6th April 2016
The Pope’s announcement at St Peter’s on 3 April that he is calling for a collection on behalf of the long suffering land and people of Ukraine was a significant gesture. On 24 April, all Catholic parishes in Europe will raise money for a country that since the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014 […]
8th January 2016
On 8 January, with the gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen, I laid a wreath at the tomb in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica of James Francis Edward Stuart, 250 years after his burial there. The message on the wreath was very simple: “In memoriam – James Francis Edward Stuart – ‘The Chevalier’ […]
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24th December 2013
Pope Francis places great emphasis in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Guadium on communication. In large part, he declares, communicating the Gospel is the Church’s principal mission statement. This is not, of course, a new message, although the emphasis may be. But it was perhaps no coincidence that the Holy See recently announced that the means of communication […]
27th November 2013
From time to time, I continue to receive queries from well-meaning people asking why we have an embassy to the Holy See. It’s not a nation state, they suggest. So what can our interests be? I would hope that regular readers of this blog or our twitter feed have a pretty good idea by now […]
31st July 2013
The following is a guest blog by Steve Townsend, Deputy Head of Mission. It is difficult to think that I have already finished the first six months of my four-year posting to the Holy See. The time seems to flown past. Why did I apply for the job? I am interested in “soft power” – […]
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17th June 2013
In an exchange of letters on the eve of the Lough Erne G8 Summit, Pope Francis and Prime Minister David Cameron have shared detailed analysis of what needs to be done to tackle the economic and political challenges faced by the world today. The Prime Minister took the initiative to inform the Pope on 5 […]
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14th March 2013
It is the dream of every Ambassador to the Holy See to be in post for a Conclave. No one with a sense of history or occasion can possibly be disappointed by the event. There can be no election in the world that is held under conditions of such intense media scrutiny, and yet also […]
11th June 2012
In his 2011 message for World Peace Day, Pope Benedict emphasised the role of the family as “the school of freedom of peace”, the bedrock of our social fabric. His Holiness added that the family founded on marriage was “the expression of the close union and complementarity between a man and a woman”. The practice […]
15th September 2011
The Papal Visit to the United Kingdom last year, exactly one year ago this week, was an extraordinary moment in the relationship between my country and the Holy See. It was the first State Visit by a Pope, and in the Prime Minister’s words “an incredibly moving four days for our country”. It emphasised the […]
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9th September 2011
This is my first blog entry as HM Ambassador to the Holy See – indeed, the first time a British Ambassador to the Holy See has had a blog. At a time when the Holy See is itself hosting meetings of bloggers from all over the world, and the Pope is tweeting, I think it […]
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