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By Hilary White

ROME, April 28, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Senator John Kerry, one of the most prominent pro-abortion Catholic politicians in the US, told an interviewer last week that it is only logical for the White House to appoint a pro-life ambassador to the Vatican.

Kerry, a former Democratic candidate for US president, said, “I think that if you’re going to have an ambassador who has access to His Holiness and who has the ability to be able to represent all the other things which you want to come together on, it is best not to, you know, make things difficult from the outset.”

“And obviously given the position of the Church, that’s difficult. And so an honest answer is, you know, I’d try to find someone who doesn’t open up that front, so to speak, and has the ability to represent where we find the common ground.”

He added, “Does it have to be [a pro-life person]? No, but that would be my recommendation.”

While the process for proposing and vetting diplomatic posts is one of the Vatican’s most closely guarded secrets, rumors have been circulating in the US and Italian press that the aggressively pro-abortion Obama administration is finding it difficult to fill the post. 

Although both the White House and the Vatican have repeatedly denied that any Obama choices have been rejected, the Times of London, the Daily Telegraph and the Italian daily Il Giornale reported in mid-April that Caroline Kennedy had been chosen but later rejected by Rome because of her pro-abortion views. Il Giornale mentioned the “strained” relationship between the Vatican and the White House since the election of Obama.

Former US ambassador to the Vatican, Raymond Flynn, speaking to the Boston Herald, argued that Kennedy’s support for legal abortion made her unsuitable. Caroline Kennedy, who dismissed the rumor that she had been proposed for the position, is the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, a prominent player in the Democrat party and was a key member of the Obama campaign team.

“It’s imperative, it’s essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has pro-life values,” Flynn said.

In early April, Italian journalist Massimo Franco a columnist for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, said that the Vatican had rejected three proposals for US ambassador because of their pro-abortion views. In an email, Franco told the Washington Times that the rejection of the Obama candidates “would suggest that, at least so far, none of the potential Democratic diplomats were considered fit to ‘improve relations’ with the Holy See.”

An official of the Vatican’s office of Secretariat of State told Catholic News Service, “Obviously, the exchange has not been fruitful in finding a mutually satisfying candidate, otherwise, at this point, there would have been an announcement, and there isn’t one.”

On April 9, Fr. Frederico Lombardi, media spokesman for the Holy See said, “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.”

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Secretary of State Clinton Admits Obama will Work to Dismantle Abortion Laws around the World
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