Legatus magazine reveals the inside scoop on Obama’s Holy See embassy downgrade . . .

Moving from one house to another is always a stressful affair. But when the house being moved is the U.S. embassy to the Holy See, a myriad of headaches flow from this maneuver made by the Obama administration in late November.

Bogus reasoning

William Donahue

Early next year the U.S. State Department will move the embassy from its current free-standing location in Rome to a building within the walls of the American embassy to Italy. The reasons for the move, according to the government, have to do with security and cost savings. Reaction to the impending move has been mixed.

“The administration says ‘safety’ and ‘economic’ issues are the reason for the move,” said William Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. “This comes from the Obama administration — the least Catholic-friendly administration in decades. We have to wonder.

“If they want to talk about safety, this administration was not preoccupied with safety in Benghazi,” he said. “I haven’t seen any evidence of them closing or moving other embassies in the Middle East. When it comes to economics, this is the most fiscally reckless administration in history. I find their reasoning unconvincing.”

Five former U.S. ambassadors to the Holy See have condemned the move. Four of them are Republicans and one is a Democrat: Ambassadors James Nicholson, Mary Ann Glendon, Francis Rooney, the recently deceased Thomas Melady, and Ray Flynn, respectively. Their main concern is that the move signifies a downgrading of the U.S.-Vatican relationship.

“I don’t like the idea of consolidating the U.S. embassy to the Holy See within the embassy to Italy,” Flynn said. “It doesn’t send the right message. We want to maintain a level of respect and dialogue.”

Renewed diplomacy

Kishore Jayabalan

The current ambassador to the Holy See, Ken Hackett, sees no problem with the move.

“This has been in the planning for years,” he said. “Right now you could throw a rock from the sidewalk through my window. It’s much too close to the street.”

Under the Lateran Treaty of 1929, all nations that have diplomatic relations with the Vatican must maintain a separate building from their mission to Italy.

“The Vatican wants this [maintaining separate embassies] or else everyone would double up,” said Kishore Jayabalan, head of the Acton Institute’s Rome office. “They would use the same ambassador to Italy for the Vatican. They would treat the Vatican as an appendage to Italy.”

The new location for the U.S. embassy to the Holy See will reportedly be in a renovated building within the compound of the embassy to Italy.

“We will have our own gate and our own entrance on Via Salustina,” Hackett said. “Plus, we will have our own much larger office space. There will be no decrease in staff or budget. It is not in any way, shape, or form a downgrade. Pope Francis was just named Man of the Year by TIME magazine. Could you see any president not paying attention to what he does?”

When asked if there have been any specific security threats to the embassy, Hackett said he did not know of any.

Ken Hackett presents his credentials to Pope Francis.

Edward Pentin, Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register, said he doesn’t believe the move will diminish U.S.-Vatican relations.

“The main critics have been past ambassadors,” Pentin said. “There’s a sense here that it’s a political debate spurred by certain Republicans.”

A genuine concern for the Vatican, he said, is when countries close their embassies altogether as Ireland did in 2011 — or when the British government relocated their embassy to the Holy See in 2006 to its embassy to Italy. There were demands in Great Britain at the time to go even further and shut the embassy altogether, but pressure from the Vatican stopped it.

“It does feel like the U.S. embassy to the Holy See has been made an appendage to the larger embassy to Italy,” Jayabalan countered. “The Vatican says it understands, but it does feel like a demotion. In terms of practical matters, it won’t change things.”

Still, there is a sense that Catholics continue to receive the short end of the stick from the Obama administration, particularly with regard to the HHS contraceptive mandate.

“The optics don’t look good because the Obama administration has all these issues with the Catholic Church at home,” said Jayabalan. “It’s not a good public relations  move for the U.S. government in general.”

SABRINA ARENA FERRISI is Legatus magazine’s senior staff writer.

The history of U.S.-Vatican diplomatic

Bishop John Carroll, SJ

1788. Pope Pius VI sends an emissary to Paris to meet with Benjamin Franklin, the first U.S. diplomat to France. He asks if President George Washington would allow a bishop in the newly formed nation. Washington agrees and the pope elevates Fr. John Carroll, SJ, as America’s first bishop.

1797-1870. The U.S. appoints 11 American consuls to the then-Papal States. Rome becomes known as a “listening post” and place to protect U.S. merchant interests.

1867. Congress votes to de-fund the diplomatic mission to the Holy See due to religious prejudice and the desire to humiliate President Andrew Johnson.

Eugenio Pacelli

1867-1940. U.S.-Vatican relations are conducted on an informal basis.

1930s. The U.S. government and American Catholics work together to tackle  poverty and unemployment.

1936. Franklin Roosevelt meets with the Vatican’s secretary of state Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII)at his mother’s home in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Frank A. Wilson with Pope John Paul II

1939. FDR creates a U.S. Mission to the Holy See with a personal representative. He sends Myron Taylor, a Protestant and former U.S. Steel chairman, who works with the Vatican to feed refugees, provide aid, and assist Allied prisoners of war.

1944. U.S. charge d’affaires to the Holy See Harold Tittman and his family spend months hiding in Vatican City during the Nazi occupation.

1984. President Ronald Reagan establishes full diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Frank A. Wilson is named ambassador.