U.S. Pulls Embassy Out of the Vatican

I have long thought it a farce that the United States - not to mention many other countries - has an embassy to the Vatican in recognition of the Mussolini/Pope Pious XII brokered deal that created the fiction that the Vatican is a separate sovereign nation.  The Vatican is the headquarters of a church, plain and simple and if the U.S. were to be consistent, there should be embassies for Islam - perhaps in Mecca - and other world religions.  Thus, it make sense that the U.S. is closing its separate freestanding embassy to the Vatican and down grading it to the status of an annex to the Embassy to Italy.  A far better move would be to simply close the embassy to the Vatican completely and relegate the Catholic Church to the status of other world religions.  Needless to say, far right American Catholic are NOT happy campers. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the move:

Citing security concerns without naming a specific threat, the U.S. State Department is planning to shutter its embassy to the Holy See inside the lush Villa Domiziana overlooking the Circus Maximus and Palatine Hill in central Rome.

The embassy, which has been in operation since 1984 when Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II signed an accord, will essentially be swallowed up by the larger, more influential U.S. embassy to Italy.

After the move to the American embassy to Italy, scheduled for January 2015 when remodeling work is expected to be completed, the embassy to the Holy See will inhabit a small annex with a separate entrance, but it will be far less independent than it is in its current position across town. 

The move is not sitting well with conservative Catholics who prefer to maintain diplomatic distance from United States policy on issues in direct defiance with Catholic teachings, including same-sex marriage and abortion. Vatican expert John Allen, who first broke the news of the downsize this week in his column in the National Catholic Reporter, quotes a former American ambassador to the Holy See calling the move “a massive downgrade.” . . .  Though unconfirmed, the Holy See ambassador is reportedly being shunted to an apartment not far from the embassy.

Creating a larger American diplomatic compound on Rome’s swishy Via Veneto will follow the lead of other major countries that have also consolidated their diplomatic properties. Israel has always had consolidated embassies, even sharing staff and services. In 2006, the United Kingdom moved its embassy to the Holy See to its embassy to Italy grounds, creating a similar uproar among British Catholics who wanted to maintain diplomatic distance. A few years later the Netherlands followed suit. In 2011, Ireland closed their embassy to the Holy See entirely, and rely on visiting envoys to keep up diplomatic ties.

The Vatican has not publicly commented on the reports of the American diplomatic consolidation, but given Pope Francis’s own reform-minded approach to running the Catholic Church, it is unlikely he will object to the shake-up.