Three months after appointing a gay diplomat as France’s ambassador to the Vatican, Paris is still waiting for the green light from Rome.
With Pope Francis entering his third year in the post, some activists see the Vatican’s silence as a test of the depth of reform in the Catholic Church.
While the Vatican usually declares it has accepted a candidate about a month after an appointment is made, it makes no public statements at all if the answer is no.
Paris appears determined to stick with seasoned candidate Laurent Stefanini, a 55-year-old practicing Catholic whom the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs described as “one of our best diplomats.”
“That’s why we appointed him,” it said. “We are waiting for a reply to our request.”
Sources close to French President Francois Hollande said the appointment was “the wish of the president” and the Cabinet of ministers.
The French Cabinet approved Stefanini’s appointment on Jan. 5, but has not yet received a reply.
“A delay of three months like this is not normal,” a well-informed source in Rome told reporters.
“The reply normally doesn’t take more than a month, a month and a half,” the source said.
If there is a refusal, “the Vatican doesn’t reply, doesn’t offer an explanation and it’s up to the country concerned to interpret this lack of a reply.”
In 2007, France proposed openly gay diplomat Jean-Loup Kuhn-Delforge to be its ambassador at the Vatican. Paris never received a reply, and it eventually put forward another nominee.
Unlike Kuhn-Delforge, Stefanini is single and is discreet about his personal life.
Italian daily Il Messagero described him as “a practicing Catholic, very cultivated, of absolute discretion.”
From 2001 to 2005, he served as the No. 2 at the French embassy in the Vatican.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not