Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for Vatican
Newsline: Pope meets with new Russian ambassador
Russia’s new ambassador to the Vatican met Monday with Pope Francis for a protocol visit, as signs emerged that the Vatican’s Ukraine peace envoy could soon be undertaking a second mission to Moscow. The Vatican said Ambassador Ivan Soltanovsky was presenting his credentials to Francis, signaling the official start of his term. His motorcade was seen leaving the Russian embassy Monday morning, bound for the Vatican, and returning about two hours later. (https://news.yahoo.com/pope-meets-russian-ambassador-second-095102068.html) The credential presentation appointment comes after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in recent days that Moscow was ready to meet again with Francis’ Ukraine peace envoy, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, a veteran of the Catholic Church’s peace initiatives. “The Vatican is continuing its efforts. The papal envoy will come back (to Russia) soon,” Lavrov said Sept. 15 at a roundtable discussion on Ukraine. Since Zuppi was appointed in May, he has visited Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and Beijing. Initially his mandate appeared limited to measures to try to reunite Ukrainian children taken to Russia after Moscow’s invasion. But during his meeting last week in Beijing with Li Hui, China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, the resumption of stalled grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports was also discussed.
Newsline: Vatican and Vietnam move towards full diplomatic relations
The Vatican and Vietnam have agreed to have a Resident Papal Representative in Hanoi, they said on Thursday, a step years in the making that could lead to full diplomatic relations with the communist-run country and provide a model for ties with China. The move, first reported by Reuters on July 16, was announced shortly after Pope Francis received Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong in a private audience. It is the result of work by a joint working group that began in 2009. A joint statement said the two sides wished “to continue advancing bilateral relations”. (https://neuters.de/world/vatican-vietnam-agree-first-post-war-resident-papal-representative-2023-07-27/) According to a senior Holy See official, the Vatican has officially but privately also asked China to allow a permanent papal representative in Beijing. Vatican officials hope that Vietnam’s acceptance could help to persuade Beijing to do the same, diplomats told Reuters.
Newsline: Vatican and Vietnam to take major step towards diplomatic relations
The Vatican and Vietnam are due to take a major step towards improving their long strained relations by finalising a deal in which Hanoi will allow the Holy See to have a resident representative in the communist-run country, sources say. The deal will likely be announced during a visit to the Vatican later this month by Vietnamese President President Vo Van Thuong, according to a senior Vatican official and a Hanoi-based diplomat familiar with the matter. “We are hoping that this will mark a turning point,” the senior Vatican official told Reuters. The Vatican has been asking Hanoi to allow a resident papal representative for more than 10 years. An agreement in principle was reached last year. (https://neuters.de/world/vatican-vietnam-take-major-step-forward-relations-2023-07-16/) Both sources said they expected the president to be received by Pope Francis. It would be the first meeting between the pope and a Vietnamese president since Tran Đại Quang visited in 2016. There are nearly 7 million Catholics in Vietnam, about 6.6% of the population of 95 million. Vietnam broke relations with the Vatican after the communists took over the reunited country at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The current papal representative to Vietnam, Archbishop Marek Zalewski, is based in Singapore, where he is the Vatican nuncio (ambassador). He is allowed to make occasional working visits to Vietnam with government approval. The establishment of a resident pontifical representative in Vietnam could lead to full diplomatic relations. But that step could take many years, given that the joint working group that hammered out the latest agreement began its work in 2009. The Vatican, a sovereign city-state surrounded by Rome, has diplomatic relations with about 180 countries.
Newsline: The oldest embassy in the world turns 400
The permanent diplomatic mission of the Kingdom of Spain to the Holy See was established 400 years ago, and is therefore the oldest in the world still in existence. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Pope’s Secretary of State, presided over a Mass this past October 12 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the establishment of the Spanish Embassy in the Vatican, the oldest embassy in the world. (https://aleteia.org/2022/10/14/the-oldest-embassy-in-the-world-turns-400/) The Spanish Embassy still sits today in the Monaldeschi Palace, also known as the Palace of Spain (Palazzo di Spagna). Until 1622, the Spanish ambassador did not have a permanent residence. He chose to establish it on a square located in the heart of Rome which, in homage, was later baptized Spain Square, Piazza di Spagna. The Square is today a tourist hot spot.
Newsline: Ukraine’s ambassador criticises Pope over comments on Russian killed by car bomb
Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican on Wednesday criticised Pope Francis for referring to Darya Dugina, daughter of a prominent Russian ultra-nationalist, who was killed by a car bomb near Moscow, as an innocent victim of war. It is highly unusual for ambassadors to the Vatican to criticise the pope publicly. “Innocents pay for war,” Francis said earlier at his Wednesday general audience in a sentence where he referred to “that poor girl thrown in the air by a bomb under the seat of a car in Moscow”. In a Tweet, Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, said the pope’s words were “disappointing”. “How (is it) possible to mention one of ideologists of (Russian) imperialism as innocent victim?” he said. Francis called the war “madness”. He said Ukrainian and Russian children had been killed and that “being an orphan knows no nationality”. In his Tweet, Yurash said: “can’t speak in same categories about aggressor and victim, rapist and raped”. (https://news.yahoo.com/pope-warns-potential-nuclear-disaster-083301194.html) The Vatican did not immediately respond to Yurash’s comments.
Newsline: Ex-Vatican ambassador to France goes on trial on sexual molestation charges
The Vatican’s former ambassador to France goes on trial in Paris on Tuesday accused of molesting four men in the latest sex scandal to rock the Roman Catholic church. Prosecutors opened an investigation after a junior official at Paris City Hall accused papal nuncio Luigi Ventura, then 74, of molestation in January 2019, and city authorities filed a complaint to the Paris prosecutor. (https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-religion-trial/ex-vatican-ambassador-to-france-goes-on-trial-on-sexual-molestation-charges-idUKKBN27Q1B5) Ventura’s lawyer has denied the allegations. The Vatican last year lifted Ventura’s diplomatic immunity and he resigned from his post in December. A Paris City Hall official told Reuters last year that in January 2019, during Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s New Year address, Ventura caressed the junior official’s buttocks repeatedly. Since then, three other men have come forward with similar allegations. Jade Dousselin, a lawyer for one of the men, a City Hall community manager who was 39 at the time, said her client had been molested in 2018. Ventura was papal envoy in France from 2008 to 2019, following postings in several African countries and in Canada.
Newsline: Coronavirus kills Iran’s ex-ambassador to Vatican
Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican and prominent cleric Hadi Khosrowshahi has died of the coronavirus, local media reported. According to the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency, the 81-year-old cleric died at a hospital in Iran. (https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/coronavirus-kills-irans-ex-ambassador-to-vatican) Iran had put the death toll in the country from the coronavirus to 26, with 254 confirmed cases. Iran has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases over the past week. Iran is one of over 35 countries that account for the nearly 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world. The outbreak’s epicenter in Iran is the holy Shiite city of Qom, where the faithful in reverence reach out to kiss and touch a famous shrine. That shrine and others have remained open, despite Iran’s civilian government calling for them to be closed.
Newsline: Pope names first woman to senior Vatican diplomatic post
Pope Francis named the first woman to hold a high-ranking post in the Secretariat of State, the male-dominated Vatican’s diplomatic and administrative nerve center. Italian lay woman Francesca Di Giovanni, 66, will assume a newly-created post in a division known as the Section for Relations with States where she takes the rank of under-secretary, effectively one of two deputy foreign ministers. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-women/pope-names-first-woman-to-senior-vatican-diplomatic-post-idUSKBN1ZE1XC) The Roman Catholic Church allows only men to be ordained as priests and women have traditionally been consigned to the shadows of its administration. However, women’s groups, including the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), an umbrella group of Catholic nuns, have long called on the pope to appoint more females to senior jobs within the Vatican bureaucracy.
Newsline: Italian diplomat named as Vatican’s new ambassador to United Nations
Pope Francis has named Italian Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia to serve as his new representative to the United Nations. The appointment was announced on Saturday by the Holy See. Caccia will succeed outgoing papal nuncio, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, who has held the post since 2014. Last month, he was named as the nuncio to Spain and the Principality of Andorra. (https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2019/11/16/pope-names-italian-diplomat-as-vaticans-new-ambassador-to-united-nations-do-not-publish/) Caccia now becomes the seventh Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York since the Holy See became a Permanent Observer State on April 6, 1964.
Newsline: Vatican lifts immunity of papal diplomat accused of sexual assault in France
The Holy See has waived the diplomatic immunity of a Vatican diplomat who has been under investigation by authorities in Paris for allegedly sexually assaulting a city official. Alessandro Gisotti, interim director of the Vatican Press Office, said the move was an “extraordinary gesture” that underlined the diplomat’s desire to fully cooperate with French authorities. (https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/07/08/vatican-lifts-immunity-papal-diplomat-accused-sexual-assault) In January, prosecutors in Paris had launched a formal investigation into an allegation against Italian Archbishop Luigi Ventura, 74, a Vatican diplomat who has been representing the Holy See in France since 2009. Gisotti confirmed July 8 that the Holy See had waived the diplomat’s immunity in light of the criminal proceedings underway against him in France.
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