Christian Peregin
US Ambassador’s resignation accepted
US President Barack Obama has accepted the resignation of his government’s Ambassador to Malta, Douglas Kmiec, a State Department official said last night.
Prof. Kmiec’s resignation came on Saturday in the wake of a report by the US Office of Inspector General (OIG), which criticised the amount of time he dedicated to promoting his faith.
The story made international headlines since Prof. Kmiec, a devout Catholic, was a well-known aide of President Obama on the campaign trail. Prof. Kmiec endorsed Mr Obama despite the aspiring president’s pro-choice stance.
Meanwhile, Malta’s Foreign Minister Tonio Borg yesterday said he was “disappointed and surprised” by the fact that the Ambassador was stepping down.
“He was and still is a good Ambassador who has served his country well, while winning the hearts of many,” Dr Borg said.
“Far from hindering the carrying out of his duties, his faith actually made him stronger and helped him gain respect and admiration.”
In his resignation letter, Prof. Kmiec said that the only way he could stay on as Ambassador was if President Obama personally affirmed his credentials. He, therefore, addressed his letter to Mr Obama:
Ambassador’s resignation
“With the highest respect for your leadership, and with some understanding of the difficulty and complexity of the challenges that you and Secretary (of State Hilary) Clinton face each day, I ask that you accept my resignation effective on the feast of the Assumption, 2011.”
Prof. Kmiec, who has served as ambassador to Malta since 2009, also criticised the OIG.
“An unfortunate OIG report published last week claims that high standard unmet on the unsupported speculation that someone doing as much writing as I have done could not have also been devoted to the embassy mission.”
In his letter to the President, the ambassador invited Mr Obama to attend the opening of the new US Embassy in Malta in July and in a separate statement urged him to make the journey to the island even sooner.
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Trevor Lorenzo Mizzi
Apr 19th 2011, 19:31
I hope that the next ambassador will stick to his ambassador duties instead of popish or other religious proselytizing. This is Malta, we have religion up to our necks since birth and we do not need more of the same to drown in.
Mr Alex Buds
Apr 21st 2011, 18:25
Agreed. 100%.
Mr Joe Xuereb
Apr 19th 2011, 13:49
Thanks Mr. Flynn.
My awareness of Douglas Kmiec goes back to the Church refusing him communion because of some career-enhancing move on his part. Then came the road accident where a nun died and a bishop, subsequently. At that stage, all this was, to me, mere news fodder. Then came his assignment as ambassador to Malta. A different ballgame thence onward. So I watched, and I waited. Min jistenna, jithenna (patience is rewarded).
When this issue was first reported days ago, all comments were from Catholic commiserants(?). Kmiec was very popular in Malta for obvious reasons (gosh! rubbing shoulders with an American ambassador, a Catholic to boot, what could be more socially-uplifting? In class-obsessed little Malta? I decided to break the litany, easy as pie when one's free, but decent with it. And where the name of the game is 'seeking-painful-truths'. And, thankful for the Times deciding to publish me, the floodgates were open. I am not alone. But then I never thought I was, not even in Malta ħanina/ħażina(goodly/ungoodly), depending on one's spiritual props.
Mr William Flynn
Apr 19th 2011, 11:12
Malta hosts Ambassadors from secular and also Moslem countries. His religion-laced epistles would have raised a few eyebrows. Can anyone imagine the furore if another US Ambassador posted to a Moslem country and who also happened to be a Moslem behaved in the same fashion; if that Moslem US ambassador spoke of Moslem rules, saints, feasts and encyclicals in the same way Ambassador Kmiec spoke?
His frequent proselytising would have offended and embarrassed other diplomats, his staff and colleagues and, eventually, the US State Department.
His over-the-top promotion of his own religion is incongruous with diplomatic behaviour not to mention the provisions for the separation of State from religion within the US Constitution. His celebration of the fact that Catholicism is Malta’s “official religion” alone (indeed the very utterance of the phrase “state official religion”) is a sacrilege against the US Constitution.
Consciously or otherwise his power as a US Ambassador helps shore up ecclesiastical political power in Malta, a nuance surely not lost at the US State Department); church political power of which the vast majority of Maltese have shown to have been sick to their back teeth; and just how sick of it they are is about to be demonstrated in measurable terms once more in the upcoming referendum.
Ambassador Kmiec would not have impressed those Maltese either. He was too busy looking at the sky to notice.
One day Maltese politicians and government representatives too will be shown the door for spouting religion whilst serving in their official capacities representing a Maltese truly secular (as opposed to the presently make-believe secular) country.
That day is well overdue.