1st August 2016 Holy See
“There can be only one” – not only the tag-line from the “Highlander” movies, but also the rules about Ambassadors accredited to each State. There can only be one official Ambassador in a country at a time. So there is always a gap between one leaving and the next arriving – which is another opportunity […]
18th May 2016
The international activism and high profile of Pope Francis has generated renewed interest in the nature and practice of the Holy See’s diplomacy. Just in the last week, the Pope visited the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy – the papal diplomatic college – to meet the young priests preparing there to take up their role as a […]
22nd April 2016
There are many oddities in English history. One is that our patron saint is St George. It is an ecumenical oddity. His feast day, 23 April, is both a Solemnity in the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church in England, and a ‘Feast’ in the Church of England calendar (and he is a major saint […]
10th March 2016
Last week I accompanied the Holy See Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, on a visit to the United Kingdom. He came at the invitation of the British government, so inevitably much of his time was taken up in official meetings with a wide range of government ministers. He visited five different Departments […]
30th December 2015
Pope Francis has spoken frequently of his belief that the current state of instability in the world, overlain by the global threat of terrorism, is something akin to a “third world war fought piecemeal”. In his message for the World Day of Peace, he noted that, “sadly, war and terrorism, accompanied by kidnapping, ethnic or […]
10th November 2015
One important element in the bilateral relationship between Britain and the Holy See is Parliament. Since 2004, an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Holy See has existed, in its words, “to monitor the relationship between the UK and the Holy See and call representatives of faith communities and the foreign/diplomatic service to brief […]
1st July 2015
This is a networked world. And yet there are few genuinely global networks out there. By that I mean networks that have a capacity to operate globally, co-ordinated centrally but operating in capillary fashion, horizontally in a radial pattern as well as vertically in a hub and spoke model. One of the reasons why we […]
24th June 2015
Confrontation across ideological fault lines. Division in Europe. Pessimism about international affairs. You might think I am referring to today’s international situation. But in fact I would like you to cast your mind back forty years to 1975 and the Cold War. Under the cloud of mutually assured destruction, Europe and the wider world needed […]
16th June 2015
On 15 June we celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. It is extraordinary how a document agreed in 1215 between a medieval English king and his leading subjects continues to resonate down the ages, wherever people believe in the rule of law. I recently wrote an article trying to set Magna Carta in its proper […]
12th June 2015
It was Holy See day this week at Expo 2015 in Milan. Expo is like a world fair, with this year 145 countries represented including 53 national pavilions (the Holy See has one) based around the theme “Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life”. Reminding us that “man does not live by bread alone”, the Holy […]