U.S.-Vatican Relations, 1975–1980

A Diplomatic Study

P. Peter Sarros

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780268006396, 9780268007829
• eBook ISBN: 9780268106836
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the bilateral relations between the United States and the Vatican from 1975 to 1980, a turbulent period that had two presidents, three presidential envoys, and three popes. This previously untold story shows how the United States and the Vatican worked quietly together behind the scenes to influence the international response to major issues of the day. Peter Sarros examines the Iran hostage crisis, the tensions of the Cold War, the Helsinki process, and the Beagle Channel dispute, among other issues. These interactions produced a tacit alliance in the foreign policies of the United States and the Vatican even before the establishment of full diplomatic relations. This unique book is based largely on official documents from the archives of the Office of the U.S. Special Envoy of the United States to the Vatican, supplemented by Sarros's contemporaneous diaries, notes, and other unpublished sources.

The confidential consultations at the Vatican by three special envoys and by Sarros in his role as chargé and ambassador at the Vatican were critical in obtaining Vatican support on major international issues. The Vatican also derived substantial benefits from the partnership through U.S. support of Vatican initiatives in Lebanon and elsewhere, and by U.S. policies that gave Vatican diplomacy the flexibility to play a larger role in the international sphere. Sarros concludes that American diplomacy was successful at the Holy See during this period because it took advantage of the Vatican's overarching international strategy, which was to increase its influence through support for the global balance of power while blocking the expansion of Soviet power and communism in Europe. U.S.-Vatican Relations, 1975–1980 will be of interest to students and scholars of history and political science, especially in the fields of diplomatic relations and church history.

NOTES

Preface

1. Memorandum for the Secretary of State, from the President’s National Security Adviser: Subject: “Relations with the Vatican,” April 15, 1970. It informs the State Department, “The President has decided to have Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge visit Rome from time to time for consultations with the Holy See.” It also instructs the State Department to “provide appropriate office facilities and staff support in Washington and Rome. It should arrange to make available to the Ambassador the necessary papers and briefings within the Executive Branch on subjects which the Ambassador expects to take up during his visits.” This mandate guided Ambassador Lodge’s consultations during his periodic visits to the Vatican, and also those of his assistant, who was in charge of his office in Rome—an office, at the insistence of the Vatican, physically separate from the American Embassy to Italy.

2. The three envoys were Henry Cabot Lodge, David Walters, and Robert F. Wagner. I was the only U.S. envoy at the Vatican from August 14 to December 4, 1978, when Ambassador Wagner presented his credentials to the pope.

3. President Nixon initiated the special mission, President Ford solidified it, and President Carter enhanced it significantly.

4. Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II.

5. During these years, the mission produced a voluminous archive of telegrams, memoranda, and special studies on numerous issues relating to international relations, many of which are available in the Department of State Archives or the National Archives. Perforce, since I only address a limited number of issues, I have selected only those considered the most important in illustrating the primary roles of the mission as observer, reporter, and advocate. Except for a brief mention in the year of three popes, I do not address the numerous audiences that I had to arrange for distinguished Americans and U.S. congressional delegations, or the important papal ceremonies and diplomatic events that my wife and I attended.

6. Whereas Ambassador Lodge visited the Vatican usually two times a year, Ambassador Wagner visited ten times in fifteen months. Furthermore, the mission during Lodge’s tenure operated quietly and maintained an unobtrusive public profile, but Wagner operated more visibly, met journalists frequently, and also conducted numerous diplomatic functions for Vatican officials and members of the Vatican diplomatic corps.

7. There were four high-level, and unprecedentedly large, U.S. delegations to the two funerals and the two papal inaugurations in August, September, October, and November 1978, as described in chapter 1.

Chapter One The Year of Three Popes and the Transformation of U.S.–Vatican Relations

1. The terms “Vatican” and “Holy See” are often used interchangeably by diplomats, academics, and journalists. Technically, they are distinct: the Vatican is the Vatican Palace, where the pope and the staff of the Secretariat of State work. “Vatican” can also refer to the state of Vatican City, a territorial entity in which the pope is sovereign. The Holy See is the ministry of the pope as the supreme pastor of the Roman Catholic Church. Diplomats are accredited to the Holy See, not to Vatican City.

2. Throughout this study there are several examples when knowledge of history proved to be helpful in conducting diplomatic business at the Vatican. I was ever mindful of the axiom that those who ignore the past are liable to repeat its mistakes. Knowledge of history was a basic qualification when I applied for entry into the Foreign Service.

3. Historians say that the papacy emerged as “a great historical force” with Pope Leo the Great in the fifth century, after having developed the “apparatus of government” and “the administrative skills” that surpassed those found outside the Roman imperial administration in Constantinople. They also date the genesis of the Papal States to the year 756, when Pepin granted Ravenna “to St. Peter,” which “was the beginning of 1,100 years of the pope’s temporal power, the secular authority enjoyed by the pope over his own dominions as a ruler like any other” (Roberts and Westad, The History of the World, 297).

4. I had only one job interview with Ambassador Lodge, arranged for me by my friend Henry Boudreau, the administrative counselor at the Rome embassy, who recommended me for the position. Lodge chose me over several candidates, of higher rank, because, he told me, I was “lean and hungry and had the intellectual preparation and ambition to advance in the diplomatic service.” Apparently, I must have met his expectations. At the end of his mission, in a letter to the under secretary of state, dated July 28, 1977, he wrote that “P. Peter Sarros . . . has done exceptionally well as Chargé d’Affaires and his work has been of a high order. I believe he is qualified for higher things and he has demonstrated that he is able to discharge the responsibilities of a chief of mission.”

5. There were several distinct eras that characterized U.S.–Vatican relations: The United States had diplomatic relations with the Papal States for only twenty years (1848–68). There followed a period of seventy years of diplomatic neglect (1868 to 1939). In 1939, FDR established quasi-diplomatic relations by sending Amb. Myron C. Taylor as his personal representative to the pope, which lasted for about ten years under FDR (1940–45) and then President Truman (1945–50). Taylor resigned for health reasons in 1950. Truman nominated Gen. Mark Clark as “ambassador to the Vatican,” but the nomination was not acted on by the Senate, and Clark withdrew his name. The termination of the Taylor mission, in 1950, was followed by a second period of diplomatic neglect of the Vatican, when there were no continuing direct contacts. A new period of quasi-diplomatic relations began in 1970 with the appointment by President Nixon of Henry Cabot Lodge as the special envoy of the United States to the pope, which was continued by the next three presidents (Ford, Carter, and Reagan) until 1984, when full and reciprocal diplomatic relations were established by President Reagan and John Paul II in 1984.

6. Stock, Consular Relations.

7. Ibid., 354–59. Inevitably, when the pope was restored to power over Rome by French troops in 1849, Consul Brown was dismissed from his position as consul general of the United States.

8. Ibid., 156.

9. Although during this period the papacy had consular relations with the United States, it accredited no diplomatic representatives to the U.S. government, and it conducted its ecclesiastical affairs in the United States through an apostolic delegate to the American Catholic hierarchy, the first of whom, appointed in 1893, had occasional contacts with the U.S. government.

10. Apparently out of courtesy, the Department of State never explicitly withdrew the exequatur of Consul General Binsse, despite repeated requests by the diplomatic representatives of the Kingdom of Italy.

11. The title of “minister” was granted after 1854; previously the U.S. diplomatic representative had the title of “chargé d’affaires.”

12. Martin died on August 26, 1848, seven days after presenting his credentials. Leo F. Stock has provided a selection of the diplomatic dispatches and instructions produced during the era of diplomatic relations, with an excellent introduction, in Stock, United States Ministers. Accordingly, James Buchanan in his Dispatch No. 2 told Chargé d’Affaires Jacob L. Martin:

[In your] highly honorable and important mission, there is one consideration which you ought always to keep in view in your intercourse with the Papal authorities. Most, if not all, the governments which have Diplomatic Representatives at Rome are connected with the pope as Head of the Church. In this respect, the Government of the United States occupies an entirely different position. It possesses no power whatever over the question of religion. All denomination of Christians stand on the same footing in this country—and every man enjoys the inestimable right of worshiping his God according to the dictates of his own conscience. Your efforts therefore will be devoted exclusively to the cultivation of the friendliest civil relations with the Papal Government, and to the extension of the commerce between the two countries. You will carefully avoid even the appearance of interfering in ecclesiastical questions, whether these relate to the United States or to any other portion of the world. It might be proper, should you deem it advisable, to make these views known, on some suitable occasion to the Papal Government; so, that there may be no mistake or misunderstanding on this subject.

This guideline was also strictly observed by the three special envoys and by me in 1975–80.

13. Cass was the longest-serving minister at Rome, and during one period he reported to his father, Lewis Cass Sr., who was the secretary of state.

14. The pope had agreed to surrender him to the United States, but when in jail until a formal request was received from the U.S. government, he escaped. He was later captured in Egypt, but his trial resulted in a hung jury.

15. The vote on February 28, 1867, was 87–18 in the House, and the Senate passed it without a recorded vote. Secretary of State Seward wrote to King on March 11 that there will be “no money . . . for the support of the American legation in Rome from and after the 13th day of June, eighteen hindered and sixty-seven.” Seward reminded King once again on April 20, 1867, that the action of Congress left the mission “still existing but without compensation.” On May 4, King replied, “It is my present purpose to maintain the post . . . until recalled. . . . The question of my compensation I leave to the justice of my Congress.”

16. Stock, United States Ministers, provides the extensive documentation of King’s efforts to correct the record on the religious situation of Protestants in Rome in the hope that Congress would reconsider its decisions. His efforts were in vain for several reasons, such as that Americans disliked the pope’s increasing conservatism, and the lingering imbroglio over the alleged expulsion of the American Protestant church from Rome. Moreover, some in Congress may have been influenced to vote for the legation’s closure by the false rumor that the pope had recognized the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War. King, in Dispatch 92, May 7, 1867, states that he considered the congressional action “hasty and . . . groundless . . . and an unkind and ungenerous return for the good will the pope manifested toward the American government and people.”

17. Stock, United States Ministers, xxxix. Former Secretary of State Acheson’s characterization of the action is more colorful: “While the echoes of ‘Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion’ were still reverberating in the country, Congress had enacted [in 1867] in a rider on an appropriation act that no appropriated funds might be used to maintain a diplomatic mission at the Vatican” (Acheson, Present at the Creation, 574). The Vatican considered that relations had been suspended, but not terminated. The Vatican statistical yearbook, Annuario Pontificio, in the 1950s listed the United States as having relations but with no designated incumbent. The United States considered the action definitive, and in 1983, Congress revoked the termination to enable President Reagan to establish formal diplomatic relations.

18. “Wilson felt the Pontiff offered nothing more than a return to the status quo before the war, without removing any of the elements that proofed the pretext for the war. . . . ‘It is none of our business how the German people got under the control of such a government or kept under the domination of its power and its purpose,’ he wrote in replying to the pope, ‘but it is our business to see to it that the history of the world is no longer left to their handling’” (Berg, Wilson, 462). Apparently, there is no U.S. record of the substance of the talk between the president and the pope. President Wilson had objected to the pope’s appeal for peace in August 1917.

Berg provides the following description of the visit of the president to the Vatican:

The next day, January 4, Wilson and his entourage faced more hysteria at the only venue that then seemed worthy of his presence—the Vatican. The majordomo escorted him through dozens of chambers, past colorfully costumed Swiss Guards and courtiers until he arrived at a small throne room. At the tinkling of a bell, the diminutive Pontiff dressed all in white emerged. Accompanied only by a pair of interpreters, Benedict XV took the president by the hand into the Papal study for a brief private conversation in the first meeting between an American president and a pope. Strangely, by the time the president left the Vatican, the crowd had vanished. The officials later told Wilson that the police had dispersed the multitudes because of a potential threat of a riot. But later, Wilson explained to Edith that the government had broken up the demonstrations for fear that the president might try to enlist the people’s support for his Fourteen Points—to which Italy had agreed as the basis of armistice but it did not necessarily intend to adhere. (Berg, Wilson, 521)

The visit to the Vatican in 1901 by William Howard Taft was not considered a diplomatic one. It was made exclusively for the purpose of clarifying the status of Catholic Church properties in the Philippines. His instruction from the secretary of war: “Your errand will not be in any sense or degree diplomatic in its nature, but will be a business matter of negotiation by you as Governor of the Philippines for the purchase of property from the owners thereof”; see Simeon E. Baldwin, “The Mission of Governor Taft to the Vatican,” The Yale Law Journal 12, no. 1 (1902): 1–7, https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5293&context=fss_papers.

19. For example, through most of our history, American and Vatican principles of government were diametrically opposed. The United States was the beacon of liberty, dedicated to constitutional government, the separation of powers in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, the separation of church and state, and all the traditional liberties of conscience, speech press, and so on. The Vatican until very recently (e.g., since...

Table of contents

• Halftitle
• Series
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• One The Year of Three Popes and the Transformation of U.S.–Vatican Relations
• Two Beagle Channel Mediation: Diplomacy and War Prevention
• Three The Vatican, Italy, and Eurocommunism
• Four Vatican Ostpolitik: Diplomacy of Rapprochement with Communism
• Five The Vatican and the Helsinki Process, 1975–1980
• Six The Pope, the Neutron Bomb, and NATO Modernization
• Seven The President, the Pope, and the Crown of St. Stephen
• Eight The Vatican, the United States, and Lebanon’s Civil War
• Nine The United States, the Vatican, the Middle East, and Jerusalem
• Ten The Pope and the Iranian Hostage Crisis: The Limits of Papal Power
• Eleven The Vatican, Liberation Theology, and the Central American Imbroglio
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Author