Washington agrees to diplomatic ties with the Vatican
Harry S Truman liked a good scrap, but in 1951 he quickly backed down when American Protestants erupted in fury against his plan to extend diplomatic recognition to the Vatican. Even the President's own Baptist pastor in Washington denounced the idea from the pulpit. So abashed was Truman that he eliminated the post of the President's "personal representative" to the Holy See.
Now the once impossible step is about to be taken. Last week a highly placed source told TIME Rome Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn that the U.S. and the Vatican have agreed in principle to establish full diplomatic relations and that the official announcement will occur any day. The Holy See has 102 accredited ambassadors, but it has long been concerned that three major powers, the U.S., the Soviet Union and China, are not formally represented. The Vatican has been particulary eager to win U.S. recognition.
The change is coming about partly because the Reagan Administration no longer worries about the negative political effects of Vatican ties. In fact Republican strategists are far more interested in the number of Roman Catholic votes they might gain in 1984. It is known that the White House has sounded out pockets of potential Protestant opposition and found only minimal political damage. However, several organizations, including the National Council of Churches, have expressed their dismay. "I'm appalled," says President James Draper of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant group. More adverse publicity for the Administration could be generated by Senate confirmation of the first Ambassador to the Vatican. He is likely to be Reagan's current personal representative, William Wilson, 69, a Catholic convert, California businessman and Reagan intimate.
For some time Wilson has been urging the White House to extend diplomatic recognition. Reagan was receptive to the idea when John Paul II raised the possibility during the President's visit to the Vatican in 1982. Earlier this year, Indiana's Senator Richard Lugar, a Methodist, and the late Representative Clement Zablocki of Wisconsin, a Catholic, initiated legislation to remove an 1867 ban on funding a diplomatic mission to the Holy See. Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli nailed things down at the White House last month.
The history of U.S. relations with the Vatican is tangled indeed. Washington had a consul, chargé d'affaires or "minister resident" to the Papal States from 1797 to 1867, when, with the impending collapse of the Pope's regime, the U.S. legation was closed down. There matters stood until two days before Christmas, 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed his personal representative to the Holy See. (By not sending an ambassador, F.D.R. avoided Senate confirmation and the inevitable Protestant uproar.) There was no regular diplomatic contact following President Truman's debacle of 1951 until 1970, when President Nixon restored the post of personal representative, which has no diplomatic status.