10th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Pope Francis is on record as calling modern slavery “a crime against humanity”. Over 200 years since the British Parliament abolished the transatlantic slave trade and began an international campaign, led by the Royal Navy, to eradicate it, the Home Office estimates that there are around 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK […]
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10th November 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
One important element in the bilateral relationship between Britain and the Holy See is Parliament. Since 2004, an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Holy See has existed, in its words, “to monitor the relationship between the UK and the Holy See and call representatives of faith communities and the foreign/diplomatic service to brief […]
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29th September 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
What does Pope Francis’s announcement of the Jubilee Year of Mercy mean for an embassy accredited to the Holy See? Above all, it means many more people coming to Rome, and specifically to the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica, not as tourists but as pilgrims. Our role, together with the British Embassy to Italy, […]
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21st September 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Just over ten years ago, the European Union embassies in Cuba, including the United Kingdom, were involved in a stand-off with the Cuban government in Havana that became immortalised as “the cocktail wars”. Despite the seemingly frivolous impression given of the spat (which concerned the invitation to embassy receptions of dissident Cubans), there were deadly […]
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25th August 2015
On 25 August 1609, Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telescope to the Venetian authorities. This invention opened up the skies, and piqued men’s interest in the planets and stars around us and beyond, which in turn has led to modern wonders such as men on the moon, the Hubble space telescope, the Rosetta mission to […]
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17th August 2015
One of the quirks of being posted to the Holy See is that it is one of the few in the world where Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission regularly have to wear diplomatic uniforms. It comes as a surprise to many that the Foreign Office has a uniform at all – unless they had […]
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1st July 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
This is a networked world. And yet there are few genuinely global networks out there. By that I mean networks that have a capacity to operate globally, co-ordinated centrally but operating in capillary fashion, horizontally in a radial pattern as well as vertically in a hub and spoke model. One of the reasons why we […]
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24th June 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Confrontation across ideological fault lines. Division in Europe. Pessimism about international affairs. You might think I am referring to today’s international situation. But in fact I would like you to cast your mind back forty years to 1975 and the Cold War. Under the cloud of mutually assured destruction, Europe and the wider world needed […]
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12th June 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
It was Holy See day this week at Expo 2015 in Milan. Expo is like a world fair, with this year 145 countries represented including 53 national pavilions (the Holy See has one) based around the theme “Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life”. Reminding us that “man does not live by bread alone”, the Holy […]
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28th May 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Amongst the various reforms underway at the Vatican, one that has generated considerable interest is the reform of Holy See communications. There had for many years been criticism of a lack of coordination and high levels of duplication in Holy See communications. The last decade had also seen a number of avoidable communications errors that […]
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