It's The 25th Anniversary of Formal Diplomatic Relations with the Holy See (Updated)

I saw the Prof Rick Garnett made a comment on our out going Envoy to the Holy See over at MOJ.

I spent this past week in Rome. The occasion was a wonderful conference, hosted by Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration, and also the 25th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy See, on "the American model of religious freedom." My task, in a nutshell, was to describe that model, and I punted, contending that the American "model" is really an ongoing dialogue / debate among three models: "freedom of religion", "freedom from religion", and "freedom for religion."
I was so impressed with the Ambassador. It was clear to me that both our country and the Church have been extremely well served by her.

So true. It is infortuanate that most Americans don't realize the impact that Mary Ann Glendon has had over the years. Her wilki page gives a glimpse. The fact that one of the most important LAY people in the American Catholic Church is a female strangely goes unnoticed by the Church haters :)

The Web page for our Embassy to the Holy See has a short write up on this very interesting conference. Looking at the topics it is shame that it appears these talks are not online. I mentions that the Knights of Columbus Paid for this perhaps they have something.

I guess she was not asked to stay on so I am not sure who is running the show over there till President Obama picks a new Envoy. It might be this lady.

On a side note it should be pointed out that we have had some relations with the "Vatican" before as to the Papal States. The United States maintained consular relations with the Papal States from 1797 to 1870 and diplomatic relations with the Pope, in his capacity as head of the Papal States, from 1848 to 1868, though not at the ambassador level. These relations lapsed with the loss of all papal territories in 1870.

In fact I talked about that here and an amusing (well not at the time) International Incident involving a Pope and America's most famous warship. See The First Papal Trip to "United States " resulted in a Court Martial Proceeding!!! ( AN Overview)

Updated-

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Also see this nice recent post by Amy Wellborn on How to get a bunch of Americans in Rome to start tearing up, immediately?