On behalf of Pope Francis, the Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin recently sent a note to all embassies of countries with which it has diplomatic relations urging ambassadors to work for peace. The nota verbale, as it is called…

Recently, Pope Francis, Shimon Perez and Mahmoud Abbas met at the Vatican to pray for peace and discuss peace in the Middle East. Here is the background of that meeting. Pope Francis may be the world’s best politician. During his…

While in the Holy Land, Pope Francis made a few unscheduled stops. He stopped to pray at the Western Wall in the West Bank, and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he visited an Israeli memorial for victims of terrorism. He…

Pope Francis received her majesty Queen Elizabeth for an official “tea” at the Vatican recently where the two exchanged casual conversation and gifts. The 17-minute meeting was the fifth encounter the 87-year-old monarch has had with a pope. Her first…

At a recent book festival in Charlottesville, Virginia, Ambassador Francis Rooney spoke about the Vatican and its diplomatic links to the United States and other nations during a panel discussion. Ambassador Rooney was President George W. Bush’s envoy to the…

Demanding that the Vatican “immediately remove” clergy who are child abusers, the United Nations released a report that criticized the Vatican for not dealing with priests who have abused thousands of children. The report also criticized the church for its…

The United States and the Vatican have been diplomatic allies for 30 years now. The first U.S. Embassy to the Holy See opened on April 9, 1984, but the agreement between the U.S. and the Vatican was signed on January…

If the United States and the Vatican see anything nearly eye to eye these days it would be the need to handle the gap between rich and poor. Both the White House and the Vatican believe that wealth must be…

President Obama is moving to shut down the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and move it to the larger American Embassy in Italy. While the U.S. claims that this is a security measure in light of the Benghazi attack…

The United States must embrace the Vatican, wrote Francis Rooney, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See in a USA Today op ed. The “cordial but cooling relations” between the U.S. and the Vatican, he suggested, have not taken into…

Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament went to Rome to visit the Pope on October 11, 2013. After the audience a smiling Schulz said “it was an honour and a pleasure for me to be received by Pope Francis…

The Vatican is working all diplomatic, political and popular angles to prevent an attack on the Syrian dictatorship by the United States and its allies. The United States has tried to justify a strike on the basis of human rights…