The Guardian's WikiLeaks team has been combing through leaked
diplomatic cables from the US Embassy to the Vatican, and other related cables, and turning the revelations into stories. Today, they publish four stories that the Vatican and the diplomats would rather we didn't know.
deals with a visit to Rome by Rowan Williams. Francis Campbell (pictured, left), the UK's Ambassador to the Holy See, is reported to have claimed that the Pope's creation of an Anglican Ordinariate to provide an ecclesial home for disaffected English Anglicans could trigger violence against England's mostly Irish-origin, Catholic minority.
Money quote: "There is still latent anti-Catholicism in some parts of England and it may not take much to set it off. The outcome could be discrimination or in isolated cases, even violence, against this minority." Many will regard this claim -- if the cable is a fair record -- as bizarrely over-the-top.
The same cable reports Francis Campbell's concerns about the pending papal visit to the UK: "As for the Pope's visit next year to England, Campbell said he now expected a chilly reception, especially from the Royal family - which was not a great supporter of ecumenical dialogue even before the crisis." As it turns out, the visit was an unalloyed success and the Queen's welcome could not have been warmer. If this cable is a fair record of Francis Campbell's comments, it would appear that Her Majesty's Ambassador has been telling American diplomats that the Queen is not a fan of inter-church relations.
More significant in Ireland is which lifts the lid on the secret diplomacy that led to the Irish government. The cable will be read by many as yet more evidence that the Vatican was more focused on diplomatic niceties than on the abuse of children in Ireland.
Money quote: "The Murphy Commission's requests offended many in the Vatican, the Holy See's Assessor Peter Wells (protect strictly) told DCM [deputy chief of mission], because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty. Vatican officials were also angered that the Government of Ireland did not step in to direct the Murphy Commission to follow standard procedures in communications with Vatican City." The Vatican's ambassador to Ireland (the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, pictured, right) simply ignored all requests for co-operation because they had not come through the appropriate diplomatic channels. After a failed attempt by Ireland's Ambassador to facilitate communications between his government and the Holy See, the Irish government relented.
This first batch of Vatican cables also reveals that US diplomatics are deeply unimpressed -- and the technophobia of Vatican officials in a world dominated by the internet and high-speed communications. And from 2004 shows that the future Pope Benedict lobbied against Turkey's membership of the EU. We are also beginning to see more details of the Vatican'sof political and moral issues. A is critical of the Pope's "unhelpful" role in the Middle East peace process, but gives the Vatican credit for helping to secure the release of British sailors captured by Iran -- indeed more credit than British officials
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