Religion & Law

The Washington Times reported that the Vatican had rejected ambassadors put forward by Obama and the story was cited by one of our contributors. Apparently not so. David Gibson at dot.commonweal says:"Much of this sounded like jumping on the Obama-as-unpopular-with-Catholics bandwagon. And now John Thavis at CNS has a pretty definitive debunking:'No proposals about the new ambassador of the United States to the Holy See have reached the Vatican, and therefore it is not true that they have been rejected. The rumors circulating about this topic are not reliable,' the spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, told Catholic News Service April 9.The spokesman?s comments echoed off-the-record remarks by informed diplomatic and Vatican sources in Rome, who said the reports appeared to be unfounded. 'It?s possible names have been circulated inside the U.S. administration, and perhaps rejected for some reason or other, but not because of any Vatican veto.'"