of the award announcement, in case the pope accepts the award; and I never had a chance to speak.
(Sometimes I've been counting on billing all the expenses that show up that I've never received, but somehow, I suspect they'll pay the bill.)
To date, four Catholic leaders have received the Peace Prize:
Dominique Pire, a Belgian Dominican, was honored in 1958 for his work in helping European refugees after the war. Mother Teresa, Calcutta, received the award in 1979 for her efforts to alleviate human suffering.
Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, who together with politician José Ramos-Horta received the prize in 1996 for their leadership in achieving a peaceful and just solution to the conflict in East Timor that led to national independence.
Father Jose Ramon Tizon Villarin, a Filipino Jesuit who is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, received the 2007 Nobel Prize.
Bishop Belo recently faced accusations of sexual abuse and misconduct, leading to previously undisclosed sanctions by the Vatican in 2020. However, so far, there have not been any. any proposal that the bishop's Nobel Prize could be revoked.
Since Benedict XV (1914-1922), every pope has at some point received a nomination, but so far no pope has become a Nobel laureate.
Why are the popes not awarded?
First, the Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by a five-member committee chosen by the Norwegian parliament, a country traditionally Protestant, and interest in the popes is not particularly high.
Not that Norwegian MPs are caught up in the old debates, but generally speaking, in a country where national identity is forged in part through the denial of papal authority, the awarding of a prize Such a reward for a pope is not the most natural thing to do.
In some cases, anti-pope bias is evident. When the Norwegian Church's Bishop Gunnar Stalsett of Oslo, who was on the Nobel Peace Prize committee from 1985 to 1990 and from 1994 to 2003, he made it clear that he would not support the nominated Pope John Paul II due to the Catholic Church's stance on contraception.
At the time, many observers thought that without Stalsett's unofficial veto, John Paul II might have been honored in 1990 alongside Mikhail Gorbachev for their role in the dissolution. the Soviet empire peacefully.
Part of the logic of not awarding popes has to do with the fact that popes don't need the money, nor the media attention that awards always generate, while activists do not need the money. Lesser-known activities and organizations can benefit greatly from these two.
Of course, similar arguments could be made about the awarding of awards to presidents, prime ministers and other prominent public figures, which has not stopped the previous committee from making its own policy. confirm that.
Finally, it is perhaps fair to say that there is a vague secularist bias in this process, which holds that religion is simply not important or useful in global affairs like Realpolitik. (Political politics) or civil society. During the 121 years the prize has been awarded, relatively few laureates have been religious figures of any kind – Lutheran Ar Sweden, Archbishop Nathan Suderblom in 1930, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa 1984 and the Dalai Lama in 1989 are among the few exceptions.
It is not, of course, that not being awarded a Nobel Prize in any way diminishes the moral authority of the pope, or that the popes themselves desire recognition. The popes have received a lot of acclaim – in 2013, Pope Francis was chosen by Time magazine as man of the year, he was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for European Unity and even appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone .
The Vatican, on the other hand, is not unnoticed. During the years of Pope John Paul II, staff of Vatican media were sometimes advised to minimize publicity on the grounds that, in fact, any victor who was not a pope was a an insult.
In any event, the statutes of the Nobel Peace Prize clearly state that the prize will be awarded to those who have "done the most or have done the best work for brotherhood among nations, for the abolition of or reduce the standing army and for the holding and promotion of peace.”
It is hard to believe that in the past 121 years there has not been a single eligible pope – unless, of course, there is some reason the commission simply does not want to recognize a pope.