With the imminent and <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/us-ambassador-to-the-holy-see-to-step-down/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">unexpected departure</mark> </a>of Joseph Donnelly as the US Ambassador to the Holy See, it seems likely the post will be vacant for a while. It would make little sense to try to ram through a nominee before the US election in November, and afterwards it can take a new (or returning) administration six months, or more, to work its way down to the Vatican post on the list of federal jobs to fill.
As a result, we have a cesura, a pregnant pause, which could provide a moment to rethink the US's approach to whom it sends as its envoy to the Vatican.
I’m going to lay out here a modest proposal that I’ve been floating periodically for the better part of two decades, in the serene confidence that it’s no more likely to be taken up now than at any other point over that span. The fact I can’t get anyone to listen, however, doesn’t, <em>ipso facto</em>, make me wrong.
Both elements of this modest proposal are intended to expand the talent pool, as well as privileging competence and preparation over politics. I suggest the United States break with what have been two unquestioned assumptions about the position since full diplomatic relations were first launched under President Ronald Reagan in 1984:
First, we should end the bias in favour of political appointees and instead give consideration to career foreign service professionals.
Second, we should also break with the convention that the ambassador to the Vatican <em>has to be a Catholic</em>.
To be clear, these are US conventions, not Vatican requirements. Plenty of other nations appoint career diplomats to the Vatican role, and plenty also nominate non-Catholics.
Let’s take each point in turn.
In terms of favouring a political appointee, there is a surface logic to it, beyond the obvious patronage factor of rewarding somebody who supported the incoming administration. Generally speaking, any host nation wants to feel the US takes its relationship with them seriously, and so picking an ambassador who’s known to have political juice with the White House is certainly one way of making the point that the US is dealing with you seriously and respectfully.
When, for instance, George W. Bush sent to Rome Jim Nicholson to Rome, the former head of the Republican National Committee and a figure who had Karl Rove on speed dial, it said something about the importance Bush attached to the role. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s choice of Lindy Boggs, an influential former member of congress and the first woman ever to preside over a national political convention, was well received.
However, choosing a career politician for the ambassador’s role is often a prescription for a steep learning curve. Generally, the new envoy arrives with little experience of diplomacy, no command of Italian, and a blank slate as far as understanding the inner workings of the Vatican. Often they’re only beginning to get the hang of things by the time their term is up.
On the other hand, I’ve known every deputy chief of mission, or number two official, at the US's Vatican embassy for the last 25 years, and I can say with certainty that any one of them would have made an outstanding ambassador. They’re generally career diplomats with a facility for languages, not to mention the institutional sophistication required to navigate the opaque environment of the Vatican.
Over the years, I’ve made it a point to set up a meeting with a political officer at the US embassy in whatever foreign country I visit for the first time, and I’ve invariably found these folks to be smart, well-informed, balanced and realistic in their expectations, while also committed to getting things done. One can complain about government waste in other arenas, but the payroll of the US foreign service, in my experience, is money well spent.
At the same time, the diplomatic apparatus in the Vatican would be delighted to see a person of substance and energy appointed to the ambassador’s role, as opposed to a politician nearing the end of his or her career and looking at the position as a soft landing.
As far as picking only Catholics, not only does that practice artificially limit the range of possibilities, but it also muddies the waters by artificially injecting a sort of ecclesiastical litmus test into what should be a strictly objective exercise of choosing the best possible envoy to represent the administration’s agenda.
Democratic administrations have to find a Catholic who’s at least sufficiently pro-life that the nomination won’t seem like a poke in the eye, while Republicans, especially under this papacy, have to find a Catholic who’s not seen as flagrantly at odds with the rest of the Pope’s social agenda, such as climate change, poverty and war and peace.
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In other words, both sides of the aisle are pressured to find the “right” kind of Catholic, which unnecessarily complicates the choice and invests it with a distracting and misplaced significance in terms of Church politics.
Both of these conventions – which amount to an informal rule that the ambassador has to be a political nominee and has to be Catholic – were born of noble intentions based on showing respect to the Vatican. Yet during the course of the 40 years that the US and the Vatican have enjoyed full diplomatic relations, experience has shown that these parameters sometimes cut in the opposite direction, producing envoys who, despite the best of intentions, are unprepared to fully exploit the potential of the role.
Would US-Vatican relations be stronger if the US stopped artificially handicapping itself and instead expanded the roster of possible choices for the ambassador’s post?
In my view, unquestionably.
Is that likely to happen? Probably not, because all too often it appears that sound policy can actually make too much sense to fly amid political expediency. <br><br><em>Photo: President Ronald Reagan with Pope John Paul II. (Credit: Photo courtesy of the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See; via Crux.)</em>
