U.S. Ambassador to Holy See leaves Rome

(Vatican Radio) The United States’ Ambassador to the Holy See Miguel H. Díaz leaves his post this week to return to academia in the U.S. Diaz, who presented his letters of credential to Pope Benedict in October 2009 says he is “proud to serve almost three and a half years in his position as the 9th U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.” The Ambassador will join his family in Dayton, Ohio, where he has been named University Professor of Faith and Culture at the University of Dayton.

Ambassador Diaz helped launch the Religion in Foreign Policy Working Group of the Secretary of State’s Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society. The Working Group facilitates regular dialogue between the U.S. foreign policy establishment and religious leaders, scholars, and practitioners worldwide on strategies to build more effective partnerships on a wide range of goals, including conflict prevention, humanitarian assistance, and national security. In a press release announcing his departure from Rome, the Ambassador said “the working group is an unprecedented initiative that demonstrates the administration’s commitment to involve religious leaders in shaping U.S. foreign policy; I am proud to take an active role to ensure its success.”

In an interview with Vatican Radio’s Tracey McClure, Ambassador Diaz outlined some of the most rewarding aspects of his job:

“We have deepened the existing relationships that my predecessors have established and we have expanded relationships with other groups and communities and institutions associated with the Holy See. Because of my background (ed. in Catholic education) and because of the signs of the times, I’ve really taken on…the invitation that the President himself issued at Cairo to turn interfaith conversations into actions.

“We’ve built a lot of bridges across cultures and religious traditions. In our ‘Building bridges’ series, we build bridges with Muslims, Christians and Jews around issues that are very important to the human family today: conflict resolution, just economies, climate change. We’ve done other bridge building with different constituencies: civil society, religious as well as members of the corporate world around the issue, for instance, of human trafficking – another issue that remains a very important challenge in terms of our times.”

Mr. Diaz also spoke of his office’s efforts to focus on the “key” issue of migration “because it affects so many of us…who are on the move across the planet.”

Listen to the extended interview with Ambassador Diaz who explains why he is leaving his post even though the man who put him there was given a second term in the White House:



The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See will be headed by the Chargé d’Affaires, until a new Ambassador is nominated by the Administration and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.