Mikalaj Khalezin: Vatican’s influence shouldn’t be overestimated

The art-director of Belarus Free Theater Mikalaj Khalezin believes that the Belarusian ruler wants to use the Catholic Church for breaking through the blockade.

“Certainly, Vatican can contribute to promoting the dialogue between Lukashenka’s administration and the European Union. But I would not overestimate Vatican’s influence. Out of the entire assistance arsenal it has only one mechanism - lobbying”, - he said.

Out of all the countries, where Vatican’s positions are steadily firm, he sees one, which is able to strongly influence the process of providing assistance to Lukashenka – Poland, where “there is a fairly large group of politicians, lobbying for the interests of Belarusian dictatorship”.

Apart from that, according to Mikalaj Khalezin, Vatican can assist in organizing visits, informal and official alike, camarade.biz reports.

“Lukashenka already used this opportunity in the period of Benedict XVI’s papacy, when Silvio Berluskoni managed to lobby for the Pope’s meeting with Lukashenka. At the moment it turned out quite efficient for the Belarusian authorities, since the step was made in the period of another liberalization touch. Today the situation is more difficult, and the organization of official meetings in Europe is complicated by the sanctions and Lukashenka’s person itself”, - he said.

The invitation that the Belarusian ruler sent to the Pope Francis is, in the Free Theater art-director’s opinion, an attempt to play it vice-versa.

“Lukashenka is trying to break through the European blockade by bringing the Pope to Belarus. This could work. It is in the Catholic Church’s tradition to visit problematic countries”, - he said.

Mikalaj Khalezin highlighted that Minsk estimates the probability of the Pope’s visit to Minsk as quite high.

We would remind that the dictator today thanked Vatican for the assistance in re-establishing the relations with the European Union and invited the Pope to Belarus.