Vatican Declares ‘Very Positive Relationship’ with Biden Administration

ROME — The Vatican’s foreign minister said the Holy See has a much better relationship with the Biden administration than it did with “the previous administration” in an interview published Wednesday.

Speaking with the Jesuit-run America magazine, Archbishop Paul Gallagher said that “our exchanges with the Biden administration are frequent, particularly through the U.S. embassy to the Holy See.”

While the Vatican does not always respond in the way that they would wish, “it is a very positive relationship,” the archbishop stated, because neither party has any hesitation to approach the other.

“So compared with the previous administration, it’s easier now,” Gallagher said in reference to the Trump presidency, adding that “I think we found that we didn’t see quite as eye-to-eye with the previous administration as we do with this one.”

While the Holy See has difficulties with the Biden administration as well, “there are other issues on which we can work very well. Most of the positions, I would say, are issues on which both sides recognize the importance and sometimes the sensitivity of the issues,” Gallagher said, such as the matters of immigration and climate change.

In the interview, Archbishop Gallagher went on to underscore the importance of the Holy See’s recent accession to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

This means that the Vatican “can participate in the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 2022, as a state party to both the convention and the agreement,” Gallagher said, which “will enable us to be able to make a bigger contribution.”

“With the adherence to the convention we’re putting our money where our mouth is,” he added.

The Holy See “was the last state to agree to the convention on climate, and therefore this convention now is a universal convention; really everybody is on board,” he declared.

“I think that we’ll be able to proceed in the decarbonization that the Holy See is committed to by 2050 and to making other improvements in the environment,” the archbishop said. “I think that this will be a source of encouragement for many others who are struggling with these issues.”

In his words, Gallagher also urged greater support for the United Nations in the line of Pope Francis’ well-known advocacy for multilateralism.

“I think we have to be a little bit careful about how critical we are of the United Nations,” Gallagher said. “It’s true that maybe the organization has difficulty finding solutions to situations, but the U.N. is also the organization that brings peacekeeping missions to the world, which helps people survive in conflicts and helps the problems of food distribution through the various agencies.”

“It’s not all doom and gloom. There are many things that do work,” he added.

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