**1. Introduction**

The Basque conflict was one of the last ethnonationalist violent struggles in Western Europe, until the definitive ceasefire (2011), decommissioning (2017), and self-dissolution (2018) of the armed organization ETA (*Euskadi ta Askatasuna*, Basque Country and Freedom). The alleged definitive end of political violence has opened a two-fold debate in the Basque, Spanish, and French public spheres. The first dimension relates to the political and judicial consequences of the ending of the armed struggle, classically termed as "negative peace": decommissioning, rapprochement, release and reintegration of prisoners, and judicial treatment of victims. The second dimension deals with post-violence and the building, as a medium-term objective, of a "positive peace" (Brewer et al. 2011): work with victims and victim support groups; dealing with memory; dealing with the issues of hope, forgiveness, and reconciliation; and reintegration of protagonists. The memorial aspect holds a special importance in the Basque case with the opening of a new political arena around the competing narratives of the conflict over both its recent and its more ancient history (Tellidis 2018; Muro 2011). The post-2011 "*batalla del relato*" (battle of narratives), which is now taking place in social, media, political, academic, and fictional (Madina et al. 2018) fields opposes competing interpretations of the history and consequences of the conflict. Among other aspects, the role played by religion in general and by the Catholic Church in particular, both in the conflict and in its resolution, has now come back to the fore (Ontoso 2019). At first glance, this enduring politicization of religion, whether as part of the "problem" or of the "solution" to the political conflict, or both, is quite unexpected in the context of a very secularized society, such as Basque society. Religion is still deemed to play an important role in Basque society and politics, while churches are still empty and the proportion of priests per inhabitant has never been so low. Sociologists of religion have pinpointed the Basque Country as evidence of the third wave of secularization of

Spain ( Pérez-Agote 2012). Unlike the decatholicization or "mix and match" stage, which marked the second wave of secularization, secularization has entered into a phase of exculturation (Hervieu-Léger 2003), during which culture is gradually losing its Catholic roots. Moreover, in the Basque Country, this process has been exacerbated, according to Pérez-Agote (2006), by a kind of substitution of religion by politics and the national question as new social centralities. Yet, any intervention by the Church in Basque politics remains highly politicized.

This article aims to explore this paradoxical contrast between the *perceptions* of the Catholic Church as a relevant sociopolitical actor and the weakening of its social grip. This paradox is particularly intriguing in the role played by the Church in peacemaking. The relative leverage of Catholic actors in the peace process stemmed precisely from the secularization of politics and society in the Basque Country. The Church was seen as su fficiently detached from its former positions of power not to be suspected of hegemonistic ambitions, while also being perceived as a relevant social institution due to its territorial coverage, its expertise in peacemaking, and its presence in local welfare. This legitimacy is itself controversial due to the very institutional nature of the Church. As a memorial (Hervieu-Léger 1993; De Longcamp 2019) and a transnational institution, the Church embodies the memory of a longstanding relationship between Catholicism and Basque politics. Therefore, the Church's discourse and praxis on peace are highly exposed to politicization and publicization in times when historical narratives of the conflict are competing with each other.

The Catholic Church has also been perceived by Basque social and political actors as a legitimate actor in peacemaking due to its transnational influence. Basque political actors, in particular, seem to have perfectly understood the political ambivalence of the Church:

at the one hand, it remains a quintessentially conservative body with a hierarchical organization designed to preserve traditional theological teachings. This impulse produces conservative stances on sexual morality, abortion, and marriage, and puts the Church in alliance with other religious traditionalists, including Muslims. On the other hand, Catholic teaching on the dignity of the human person and the authenticity of the common good produce concern for the poor in the global economy and, specially [sic] in recent decades, advocacy of religious freedom, human rights, and democratic governance. (Hertzke 2016, p. 36).

In this respect, the transnational Catholic expertise on peacemaking, whether through the Holy See itself or through NGOs such as Sant'Egidio, has been regularly sought by political actors all over the world (Appleby et al. 2010). Building on Haynes' distinction between transnational and global civil society (Haynes 2012), Shani (2016) argues that transnational religious actors (in his case, Catholics and Sikhs) have the potential to collectively constitute an embryonic globalized transnational civil society as an alternative both to the Westphalian international order and to the secularized liberal model of global civil society. The Catholic Church would thus be part of a "post-secular" transnational civil society referring to "a network or coalition of non-state actors representing the interest of di fferent transnational secular or religious communities, sharing a common interest in working together to overcome the challenges posed by globalization and the Westphalian states system" (Shani 2016, p. 300).

This potentially challenging role of the Church with respect to the Westphalian states system might be turned into an opportunity for "nations without states". This is especially the case if, as John Paul II did in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1995, the Catholic reference to *human* rights is interpreted as going together with a reference to *peoples'* and *nations'* rights. Such a perception, however, has been put to the test with the ambivalent transnational political role of the Church. Ferrari (2006) has framed the Catholic Church as being both a sovereign state and an NGO relying on soft power to achieve its aims, with a billion members all over the world. Barbato (2013) has emphasized the "multi-layered actorness" of the Holy See and of the Pope, who acts simultaneously as a head of state, as an international diplomat, and as the leader of a transnational religious community. In this sense, Barbato argues, the soft power of the Pope is based on the Holy See's ability to act in a multilevel game. As we will see with the Basque case, if in some circumstances the Church may act as a transnational actor fostering the values of solidarity, social justice, and peace in its interpretation of globalization, in other cases the Holy See can play a more conventional diplomatic role by acting as a "peer in a society of states" (Barbato 2013, p. 39), without necessarily challenging the existing state system.

In that respect, while the—itself controversial—role of the Church in the Basque Country in peacemaking has been scrutinized by various essays and from various standpoints (Placer Ugarte 1998; Bilbao Alberdi 2009; Cobos Romero 2018; Serrano Oceja 2001; Itçaina 2018), the transnational dimension of Catholic peacemaking in the conflict remains underexplored. Yet, the very institutional nature of the Catholic Church lies precisely in a hierarchical and social combination of its local and global dimensions. Without claiming to be exhaustive, in this essay, I engage with this transnational dimension. More specifically, in this paper, I examine the political work undertaken by the political institutions, parties, elites, and civil society organizations of the Basque Country since the mid-1990s in order to involve the transnational Church in conflict resolution and post-conflict rehabilitation. I do so by utilizing three bodies of literature: that on religion and peacemaking; that on Basque nationalism, political violence, and conflict resolution; and that on the sociology of political work and the making of public problems.

My main argumen<sup>t</sup> can be summarized as follows: the political result of this call to involve transnational Catholic institutions was not limited to the tangible outcomes (in terms of "success" or "failure") of mediation. Rather, the mere fact of involving transnational religious *and* non-religious actors represented a symbolic gain for the parties in the conflict struggling to impose their definitions of peace as a public problem. Thereupon, explicit or implicit *comparisons* with other ethnonationalist conflicts that have inevitably arisen from the appeal for transnational mediation have constituted either political resources for or, conversely, unacceptable constraints upon, the actors involved. The remainder of the article develops this argumen<sup>t</sup> in two stages. Section 2 focuses on the political work conducted, directly or indirectly, alongside the Holy See by the Basque autonomous governmen<sup>t</sup> and by its main component, the Basque Nationalist Party (*Partido Nacionalista Vasco*, PNV), as part of its strategy of paradiplomacy. Section 3 shows that the call for transnational religious mediation was not monopolized by the Basque governmen<sup>t</sup> or by the PNV and that it was performed by a wider array of Basque political parties and peace movements, thus involving di fferent political and semantic uses of transnational comparisons. In my concluding remarks, I set out new hypotheses on the future of this plural relationship with transnational religious mediation in the context of post-violent Basque society.

In this article, I rely on qualitative research conducted among the Catholic organizations, peace groups, and political parties involved in the Basque conflict, on media analysis, and on original archive material regarding the relations between the Basque autonomous governmen<sup>t</sup> and the Vatican authorities between 1996 and 2007. Additionally, a campaign of semi-directed interviews was conducted in the Spanish and French Basque Country. On the one hand, I made use of data collected in 1995 and in 2005–2006 with Cross-Border Coordination for Basque Country Priests (*Euskal Herriko Apaizen Koordinakundea*—EHAK), with the Franciscan monks at Arantzazu and Saint-Palais, with members of the Synod of Bayonne's Secretariat, and with Basque former priests and seminarians. I updated this research with a campaign of interviews carried out in 2012–2013 with the following personalities and organizations: Monsignor Uriarte, former Bishop of San Sebastián between 2000 and 2009; the vicar general of the Diocese of Bilbao; a theologian at the University of Deusto; an o fficial at the *Baketik* (Peace) Centre at Arantzazu; Christian activists in the PNV; the former Delegate of the President of Euskadi for External Relations between 1990 and 2007; and the Socialist Party of the Basque Country—Basque Country Left (*Partido Socialista de Euskadi—Euskadiko Ezkerra*, PSE-EE), including a co-founder of the *Cristianos en el socialismo* (Christians in Socialism), the lay association *Eutsi Berrituz* (Hold Fast While Renewing) in San Sebastián, and the *Fedea eta Kultura* (Faith and Culture) Association in Bayonne.

### **2. The Expected Advocacy: The Holy See and the Paradiplomacy of the Basque Government**
