Newt Gingrich was on The View this morning. His wife is the US Ambassador to the Vatican, and he was calling in from Rome. He said that, during the Italian lockdown, his wife was still running the Embassy. Is there a US Embassy to the Vatican? An entire infrastructure dedicated to US relations with the Vatican? Is it a distinct entity from the US Embassy to Italy?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Note that it’s distinct organizationally, but shares a building with the US Embassy to Italy, and the US Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome.
Thanks.
FWIW, the Vatican embassy is located as part of the US “Tri-Mission” embassy, i.e. the US Embassy to Italy and the US Embassy to the UN Agencies in Rome (there are several UN Agencies headquartered in Rome - World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization and International Fund for Agricultural Development) and the US Embassy to the Vatican all share the same facility.
It’s a distinct entity in the sense of having a separate ambassador and probably a small staff dedicated to them, but I suspect for the most part, they glom onto the larger US Embassy to Italy for most things.
It appears that there are six people at this embassy:
In case it’s over some people’s heads, the Vatican is a separate country. It’s the remnant of the Papal States that controlled much of Italy, and had its own army… thus answering Stalin’s question - “How many divisions does the pope have?” Once upon a time, lots.
He never really had lots of divisions. Militarily, the Papal States were never what you would call a world power. Or even a regional power.
And, strictly speaking, the US ambassador (and the ambassadors of many other countries) are not Ambassadors to “Vatican City”, the state created by treaty with Italy in 1929; they are ambassadors to the Holy See, an internationally-recognised organisation that predates the Vatican City State by many centuries.
Does this matter? Yeah, in this sense: if you’re asking yourself why the US or any other country would accredit an ambassador to the Holy See, the answer is not going to have anything to do with territory (of the Vatican City State) or divisions or any of the characteristics that might influence a decision about accrediting an ambassador to a country; it’ll be about the role, reach and influence of the Holy See as an internationally significant organisation.
One point to note is that it is only relatively recently that some of the major non-Roman Catholic countries have sent full ambassadors to the Holy See. The UK has done so only since 1982, the USA since 1984, Russia since 2010. Before then they used officials with lesser titles or didn’t have diplomatic relations at all.
The Vatican refuses to recognise ambassadors to the Holy See who are also the ambassador to Italy and it isn’t hugely keen on the current trend for countries to house the two embassies in the same building. Lots of countries get round that by combining it with their embassy to another European country, often Switzerland.
Note that Reagan was criticized for sending an ambassador to the Vatican. Jerry Falwell said he was going to ask for an ambassador too.
If the Holy See is so insistent that other countries house their Vatican embassies separately from their Italian embassies, it should be willing to grant them land on Vatican grounds for those embassies. However, given that the Vatican City is only 109 acres, that’s not really practical. And similarly, it’s not really practical to house an embassy for a country of a thousand people separately from an embassy for a country of 60 million.
I’d like to skip in that many countries (but not the United States) actually operate three embassies in Rome. One to Italy, one to the Vatican (which is, as others have been pointed out, strictly speaking an embassy to the Holy See, but the distinction between the Vatican and the Holy See is something of a nuance in international law), and one to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a crusade-era order of chivalry which at some stage used to rule teh island of Malta and which continues to exist as a widely recognised subject of international law, but without sovereignty over any territory.
It would be even more impractical if more countries sent ambassadors to the Sovereign Order of Malta. Their entire national territory consists of five buildings.
It would be funny if the Vatican built a skyscraper condo building that all of the Embassies could share.
nm, server glitch
Aside: Vatican City has a papal density of 8 popes per square mile.
I don’t know who was pope in 1984, but the Holy_See/Vatican was working on international relations in general. Either as a result of changes in relations with Italy happening at that time, or as a cause.
It’s not being publicized much but the Vatican is hard at work fighting against Coronavirus!
Probably meant an exorcist, I can’t imagine a Falwellite going into the belly of the beast
Nitpick: just under 6. And of course with Benedict making occasional visits, you might have that figure
You don’t? It’s not like there’s term limits.
That was of course John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla.