U.S. closing embassy in Vatican, opening embassy in Timbuktu.

STATE DEPARTMENT INSISTS U.S. IS NOT SEVERING TIES WITH THE VATICAN

WASHINGTON - Several conservative news sources reported this week that the Obama Administration is closing the U.S. embassy in Rome's Vatican City, suggesting American relationship with the Catholic Church's Holy See is cooling. A senior State Department offical told reporters Monday that the speculation is a "series of myths."

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Good evening. To give you a little context, let me start with this – I think there are a series of myths that are running around out there.

I mean, the first myth is that embassies from any country to the Vatican are actually in Vatican City. That’s not true. There are no embassies from any country to the Holy See that are actually located within the Vatican City city-state. All embassies of any country are located in the city of Rome. So that’s kind of the first myth out there.

The second myth is that we are changing the residence of the Ambassador to the Holy See. I have seen that as well. The Ambassador’s residence is not part of this at all.

The third is that this represents a downsizing of our presence when this happens. That is not true as well. Our diplomatic presence will remain one of the largest missions accredited to the Holy See, and that there is no reduction in our diplomatic staff in this process.

The last myth is that the United States will be the – is – will be the only diplomatic mission in Rome which is somehow co-located. That’s also not true. The UK and The Netherlands are also co-located, as is the Israeli mission to the Holy See.

The official gave reasons for moving the U.S. Embassy to a different location in Rome:

So in this operation, you will have the Holy See Mission/Embassy moving to this other building that – yes, it’s on the same compound, but again, separate building, separate entrances. The whole picture is such that the separateness is maintained. They are – they get – they’re separate entrances. Anyone visiting one mission or the other would enter in through a separate building. And so whether you’re going to see any one of the three different ambassadors, you go to a separate street address and you go into a separate building.

Now, your next question is: Why are we doing this? Well, we’re doing this for two reasons. One is cost savings. We have this space, as I said, in this other building that we bought a few years ago on the Embassy – well, it was adjacent to the Embassy compound. We bought it and rolled it into the larger compound. We figure that we will save about $1.4 million a year in lease and operating costs in moving them. And as I said earlier, there is no reduction in diplomatic staff, there’s no reduction in ambassadors, there’s no reduction in mission. There is simply a reduction in overhead.

So security – then the second issue is obviously security. The Mission to the Holy See is not in a building that has the kind of physical security protection that we would like it to have. It doesn’t have the setback from the street that is available in its new compound, and there are – it does not have the level of other security protections, including Marine security guards that are available at the combined U.S. Government compound.

While some may interpret the senior official's comments as suggesting the Obama Administration is cutting off ties with the Catholic Church's world headquarters, this senior official (whose name was not given in the transcript because the call was "on background only") insists the information on Drudge.com, Breitbart.com, World Net Daily and the Washington Times is inaccurate.

Most troubling for the Obama Administration should be that American Catholics find such "myths" to be believable, because it may be an indication of how anti-religious a growing number of Christians find the Obama Administration to be. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 at 06:03 PM | Permalink

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