Speaking against the background noise of exploding fireworks as Britons marked the failure of the Catholic Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot of 1605, Britain’s man at the Vatican, Francis Campbell, stressed the ties that bind his country and the Vatican on international relations.

Campbell, a Catholic from Northern Ireland who has been UK Ambassador to the Holy See since 2005, was delivering the St Thomas More Lecture (full text here) at the Allen Hall Seminary in London’s fashionable Chelsea district.

(Photo: Ambassador Campbell/FCO)

The UK envoy emphasised how Pope Benedict’s approach to international relations had been shaped by his experience of growing up in Germany during the Nazi era. Campbell noted how Benedict, like his predecessor John Paul, “saw how fragile society actually was” and noted that he is one of the last of that generation still in authority.

Campbell underlined the common ground shared by Britain and the Vatican on issues like climate change, international development and disarmament, emphasising how the Pope’s moral authority helped to propel shared ideas.

The envoy was suitably diplomatic on media reports that  the pope would visit Britain in 2010. “I couldn’t possibly comment on that,” he said. He also refused to be drawn on the biggest recent story between Rome and London, the Vatican initiative making it easier for disaffected Anglicans to convert to Catholicism.

Do you think the Vatican is a positive force in international affairs. And what about ecumenical relations between Lambeth Palace and the Vatican?

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When Pope Benedict issued his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth) in July, he addressed it to “the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will”. That list puts Catholics first, but it gets around to a wider audience by the end. Maybe because of that sequence, most of the discussion about the document has been in Catholic circles.

But in the pope’s back yard, i.e. in Italy, the message has attracted a wider audience. In a rare reaction from a non-Christian organisation, the Italian Muslim association Comunità Religiosa Islamica (CO.RE.IS.) Italiana has welcomed the encyclical and drawn parallels between its outlook and that of Islamic economic and social thinking. CO.RE.IS presented its reaction on the occasion of the Ecumenical Day of Christian-Islamic Dialogue in Italy on Tuesday. Following are some excerpts:

“The recent financial crisis, that witnessed an almost worldwide economic crash, should constitute a further confirmation of the impossibility of establishing a presumed society of wellbeing only upon market rules, excluding any transcendence, any metaphysical and religious perspective, as the pontiff has well expressed it … Just like the market cannot find in itself the meta-principles that would discipline it according to nature and to the function that God has entrusted to man on earth, money and capital cannot constitute a value in themselves, regardless of the finality of actions and of the realities that underlie their use…

“Islamic ethics, from its origins, develops the common principles of the Abrahamic civilisation as a whole aimed at providing ‘joint satisfaction in material and spiritual needs’. For example, the Islamic ban on loans with interest (ribâ) also existed in ancient Christianity. As early as the 4^th and 5^th centuries, the Fathers of the Church, both Greeks and Latins, ardently opposed it based on both the Old Testament and the Gospel… “In the centuries that have passed, the West has wished to forget the economic principles present in religions, basically considering them to be, in modern times, a heritage of archaic thought. However, it is not about ‘turning back’ to some anachronistic and ideal restoration, but to consider, as Benedict XVI has done in his appeal, the real contribution that a religious sensibility can concretely offer in fields such as the economy.”

(Photo: CO.RE.IS Vice President Imam Yahya Pallavicini/CO.RE.IS)

CO.RE.IS says it is not using Caritas in Veritate to call for Islamic law in Western countries, but for an appreciation of religious views also inherent in Islam:

“Rather than implement parts of the sharîa within the current economic order, it is actually a matter of asking legislators to consider with due attention the contribution that economists, financial experts, technical advisors and those knowledgeable in Islam could give for a wider vision of the problems connected to the process of globalisation and governance. It is, therefore, not a matter of inserting Islamic rules into a world that could never entirely be Muslim but to benefit also from the knowledge found in the Islamic perspective on the economy.”

The document argued that an Islam understood according to its true principles and not through the extreme versions often presented by radicals had a contribution to make to the current economic discussion.

“Islam far from any fundamentalist distortions can offer something more, a vision that is not merely ‘moral’, founded on principles of equality and of the search for good for all humanity, and principles that go beyond the simple material plane… “

Therefore, as the pope says, the laws have to create boundaries for an anarchic economy… It is equally important to refer to the supra-personal Truth of God and of his Doctrine of Revelation, beyond any empty formalism: ‘Caritas’ yes but ‘in Veritate’.'Without sincere intentions, the very same Islamic model could in fact risk being manipulated and become counterproductive. The demand by certain radical movements to reinstate an alleged Islamic ‘neo-caliphate’ is extremely far from the true orthodoxy founded on the acceptance of reality as a manifestation of the divine Will and on the intelligence of being able to adapt the eternal spiritual principles to the various eras and continuously evolving situations…

(Photo: Muslims pray at Rome’s mosque, 16 Sept 2008/Chris Helgren)

“We Italian and European Muslims are fully aware of the fact that humanity today needs a new approach to face the challenges of an increasingly globalised and impersonal world, and we fully share the pontiff’s call to not passively accept the globalisation phenomenon, but to maintain our responsibilities even when the impersonal markets give the illusion that the sincerity of intentions can be left to one side.”

Do you think there are parallels between the economic and social teaching of Catholicism and Islam?

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One can guess what Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will say to Pope Benedict when the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion travels to the Vatican later this year. The more interesting question might be what  Queen Elizabeth is likely to say when she hosts the pope next year.

(Photo: Queen Elizabeth, 13 June 2009/Luke MacGregor)

The timing of the trips couldn’t be more intriguing, especially the second one. The pope is due to visit Britain in September 2010 and is expected to preside there over the beatification of the late Cardinal John Henry Newman, a famous 19th-century convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism.

The queen is, after all, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, many of whose flock the pope is seeking to poach with his offer last week allowing Anglicans to convert en masse while keeping many of their traditions. And among her honorifics is “Defender of the Faith.” While that sounds impressive, it pales in comparison to Benedict’s long string of titles including “Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles and Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church.” But oneupmanship is a British sport, so one never knows how these things can turn out.

It is unclear how many CofE traditionalists, upset at moves to ordain women bishops and the issue of homosexuality, will move over to Rome, but the conservative Anglican group Forward in Faith suggested 12 Church of England bishops may switch - more than a quarter of their total.

It was suggested by the Daily Telegraph newspaper earlier this month, before the Vatican effectively sabotaged decades of dialogue between the two churches, that the pope would receive a warm welcome at Buckingham Palace. “The warmth of her welcome will come as no surprise to the pontiff,” it said.

Citing sources speaking to the Catholic Herald weekly, the Telegraph said the queen has “grown increasingly sympathetic” to the Roman Catholic Church over the years while being “appalled,” along with her son and heir Charles, at developments in the Church of England.

(Photo: Pope Benedict, 11 Oct 2009/Max Rossi)

The Sunday Telegraph in July said the queen had told the heads of a traditional group that she “understood their concerns” about the future of the 77 million-strong global church.

But whether the warmth will stand up to the pope parking his tanks on her lawn, as Ruth Gledhill described it in The Times — especially Buckingham Palace’s lawns — would be astonishing.

As head of her faith she must defend her church, and can do so on an equal footing in both political and spiritual terms, Vicki Woods of the Telegraph wrote. “When Pope John Paul II met the queen on his visit to Britain, he was for once wrong-footed,” she pointed out.  “She spoke to him not as a fellow head of state but as a fellow head of the church: her church. Her faith. Which she defends. He was quite taken aback.”

It is not only her church’s clergy and laity which are up for grabs, but possibly also the buidlings.

And it was Queen Elizabeth I, after all, who so staunchly defended the English Reformation introduced by her father Henry VIII in 1534 in his dispute with Rome over his desire to divorce one wife and marry another.

The queen has already potentially been slighted by her Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who it has been reported in the media, apparently personally invited the pope to visit Britain during a private audience last February.

“He should read Carla Powell’s diary in The Spectator,” Woods wrote.  “Gordon Brown says he invited His Holiness, which if true would represent a gross breach of protocol. Only the queen can invite a head of state to Britain.”

(Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, 11 Feb 2009/Kieran Doherty)

The queen, needless to say, has said even less than her archbishop. The older royals don’t often leave themselves open to be quoted. On one of the rare occasions they have, the late queen mother was reported to have only commented that church services should not last beyond an hour. The archbishop has barely said much more in response to the pope other than he did not see it as “an act of aggression” and that it would not derail dialogue between the two churches.

But when you become the focus of general sympathy, you must know that you have probably been dealt a rum deal.

The fact that the archbishop was only notified two weeks before the pope revealed just how far he was prepared to go in accommodating the Anglo-Catholics must have left him “starting to wonder if he has any friends left,” Gledhill wrote in the Times over the weekend.  “He is like the academic boy at school who no one wants to play with because he doesn’t understand the rules of fisticuffs,” she added.

Many religious figures have been indignant at the way the Vatican has behaved towards Williams, with his predecessor George Carey urging him to protest at its “appalling” injustice.

The Vatican is expected to reveal more details about the offer in the next week or two. The conservative Anglican group Forward in Faith debated the offer in London at the weekend and decided its members would be consulted, with a decision due in late February after the CofE general synod.

Some women priests say that timing is cynical, based on emotional blackmail.

“It is beginning to sound like an abusive marriage,” said the pro-women ordination spokeswoman Reverend Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, chaplain at University College, Durham, in northern England. She suggested the disaffected will threaten to leave unless concessions are made on the possible ordination of women bishops, which is due to be discussed at the synod.

(Photo: Rev. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes)

The Vatican made moves 17 years ago to attract Anglicans when the ordination of women priests was being discussed.  “They could say we will leave unless you do this and that,” she  said.

What do you think? Will Queen Elizabeth surprise Pope Benedict and defend the faith, as she did with Pope John Paul? Or will diplomacy prevail?

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(Photo: Anglican Bishop of London Richard Chartres with wife and children, 5 Sept 1995/Russell Boyce. Under the Vatican offer, bishops could not be married and Anglican bishops who join the Catholic Church must give up their episcopal rank.)

Pope Benedict’s decision to fling open Catholicism’s doors to disaffected Anglicans could challenge centuries of Catholic opposition to married priests and may bring the Church closer to married priesthood.

The opening announced last week could lead to as many as half a million Anglican faithful, some 50 of their bishops and thousands of married Anglican priests converting to Catholicism.

The conservative Anglicans, who oppose female priesthood and gay bishops, now have an exit strategy. They will have their own niche within the Catholic Church and will be allowed to convert as individuals, parishes or even as whole dioceses.

They will not have to jettison their Anglican traditions and many will find their new parishes headed by formerly Anglican married priests who will become de facto married Catholic priests after they convert.

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, the pope’s job until he was elected in 2005, acknowledged that the Vatican will have some serious explaining to do to groups that have been pushing for a married priesthood: “I think for some people it seems to be a problem because as you know there have been many Catholic priests who have left the priesthood to get married, and the question arises, ‘well, if these former Anglicans can be married priests, what about us?’”

Read the whole analysis here.

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Conservative bishops who say they represent almost half the world’s Anglicans urged fellow believers on Sunday to reform the Anglican Communion rather than take up Pope Benedict’s invitation to join the Roman Catholic Church.

(Photo: A Bible, 20 Aug 2008/Simon Newman)

The “Global South” group, which last year seemed close to quitting the Communion, said those opposed to gay clergy and other liberal reforms should “stand firm with us in cherishing the Anglican heritage (and) pursuing a common vocation.”

Indirectly declining the pope’s offer to receive alienated Anglicans, the group called on the Communion’s member churches to adopt a “covenant” to coordinate policy in the loosely structured 77-million-strong worldwide Anglican community.

“The proposed Anglican Covenant … gives Anglican churches worldwide a clear and principled way forward in pursuing God’s divine purposes together,” said the statement posted on their website. Conservatives see this plan as a way to block liberal reforms in the United States, Canada and Britain.

A call to convert to Catholicism by bishops in developing countries, where the faith is expanding, could have dealt a body blow to the Anglican church, founded when King Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 to divorce one wife and marry another.

Read the full story here.

Read also our earlier blog posts on this story:

Vatican-Anglican: where in the details will the devil be hiding? — October 24th, 2009

How many Anglicans will switch to the Roman Catholic Church? — October 23rd, 2009

Pope makes it easier for Anglicans to switch to Rome — October 20th, 2009

Orthodox Anglicans skate around schism at conference — June 20th, 2008

Is Benedict planning to take in traditionalist Anglicans? — June 12, 2008

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If “the devil is in the details” when two groups seek a merger, where will he be hiding when the Vatican talks with disaffected Anglicans who want to join the Roman church? Neither the agenda nor the schedule for these talks are clear, but some issues are starting to emerge as possible hurdles to a smooth switchover for Anglicans who want to “swim the Tiber.”

(Photo: St. Peter’s Basilica and the Tiber River, 23 Dec 1999/Mario Laporta)

There is little clarity yet on either side. The Vatican has not spelled out the conditions of the “Apostolic Constitution” to accept Anglicans who want to join Catholicism while maintaining some of their own traditions. Additionally, there are varied faces of Anglicanism, which in its dogmas and practices stands somewhere between Roman Catholicism and Protestant traditions such as the Lutheran or Reformed churches. This will clearly take a while to work out.

The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, played down any problems when the offer was announced. But several reactions from Anglicans to Tuesday’s announcement, including from some inclined to make the switch, have begun to trace the outlines of the looming doctrinal debates among Anglicans worldwide and between the Vatican and Anglicans knocking at its door.

Bishop Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), posted a succinct summary of sticky issues on his group’s website. This group of about 3,500 regular churchgoers is a diocese of the breakaway conservative Anglican Church in North America, which claims over 100,000 members across the continent. Harvey asked:

1. “Will the Roman Catholic Church require Anglican priests who choose this option to be re-ordained?

(NB:  The Vatican has traditionally said that Anglican ordinations are not valid.) 

2. “Will people who accept this invitation have to subscribe to Roman Catholic dogmas to which the Anglican Formularies are diametrically opposed – such as “Papal Infallibility”, the “Immaculate Conception” and Transubstantiation?

(NB: Papal infallibility says the pope cannot err when he rules on matters of faith and morals. The Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was born without Original Sin is not a dogma in Anglicanism, although some Anglo-Catholics believe it. The Catholic dogma of transubstantiation says bread and wine actually become the flesh and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, while Anglicans believe this transformation is only symbolic.)

3. “Will Anglican priests – especially married ones – choosing to accept the Roman Catholic Church’s invitation have equal status with existing Roman Catholic clergy and will their ministry be interchangeable and welcomed in Roman Catholic parishes?”

In his statement, Harvey brought up another issue that could lead to disagreement — the meaning of the word “catholic.” Anglicans say they are a part of an undivided catholic (i.e. universal) Church, while Rome says it represents the true Church and churches that split off at the Reformation are not churches in the true sense. Pope Benedict has been quite clear on this point, most notably in his 2000 doctrinal document Dominus Iesus. Harvey quoted an ANiC priest as saying: “As for me and my house, we will remain ever faithful to the authority and primacy of the Holy Scriptures and the Faith and Order of the undivided Catholic Church. I need not become a Roman Catholic to be a Catholic Christian. As an Anglican, I am a Catholic Christian.”

(Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict at the Vatican, 23 Nov 2006/Alessandro Bianchi)

Bishop Jack Iker, head of the Episcopal (U.S. Anglican) diocese of Forth Worth, Texas, touched on the same issue in his reaction: “Not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do they believe that they must first convert to Rome in order to be truly catholic Christians.”

Pittsburgh-based Archbishop Robert Duncan, Primate of the Anglican Church in North America formed by that split off from the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada last year, wrote on the ACNA website: “This significant decision represents a recognition of the integrity of the Anglican tradition within the broader Christian church” and added that “our historic differences over church governance, dogmas regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary and the nature of Holy Orders continue to be points of prayerful dialogue.”

Another point is ecclesiology, or what the precise nature and role of a church are. The Roman Catholic Church is hierarchical, with an authoritative pope at its head, a set body of dogma and a clear chain of command through bishops down to the parish level. Anglicanism is organised around national churches with considerable autonomy and its spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has influence but not authority over them.

As Rev. Rod Thomas, chairman of the evangelical Reform group in the Church of England (C of E), noted on his website: “If priests really are out of sympathy with the C of E’s doctrine (as opposed to the battles we are having over women’s ministry and sexuality), then perhaps it is better they make a clean break and go to Rome. However, when they do, they will have to accommodate themselves to Rome’s top-down approach to church life, whereas the C of E has always stressed the importance of decision making at the level of the local church.”

(Photo: All Saints Cathedral Church in Nairobi, 3 Nov 2003/Antony Njuguna)

Reactions from Africa, where traditional Anglicans opposed to female and gay bishops are the majority, showed that some heads of the national churches there prefer the Anglican Communion’s “unity in diversity” to Roman discipline. “Anglo-Catholic Anglicans have been disillusioned by the liberal churches in the West that created a theological crisis with their liberal attitude to sexuality. Many of them would be happy with the Pope’s initiative. But the African Church does not need that because it is strong on biblical theology,” the primate of the Church of Uganda, Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, was quoted on the local New Vision website as saying. “The African Anglican Church has undertaken measures to deal with the excesses of liberalism that invaded the western church. We are a Bible-believing Church.”

What do you think? Where do you see potentials bumps on the disaffected Anglicans’ road to Rome?

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(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI with African bishops in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, 4  Oct 2009/Alessandro Bianchi)

Roman Catholic bishops called on corrupt Catholic leaders in Africa on Friday to repent or resign for giving the continent and the Church a bad name. Around 200 African bishops, along with dozens of other bishops and Africa experts, also accused multinational companies in Africa of “crimes against humanity” and urged Africans to beware of “surreptitious” attempts by international organizations to destroy traditional African values.

Their three-week synod, which ends formally on Sunday with a Mass by Pope Benedict, covered a range of Africa’s problems, such as AIDS, corruption, poverty, development aspirations and crime. But it had a very direct message for corrupt African leaders who were raised Catholics.

“Many Catholics in high office have fallen woefully short in their performance in office. The synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name.”

The message did not name any leaders. The international community has for years called on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who was raised a Catholic and educated by Jesuits, to step down, saying he had brought his once-prosperous country to its knees.

Another African leader who was raised a Catholic and has been accused of corruption is Angola’s President Eduardo dos Santos. Both men deny any wrongdoing.

In a section on AIDS, the bishops’ message repeated the Church position that the spread of the disease could not be stopped by the use of condoms alone. Last March, on his way to his first trip to Africa, the pope caused an international storm by saying that the use of condoms could actually worsen the spread of AIDS.

Read the whole story here.

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Disaffected Anglican Dioceses in Papua New Guinea, the United States and Australia might consider switching to Roman Catholicism under a new constitution offered by Pope Benedict, according to Forward in Faith (FiF), a worldwide association of Anglicans opposed to the ordination of women priests or bishops. About a dozen bishops from the Church of England, the Anglican mother church, are also likely to convert, it says.

(Photo: Vatican Cardinal William Levada announces offer to Anglicans, 20 Oct 2009/Tony Gentile)

The Church of England could not comment on numbers likely to convert, with one source adding: “It’s all guesswork.” But Stephen Parkinson, director of FiF, said a figure of 1,000 Church of England priests, reported in the media, was “credible.” Read our news story on this here.

Estimates of laity are “much harder,” Parkinson said.  “Inevitably if you say 1,000 priests you are then talking about several thousand laity.”

But he said he “would not be at all surprised at a dozen” bishops in England switching. However, in England, bishops were likely to move individually rather than take their entire dioceses, which tend to have diverse views, with them. Some Anglican clergy anticipated numbers would not be great, pointing to the early 1990s when about 500 switched over the ordination of women priests. Some later returned to Anglicanism.

Outside the Anglican Communion, a breakaway group called the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) looks keen to join the Catholic Church along with its 400,000 followers. Archbishop John Hepworth, the Australia-based head of the TAC, posted a delighted reply to Pope Benedict’s offer on his website. The TAC petitioned the Vatican to be received into the Church two years ago.  Archbishop Hepworth wrote:

“We are profoundly moved by the generosity of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI…  May I firstly state that this is an act of great goodness on the part of the Holy Father. He has dedicated his pontificate to the cause of unity. It more than matches the dreams we dared to include in our petition of two years ago. It more than matches our prayers… I have made a commitment to the Traditional Anglican Communion that the response of the Holy See will be taken to each of our National Synods. They have already endorsed our pathway. Now the Holy See challenges us to seek in the specific structures that are now available the “full, visible unity, especially Eucharistic communion”, for which we have long prayed and about which we have long dreamed. That process will begin at once.”

What do you think? Will large numbers of Anglicans switch to Rome?

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A few days after he presented his credentials to Pope Benedict as new U.S. ambassador to the United States, Miguel Humberto Diaz, invited a few journalists to his residence on Rome’s Gianicolo Hill for a chat. It was his first meeting with the media in his new role and I was the only member of a major international news organisation to be invited to the first round.

Diaz, a very amiable man, is the first Hispanic and the first theologian to fill the post of U.S. ambassador. He took questions in English and Italian on a range of topics but most of the comments were centered on what he wanted to make out of the post. Here are some excerpts. The questions have been synthesized to reflect the conversation:

(Photos: Ambassador Diaz and Pope Benedict, October 2, 2009. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano)

How did you get the news that President Obama had chosen you as new envoy and how did you feel?

“When the call came in from the White House I was, like anybody would be, pleasantly surprised and honored and humbled to have this opportunity to serve my country, to serve under this president. I had been part of an advisory team of Catholic theologians and activists during the campaign.

“One of my desires for this president was that this kind of engagement between religious ideas, public service, people of faith and service to one’s country could continue beyond the campaign. I was of the opinion that of religious thinkers could continue to participate in some kind of ongoing advisory group. When I first received the call i thought  that the president was going to ask me to do …  instead I was very honored that the president had selected me to become the next ambassador to the Holy See”

What do you think led President Obama to choose you?

“The president, in his (book) Audacity of Hope, argued in a persuasive way that religious principles, that people of faith have an active role to play in society and that within a democratic and pluralistic society what one needs to have is a persuasive translation of those principles than can be placed at the service of society for the benefit of the common good. So in many ways the professor in Obama spoke to the professor in Diaz. His style and appeal to a reasoned approach to arguments was very much persuasive…”

Won’t you miss being a theologian and an academic?

“Maybe after my appointment as U.S. ambassador I will have time to pursue those kinds of conversation but, again, this is going to be a sacrifice, this is going to hard for me to abandon the classroom and do abandon the pursuit of theological ideas so I can embrace diplomacy …

“it is clear that no other ambassador in the past has been asked to totally shed their past so what I hope is that the theological and philosophical background that I have can somehow be useful in the service of bringing people together, so if I can learn to translate in an effective way — both in terms of communication and in terms of what I do — some of the those basic principles that I believe in, then I think I might be able to become an effective communicators and engage in the kind of things that I like to engage in — inter-religious dialogue, inter-cultural dialogue, inter-racial dialogue for the sake of building peace and the common good for humanity. So if I could somehow tap into that past without offending anyone and certainly by creating bridges then maybe I can succeed as an ambassador.”

Wouldn’t you love to have a one-on-one theological conversation with Pope Benedict, even if it had to be kept secret?

“I guess you’ll never find out if  I have one. But I don’t like to work in secrecy because hardly ever does the press not find out about it. I think that we’re about transparency in this administration so, if I were to have a theological conversation with the pope, I would not like to hide it from the world. I don’t want to operate behind closed doors. But there is no doubt that this is part of who I am but I am also very conscious that as part of who I am know, as ambassador of the United States I am not here primarily to have theological conversations with the Holy Father, but I am here to represent my president, my people, my country…”

How will you build on past relations between the Vatican and Washington?

“We all stand on the shoulders of giants in some ways. We don’t start from scratch. we build on the positive things that others have done. We are celebrating 25 years of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the United States and over those 25 years we have done wonderful work. We have together rejected religion as a means for violence, we have rejected terrorism, we have worked together on issues related to food security and I suspect this will continue to be part of our work. We have worked on trafficking in person and this will be part of out ongoing engagements and in a few days we will have a conference with Caritas Internationalis on the prevention of  transferring HIV/AIDS from mother to child. These are some of the things that have preceded me. Because of my background, because of my educational background, I will invite my co-workers to engage themes such as inter-religious and inter-cultural relations and (seek) ways that we can cooperate with the Vatican and various Catholic organisations to promote these areas for the sake of human peace. Another big issue on the horizon will be climate change. This particular pope has increasingly drawn attention to the issues of distortion of the earth, global warming and so those are also issues that are dear to me …. that will also be on my radar screen.

“Given my educational background and my work with youth I would like to extend a bridge out to young people. the presidency of Barack Obama is a huge magnet of attraction for youth and I would also like to engage in conversations that engage them. As a leader I think one has to listen and one has to judge things as they come up and respond to things as they come up.”

This is only the second Democratic U.S. administration since relations between the Vatican and the United States were established 25 years ago. The last last time there was a democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton, relations were quite tense, particularly over abortion, which came to a head at the U.N. Conference on Population in Cairo in 1994. Do you think there is a danger of this happening again and what do you think your relationship with the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference will be?

(Photo: Pope Benedict and President Obama at the Vatican, 10 July 2009/Osservatore Romano)

“I think I am going to follow the example of my president here. I’m not going to look to the past but to look to the present and the future. I will certainly do everything that I can to keep the lines of communications open between our two countries. I cannot and will not get entangled in the domestic issues because I represent the United States at this international level, from one sovereign entity to another. So that while I think that this is a good conversation that my country is having at the domestic level but that conversation is being held there and I will do the job that the president would like me to do here. There is a differnce between what the U.S.  ambassador should do and what the Holy Father should do as the pastor of the Church which also has responsibility for and a relationship with the local Church. I am not representing the U.S. Church. I don’t have a relationship to the local Church nor to the (U.S.) Conference of Catholic Bishops. Of  course, wherever the dignity of the human person is involved the Holy See is going to have something to say. But I think its important to make that distinction, who is speaking for whom and under what circumstances.”

What other person attributes to you bring to the job?

“I am the child of an exile. I have immigration in my story. I know what it is to live and negotiate between cultures and peoples and speak different languages … I had to mediate with my parents, who still to this day do not speak the English language completely or perfectly … in some ways this was engrained in my very being while growing up.”

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Father Damien de Veuster, one of Hawaii's most revered figures, was remembered on Friday by the state's most famous -- U.S. President Barack Obama.

The 19th century Roman Catholic priest from Belgium cared for people with leprosy, also known as Hansen's Disease, who had been placed in government-sanctioned quarantine on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Father Damien, who eventually contracted the disease and died of it at age 49, is honored around the world as the "leper priest." He is also considered a patron saint of those who suffer from HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

Pope Benedict will canonize Father Damien as a saint on Sunday, making him the first saint with such close ties to Hawaii.

"I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out," said Obama, a Hawaii native, in a statement on Father Damien's upcoming canonization.

"In our own time as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Fr. Damien's resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick," he said.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Chris Helgren (Pope Benedict XVI walks with U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama during their meeting at the Vatican July 10, 2009)