'An insult to the Vatican'

According to reports, the British Government has decided to downgrade its embassy at the Vatican. The British ambassador to the Holy See will no longer have an official residence there. Originally there were plans for the ambassador to move and have his offices in the same building which houses the British ambassador to Italy but the plans were abandoned after "an angry response from the Vatican".

According to The Catholic Herald, the move "was seen as a breach of the 1929 Lateran Treaty which grants the Vatican sovereign status and the right to separate missions". This decision by the Foreign Office is rather ironic, considering that the current ambassador, Francis Campbell, who was appointed only a few months ago is the very first Catholic to hold such a post. Mr Campbell, a Northern Irishman, is a devout Catholic.

What makes the decision even stranger is the fact that before his appointment Mr Campbell was an adviser at Downing Street and it seems that he was quite close to Prime Minister Tony Blair who again, as is well known, is married to a practising Catholic and who is himself considered to be very sympathetic to Catholics and their faith.

The decision - which has not been explained, though it may have been taken for financial reasons - looks even stranger when one considers that Pope Benedict has been officially invited to visit Britain, and naturally the British Embassy to the Vatican will be very much involved in the arrangements for such a visit.

Reports indicate that the Pope has not been at all pleased with the Foreign Office's decision. Neither is the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. Both were reported to have said that they would not allow the sovereign status of the UK ambassador to the Vatican "to be further undermined by Britain's actions". No fewer than 174 nations have diplomatic relations with the Vatican and all major powers, including the United States, have separate missions to the Vatican and Rome, the only exception being Israel, and this for security reasons.

The Catholic weekly described the Foreign Office decision as "shameful treatment" of the newly appointed ambassador. A number of MPs from various parties, Catholic and non-Catholic, are organising a campaign to make the Foreign Office change its rather strange decision which has highly offended Catholics in the UK.

A Tory MP, who is leading the campaign to make the Foreign Office reverse its decision to downgrade the embassy, called the move "an absolute disgrace and an insult to the Vatican. I and my colleagues are horrified that Britain intends to dumb down the significance of the Vatican, especially now when it is of more importance than it has ever been."

One hopes, as the Tory MP said, that at a time when the voice from the Vatican is carrying more weight than it has ever done, common sense will prevail, centuries-old prejudices are overcome and relations will return to normal.