Bishops Hold Secret Kumbaya in Iran

When representatives from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany worked in Vienna to finalize a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran last week, they were probably unaware some Catholic bishops had a secret summit of their own with the Islamic Republic.

The four-day meeting in March led by Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines was not made public until the same week the Vienna talks began. Pates said he, the retired archbishop of Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and auxiliary Bishop Denis Madden of Baltimore met in Qom with several prominent Islamic clerics to “promote understanding between the peoples of Iran and the United States.” Pope Francis didn’t send an envoy of his own to Qom (and likely declined to, if his relations with the Argentinian authorities are any indication). But Pates said the get-together was in line with the new pontiff’s view that “dialogue is the key to discovering truth and avoiding misunderstanding.”