David Cameron will send 'temp’ to the Vatican after Ann Widdecombe's rejection
'Embarrassment' as Britain is to be without an ambassador to the Vatican after
Ann Widdecombe and other prominent figures turned down the role.
Three months after Pope Benedict XVI’s historic visit to this country was
hailed as a great success, David Cameron has failed to find anyone to send
to the Vatican as our ambassador.
Mandrake can disclose that William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, is to send an
interim charge d’affairs to run Britain’s embassy in the Holy See after a
string of potential candidates, including Ann Widdecombe, Lord Patten of
Barnes and Edward Leigh, turned down the role.
“It is becoming a genuine embarrassment,” says my man at the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office. “The original idea was for it to be a political
appointee, but now the job is being advertised here. The Government should
never have indicated that it would be a political appointment if they did
not have someone lined up.”
The “temp” will take up the post after Francis Campbell leaves at the end of
next month. It is understood that the interim envoy will be in the Vatican
for six months.
Widdecombe, a former Home Office minister, said in the summer that she had
turned down the job because of an eye problem.
“Even before that happened, I was debating it,” she admitted last month. “I
was thinking, do I really want three years, as an expat? Do I really want a
job that’s going to take all day, every day in a heaving, hot capital city?”
This week, Lord Patten, the former Tory chairman, who is the chancellor of
Oxford University, applied for the job of chairman of the BBC Trust.
By contrast, the Pope is about to announce the name of his new ambassador to
this country, just days after it was made public that Archbishop Faustino
Sainz Muñoz was leaving his post because of poor health.
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