Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz, the Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain, last week announced his retirement due to ill health; he will probably end his time here in December. He has been in the post for five and a half years: he was thus the last nuncio to have been appointed to England and Scotland by the disastrous former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, his very welcome replacement, now has a chance to make an appointment which could decisively change the direction of the English Church. The problem we have had here is simple. For the most part, nuncios are not pastors: they are diplomatists. And, in the words of Damian Thompson’s Telegraph blog on Monday: “I don’t want to single out Archbishop Sainz, because he was just one of a string of Apostolic Nuncios or Delegates who represented the bishops’ conferences to the Pope rather than the other way around . Like secular diplomats who go native, the Holy See’s ambassadors have allowed the Magic Circle to force the names of second-rate Church politicians on to ternas.”
