Catholic Asia and The Role of the Vatican
Victor Gaetan, 7 May 2025, 14.00 BST Online
With an estimated 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide, the Catholic Church and the Vatican are hugely influential. But the presence and influence of Catholicism in Asia is often overlooked. An estimated 150 million Catholics reside across Asia with overwhelming majorities in Timor-Leste and the Philippines and sizable minorities in China, India, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia and elsewhere.
How does the Catholic Church use its influence to shape policy, manage inter-religious relations and engage effectively in diplomatic crises across the region? Following the late Pope’s tour of Asia last year, the region is obviously on the minds of Vatican leadership but how does the Church remain relevant in a rapidly changing region and continue to offer hope in an increasing violent and unstable world? And what will the outcome of the upcoming conclave mean for Asian Catholics and Vatican-Asia relations?
This talk will address these and many other questions as well as exploring the diversity of the Catholic Church in Asia and the prospects for its future.
Victor Gaetan is a senior correspondent for the National Catholic Register, focusing on international issues. For over two decades he has reported from countries in turmoil including Türkiye, Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan, among many others, which has provided him with a wealth of contacts within the notoriously tight-lipped papal diplomatic corps as well as access to the Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly known as the Vatican Secret Archive, which is not open to the public.
He has received numerous awards from the Catholic Press Association of North America and also writes for Foreign Affairs magazine, The American Spectator, the Washington Examiner, the Diplomat and others. Gaetan holds a PhD in Ideology in Literature from Tufts University and is the author of God’s Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy, and America’s Armageddon.
God’s Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy and America’s Armageddon
Using inside sources and extensive field reporting about the secretive, high-stakes world of international diplomacy, Vatican reporter Victor Gaetan takes readers to the Holy See to explicate Pope Francis’s diplomacy, show why it works, and to offer readers a startling contrast to the dangerous inadequacies of recent U.S. international decisions.
