After learning of the General Secretary's passing on 22 July, Francis sent condolences to Vietnam's president and spoke of Trong's major contribution to the diplomatic process.

The Pope's message expressed his gratitude for Trong's fostering, promoting and developing of relations between Vietnam and the Holy See.

As the country's general secretary from 2011 until his death, Trong set the general direction of Vietnam's policies. He also served as president from 2018 to 2021.

"Pope Francis willingly sends the pledge of his spiritual closeness to your Excellency and all your fellow citizens at this time of sorrow for the nation" wrote Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Francis' behalf.

Full diplomatic relations

The improvement in the Vatican-Vietnam relationship has been coming for a long time.

It began in 2007, with Pope Benedict XVI seeking to establish full diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the Vatican. Francis has continued to foster this objective.

Last July, Francis wrote to Vietnam's Catholics for the first time after reaching a landmark pact with the country's communist rulers.

The pact allowed a papal representative to reside in Vietnam and open an office in Hanoi for the first time since the communist government severed ties with the Vatican in 1975.

Ending historical conflict of ideologies

The Pope's letter "formally abolished and definitively ended the historical conflict of ideologies" said Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Vu Chien Thang last July at a Government Committee for Religious Affairs workshop.

The workshop discussed the letter's implications and sought ways to enhance bilateral ties. It also discussed strategies for greater Catholic engagement in education, healthcare and social welfare initiatives.

This development marks "a significant milestone in Vietnam-Vatican relations after nearly a century of strained ties due to ideological conflicts" said Bishop Joseph Do Manh Hung, secretary-general of Vietnam's Catholic Bishops' Conference.

He is sure both sides will find common ground to benefit the Vietnamese people and the Vatican.

"The papal letter represents a crucial historical moment with profound implications for the local Church, encouraging local communities to continue accompanying the nation."

It is a substantial achievement, reflecting Vietnam's commitment to safeguarding religious freedom for its citizens.

Thang is quoted as saying "This marks mutual recognition - the Communist Party of Vietnam acknowledges the Vatican as a friend and partner, while the Vatican acknowledges the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as cooperative partners, without posing threats to the Catholic Church and the Vatican State".

Vietnam's 7.2 million Catholics are an essential and inseparable part of the nation, he pointed out.

They work alongside other religious and non-religious communities to build the country and significantly contribute to Vietnam's social welfare, charity, healthcare and education.

Papal visit likely

After Pope Francis met with then-President Vo Van Thuong at the Vatican in 2023, Thuong officially invited him to visit Vietnam.

Francis told reporters if he does not go, his successor "certainly will!"

Source

• UCA News
• UCA News

SNAP - a group of clergy sex abuse survivors - in a recent letter to Dame Cindy Kiro called for the diplomatic ties to be cut.

The group says Government House informed them "the Governor-General acts on the advice of Ministers, and this is not a matter she can comment on."

SNAP has since written to New Zealand's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Nanaia Mahuta.

They want her to recommend New Zealand rescind the protections and privileges it granted to the Catholic corporate state entity in 1973.

SNAP's new open letter claims those "privileges and protections were not only unfair, unnecessary and discriminatory" - they were granted to one church only, they explained.

These privileges also "created whakanoa i te tapu o te tangata, violation of people, and a lack of self-determination for our nation."

Second karanga

SNAP hopes the Government will hear its second karanga to Mahuta.

"As you will know, the Holy See is a legal corporate person under international law, and it maintains bilateral diplomatic relations with several sovereign states including New Zealand," says SNAPs letter to Mahuta.

"It also performs multilateral diplomacy with several intergovernmental organisations.

"The Holy See claims a need to exercise its mission in full freedom when dealing with every interlocutor," the letter continues. But the Holy See's freedoms have never been subject to any critical examination.

"Thus, The Holy See has been able to escape the scrutiny applied to real sovereign states and corporations."

SNAP told Mahuta that the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions' 2021 interim report found the Church dominated many religious institutions for crimes of "predatory and criminal sexual violence."

These crimes, SNAP wrote, were perpetrated by Catholic priests, brothers and nuns.

SNAP says the political privilege and immunity the Government grants to the Holy See enables the Catholic Church to conceal sex abuse crimes and impede justice for thousands of child victims.

The sex abuse survivors' letter claims Catholic lawyers working for Catholic bishops are obstructing the Royal Commission's progress, "despite what those same bishops are telling the New Zealand public."

The Vatican is also facilitating this, SNAP tells Mahuta.

Although SNAP offers to supply concrete examples of its claims, none is actually referenced in the letter itself.

Political and legal courtesy

Victims and survivors and their whanau in New Zealand are not able to trust the government, SNAP told Mahuta.

It grants political immunity to a Church which uses that immunity to shield its abusers and conceal their paedophilic crimes, SNAP wrote.

"They do not want to be abused by the laws of our State as they were abused by Catholic Church leaders.

"May we ask: Will you help us remove these unjust privileges and protections from a foreign church-corporate state which is abusing our nation and its people?"

Source

• SNAP
• Scoop

Vatican-U.S. relations have grown increasingly strained in recent years, mainly as a result of the opposing views of Pope Francis and the Trump administration on a wide range of issues, from immigration to the environment.

Francis, who has sought to build bridges with other religions, cultures and the scientific community, has often presented an opposing force to Trump's wall-building politics.

The second Catholic president of the United States after John Kennedy will likely align with many of the priorities of this pontificate.

The transition plan proposed by his campaign, published on Nov. 9, focuses on addressing the global pandemic, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

In a speech on Oct. 27, Biden quoted from Fratelli tutti, asking the questions that Francis says leaders must ask themselves if they wish to engage in politics.

"Why am I doing this? What is my real aim?" Biden said, quoting the pontiff, before answering: "To unite this nation. To heal this nation."

Biden's recent promise to recommit to the Paris Agreement and "to go much further than that," will earn a hearty thumbs up from the Vatican.

The theme of unity is a welcome one for a pontificate that has been battling polarization just as extreme as the divide in U.S. presidential politics.

Biden's intention "of not dividing, but uniting a very polarized society" is a positive answer to "the pope's appeal to build bridges and not walls," said the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a key adviser to Pope Francis and director of the Jesuit publication Civiltà Cattolica, in a Nov. 8 interview with AdnKronos.

On foreign affairs, the Trump administration often found common ground.

The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See has collaborated effectively with the Vatican over the past four years, especially on freedom of religion and human trafficking, working in close partnership with Catholic religious orders and organizing events.

But the two states have clashed over China.

In late September, American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at an event held at the embassy on the topic of advancing international religious freedom, apparently objecting to an experimental agreement the Church has been negotiating to share responsibility for selecting Chinese bishops with Beijing. Pompeo asked that Catholic leaders not renounce their "moral witness."

Pope Francis' number two, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, expressed "surprise" at what many in the Vatican saw as interference with its relations with China.

The Vatican has been working toward restoring diplomatic ties with the superpower in hopes of making life easier for its roughly 6 million Catholics.

The prospect of a Biden White House rekindles Vatican hopes for a renewed U.S. commitment to multilateralism, including more cooperative engagement with China.

The election of Kamala Harris as Biden's vice president will buttress the themes Francis has pushed over his seven years as pope.

"With Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris, a woman with Indian origins, we have a powerful immigrant representative who found in the American society an opportunity to realize a dream," Spadaro said.

"This is one of the radical elements of the American myth that will be recovered," he added.

Not everyone in Rome is celebrating the election. Biden and Harris' support for abortion and progressive family policies have already garnered pushback from Catholics, especially conservatives.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a vocal papal opponent, said in late August that, due to his views on abortion, Biden "is not a Catholic in good standing and he should not approach to receive Holy Communion."

But even on this Biden and Francis may find ways to express solidarity.

While comparing abortion to "hiring a hitman," Francis has been dovish in condemning abortion legislation globally, preferring to address life issues in a broader framework that encompasses the multitude of human experiences, from poverty to artificial intelligence.

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

According to a Mail Online article, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta diplomatic passport is one of the rarest in the world, with only a few hundred issued at any given time.

The passports are issued to members of the order's diplomatic missions.

The order has diplomatic relations with several multilateral organisations included the United Nations.

But it is not recognised by the United States, the United Kingdom or New Zealand.

Continue reading

The six-member delegation visited for 11 days, during which time they visited Beijing Cathedral, the National Seminary and Bishop Giuseppe Li Shan.

Bishop Li-Shan is recognised by both the Holy See and the Chinese Government.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See's secretary of state, said the Vatican is engaged in a dialogue with the Chinese authorities, a fact the Holy See vies as "very positive".

"It is a part of a process aimed at the normalisation of relations. The sheer fact we are able to talk about it is significant," Cardinal Parolin said.

Continue reading

Gilmore said that the non-resident Ambassador, department secretary general David Cooney, was in talks with Vatican authorities to seek an agreement about both missions cohabitaing in the Villa Spada, Ireland's former embassy to the Holy See.

"One of the difficulties we had was the insistence by the Vatican that we had to have two separate ambassadors, two separate embassies, two separate buildings," said Gilmore. "In our present financial circumstances I didn't think that was sustainable." Continue reading

"You cannot extract Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can erase the spires from our landscape," she said.

"I see a great danger to this confident affirmation of religion today. It is what the Holy Father called the 'increasing marginalisation of religion' during his speech in Westminster Hall. I see it in the United Kingdom and I see it in Europe. Spirituality, suppressed. Divinity, downgraded."

Baroness Sayeeda Hussain Warsi is a minster without portfolio in the UK government and co-chair of the Conservative party. She grew up in a Northern mill town where Christian values were important during her youth. The minister has decided to send her own daughter to a Christian school.

The minister gave the speech to the staff and students of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in the course of a two-day delegation of seven British ministers to the Holy See. It is the first time a serving minister of a foreign government has addressed to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which trains Papal diplomats. On Wednesday she was received by Pope Benedict for a private audience.

The visit marked the 30th anniversary of the re-establishment of full diplomatic ties between Britain and the Vatican, follows the Pope's successful visit to Britain in 2010 when he is said to have been impressed by the Government's outspoken defence of the importance of religion in public life.

Source

• The Telegraph
• Image: Tribune.com

"I wish to express my profound disappointment at this decision which means that Ireland will be without a resident ambassador to the Holy See for the first time since diplomatic relations were established and envoys were exchanged in 1929. I know that many others will share this disappointment", said Brady.

"I hope that despite this regrettable step, the close and mutually beneficial co-operation between Ireland and the Holy See in the world of diplomacy can continue - based on shared commitment to justice, peace, international development and concern for the common good."

Brady said he looked forward to a time when the Government will again appoint a resident ambassador to the Holy See and that it will happen as soon as possible.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore said the announcement was made with the "greatest regret" and said that although the embassy was one of "Ireland's oldest missions" it yielded "no economic return".

As part of cost-cutting plans, Ireland is also closing the embassy in Iran and a representative office in Timor Leste, formerly East Timor.

Gilmore said due to EU targets to help restore public spending the Government had "been obliged to implement cuts across a wide range of public services" and "no area of government expenditure" was immune.

"The Government believes that Ireland's interests with the Holy See can be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador," he said.

He added he would be seeking the agreement of the Holy See to appoint a senior diplomat to the position.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, said, "The Holy See takes note of the decision of Ireland to close its Embassy to the Holy See in Rome.

"Naturally, every state that has diplomatic relations with the Holy See is free to decide, on the basis of its possibilities and its interests, whether to have an Ambassador to the Holy See resident in Rome or in another country. What's important are the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the states, and these are not in question with regard to Ireland."

The decision to shut the Irish embassy to the Vatican comes after the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican's representative in Ireland, was recalled in July following the impact of the Cloyne Report into clerical abuse. Mr Gilmore insisted the closure was not as a result of the report's controversy.

According to the minister, the Irish government will not sell Villa Spada - the Irish embassy in the Vatican - but instead staff working in the embassy to Italy will be transferred there.

The grand building is the most expensive property owned by the Irish diplomatic service.

The annual saving from the closures is thought to be around £1.4m a year.

Sources

• Belfast Telegraph
• Vatican Radio
• Catholic Herald
• Image: FaithWorld

These words, pronounced by a European ambassador to the Holy See, testify to the stress that both sex abuse scandals and the economic crisis are creating in diplomatic circles in Rome.

Being appointed ambassador to the Vatican still gives a very prestigious status. But in recent months it has also made the appointees feel a whiff of uncertainty about their future.

The tiny republic of Venice lasted till 1797, when Napoleon invaded the city and swallowed its territories and institutions.

The comparison between that experience and the Vatican may sound an inappropriate and exaggerated one.

The number of states eager to have diplomatic relations with papal Rome is growing: so far there are 179. Latest arrivals: Russia and Malaysia. No surprise.

Back in 1831, Edward Hannegan, a senator for Indiana, said that the US needed diplomatic relations because papal Rome served as an "emporium of the intelligence in Europe". Furthermore, and rightly, the Vatican is considered the permanent factor in Italian politics.

But rumours about the difficulty of redefining the approach to today's Holy See are very telling.

Continue reading the Guardian article, questioning whether this is the Vatican's twilight.