Vatican embassy closure

IT IS clear that the Government never sought to abolish the Irish diplomatic channel to the Vatican at all, but rather to save money by combining the two embassies in Rome into one, serving both Italy and the Vatican.

Why it is unacceptable to the Vatican that Ireland does this, given our desperate state, when it’s OK for many other states to do so, is puzzling. It’s true that our embassy to the Vatican was opened in 1929, but that was because all the main political parties had a very unhealthy relationship of obeisance with the Catholic Church at the time.

The same embassy was the conduit by which Éamon de Valera sent drafts of our Constitution to the Papacy for the Pope’s approval, before publishing his finished draft in the Irish Press on May 1, 1937.