Feature Article

Pragmatists and fools

The Government has apologised to the Vatican and the Church over a shocking memo about the papal visit. Middle-ranking officials have been blamed – but the roots of the row can be found in new styles of government, diplomacy and management

The papal nuncio’s annual reception to mark the anniversary of Pope Benedict’s election has become a landmark event in Catholic Britain’s social calendar. Guests arriving at this year’s celebration, held in Archbishop’s House on Monday night, found dozens of ambassadorial cars jamming Ambrosden Avenue behind Westminster Cathedral, the papal flag fluttering outside the house, and the sound of convivial chatter floating down from the party-filled Throne Room’s windows.

But inside, the usual atmosphere of jollity was tinged with something else: bemusement, shock and anger. For just the day before, The Sunday Telegraph had splashed all over its front page revelations of a Foreign Office memo circulated to Downing Street and Whitehall regarding the Pope’s forthcoming visit to Britain, which included suggestions that he open an abortion ward, launch Benedict- branded condoms, and bless a “gay wedding”.

Many of the other ideas were anodyne, while some were intriguing, including the Pope to launch a prize akin to the Nobel for development and that churches should have solar panels. But some listed in the memo, entitled “The ideal visit would see … ” were so far-fetched that readers of the Telegraph and of follow-up stories that ran across the world would be forgiven for thinking the memo a spoof, albeit in very bad taste.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s swift apology put paid to any idea that it was meant to be funny. So did the dispatch of Francis Campbell, British Ambassador to the Holy See, to the Vatican on Saturday to express the Government’s regrets, and the phone call of apology from Sir Peter Ricketts, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and head of the diplomatic service, to the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols.

And so did the arrival of Dame Helen Ghosh, the senior civil servant who is chairing the lead Whitehall committee on the papal visit, at the papal nuncio’s reception. Dame Helen was greeted by the nuncio, Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz, and Archbishop Nichols, to whom she apologised publicly for the memo “on behalf of the British Government”. It was an extraordinary moment, caused by an extraordinary gaffe. But how had it come about?

The roots of both the gaffe and the invitation to the Pope to visit Britain can both be found, intriguingly, in the political style of New Labour. Some politicians may be idealists, others pragmatists, and when Labour came to power in 1997 after 18 years in the wilderness, they were pragmatists par excellence.

This was the party, after all, that had dropped Clause Four, the nearest “old” Labour had to sacred writ, in their determination to be elected. So pragmatic were they that later its Ministers, despite their clash with the Catholic Church in Britain on domestic policy issues such as education, adoption and homosexuality, spotted that on the global stage, the Church could be a useful ally in getting things done. That Tony Blair was married to a Catholic and was clearly drawn to the Church himself no doubt played a part in the courting of the Vatican by the British Government.

But Blair was not alone in beating a path to the Holy See. So did Junior Minister Baroness Shriti Vadera, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, and David Miliband in his previous post as Environment Secretary. (Indeed, so keen was Miliband to court the Catholic Church as an ally on climate change that he got his special adviser to ask The Tablet to interview him.) Also checking in for a Rome flight on more than one occasion was Gordon Brown, who visited the Vatican in his capacity both as Chancellor and as Prime Minister.

Blair had asked the Pope to visit Britain, and Brown repeated the request. And after the Prince of Wales had also called on the Pope last April, it might have started to seem churlish not to reciprocate. In September, it emerged that Benedict would come to Britain, the first ever state visit to Britain by a Pope.

That relations between Britain and Rome had developed so cordially in the last few years was down to another aspect of New Labour modernisation: the appointment of Francis Campbell in 2005 as Ambassador to the Holy See. Hiring Campbell was a first on two counts: the first time that the Foreign Office had publicly advertised an ambassadorial job and the first time a Catholic had been appointed to be our man at the Holy See since the Reformation.

Campbell was not only unusual in being a Catholic. He was also unusual in that he had been a seminarian (but left before ordination), and he combined his knowledge of the Church with a political and diplomatic astuteness. “He understands the pragmatism of politicians,” said a former Foreign Office colleague. “He realised that he could get things done if he understood what they wanted. He could see where the Holy See’s interests overlapped with the British interests. He made an impact.”

Until Campbell arrived in Rome, the post of Ambassador to the Holy See was a Cinderella job. The Vatican was not deemed as interesting as, say, Pakistan, or Nigeria. The FCO at one time tried to scrap its Holy See embassy, only to be warned by the Vatican that it could be violating the terms of the Lateran Pacts of 1929.

And even at a time, post-9/11, that religion was becoming a vital concern again in political circles, the FCO officials had not caught up with their political masters. Their roads might lead to Rome, but the FCO’s led elsewhere. “The gap was there, between the politicians and the civil servants,” said a former official. Nor was the situation helped by the fact that the crossover between the Vatican’s interests and Britain’s was largely in developing world issues – and New Labour decoupled aid policies from the FCO with its creation of the Department for International Development.

But the FCO had embraced the New Labour modernisation in another way – which was to have dramatic consequences. The once solid path that elite graduates trod in the FCO became instead a gallop. Staff were given responsibility at a much younger age; the focus was output; thrusting ambition was encouraged; the language and style of management consultancy was encouraged.

“The civil service today is unhierarchical. It’s perfectly possible to get together and come up with outlandish ideas,” said a long-serving insider. “But yes, there are risks to working like this.” And this time the risk happened: a group of young, middle-ranking people assigned to an FCO papal visit committee got together for a bit of blue-skies thinking and came up with a to-do list, veering between the bright, the fun and the puerile, for the leader of the Catholic Church. Even more oddly, a more senior official thought it a worthwhile enough list to circulate to 35 other people across Whitehall.

Meanwhile, papal-visit preparations were going on ahead elsewhere. Back in December, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, was already fretting about the possibility of planning for the papal visit getting lost in the maelstrom of a general election. Sir Gus, himself a Catholic, asked Dame Helen Ghosh, also a Catholic and Permanent Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to chair a pan-Whitehall “committee of committees” to coordinate arrangements and liaise with the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and in Scotland.

In February, a delegation from the Vatican arrived in London to discuss the visit and lunch with Dame Helen. By that time, most of the events for the visit were mapped out. Yet a month later the team at the FCO was drawing up its wish list, complete with condoms and abortions. While the memo was circulated to 35 others, none of the senior key people – including Dame Helen and Francis Campbell – received it. It was only around Easter that another middle-ranker spotted how problematic it was and alerted the key players. Three weeks later, it hit the press.

Reaction to the memo has been mixed. Some commentators see it as mildly amusing, others as proof of the increasing secularisation of Britain. The staff of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, which has been working on the preparations for the visit, appeared shocked but not surprised by the memo. “We’ve had anxieties all the way through. People working on this visit at junior- and middle-rank level often know little about the Church and yet they often also view it with disdain,” said one conference insider.

That disdain has been growing for some time, in part influenced by writers such as Richard Dawkins, Matthew Parris and Christopher Hitchens. Esteem for the Church has sunk to a new low recently with revelations about clerical child abuse, and in liberal Britain, the Church’s stand on sexual matters is often perceived as out of touch.

Then there’s sheer ignorance, even among the most well-meaning. One Home Office official told me at the nuncio’s party that she and other Home Office staff working on the visit know nothing about Catholicism. “Where shall we start?” she said. “Is there a book we can read?” So far, nobody had briefed them on the basics about the Church.

Privately, church officials are angry. “Enough is enough,” said one at the nuncio’s party. “No other minority would be treated like this.” Publicly, the Church is magnanimous. The Vatican and the Church in Britain have reiterated that the visit is still going ahead. But there is more to its reaction than just turning the other cheek.

On Monday night, Archbishop Vincent Nichols was promised a phone call from Sir Gus O’Donnell. The civil service knows that the archbishop may now ask for additional events for the visit, such a Hyde Park prayer vigil. And if that happens, it will require more money for matters such as policing. That one memo may well end up costing far more than red faces at the FCO.

What that email said:
The ideal visit would see….
Climate Change: Vatican to supply Rome/Europe with renewable energy. God will make trees fall on illegal loggers; Every Catholic country to sign up to 10.10. Pope-a-shaw/Electric/Biofuel Pope mobile. New uni to develop cc technology. Calls leaders to agree to Post-Kyoto treaty. 1 week’s collection worldwide to cc fund. Travel by boat/bike on visit. Every church to become carbon neutral. Vatican and all churches to have solar panels/wind turbines. Next Vatican Council on cc. Pope plants trees in UK. Bishops to plant 100 trees per diocese. Every Catholic to give £1 to cc fund. Announce funding for 265 eco-sites. Virtual visits and masses. Event with P.o.W on CC. Chair conference on CC. Statement on Energy security. Link young/old/UK/Bangladeshi/Muslims. Turn on source solar panels/turbines on church spires. Tax hats for cc. Bring smaller delegation. Link faith to cc. Use sustainable incense. Push EU on cc. Visit Norwich at risk of flooding. Kiss someone on cc. CC mitigation fund.

Development: Sale of Vatican for poor. Issue stamps to raise money for MDGs. Announce annual prize for development like Nobel. Increase Italy’s ODA commitments. 1m fund for sexual health. 0.7% of Peter’s pence on development. Speech to city on responsibility and charity. Joint Commonwealth Catholic Countries pledge on MDGs. Duet with Queen for aid. 0.7% GDP/ODAs. Food security initiative. Pope announces 1-month salary for development and gets all Catholics to pledge too. Vatican mitigation with G77 in UN. Joint pledge all Catholic clebs to give 1 week’s salary to development. Promote wind-up radios and broadcast educational programmes in 30 developing countries. Crack-down on church corruption. Get Queen to change national anthem to ‘God save the World’. Catholic poverty tax. Announce funding for Africa light cells. Visit Diaspora community/mosque. Encourage global donors to give in recession. Queen to make Balmoral carbon neutral. Meet refugees in UK from dev. World. Cancel debt. Sign the 1Goal football. Miss Development World Comp. Open Vatican records on WWII. Apologise for Armada.

Social: Launch of ‘Benedict’ condoms. Review of Vatican attitude on condom use. Bless a civil partnership. Reversal of policy on women bishops/ordain women. Open an abortion ward. Speech on equality. Statement on view over adoption (change of stance). Training course for all bishops on child abuse allegations. Harder line on child abuse – announce sacking of dodgy bishops. Vatican sponsorship for network of AIDS clinics. Meet young unemployed people. Apologise for Canonise/pseudo canonize a group. Announce whistle-blowing system for child abuse cases. Go to job centre. Debate on abortion. All Catholic schools should be free entry to all. Speech on democracy. Vatican and C of E funded committee on dialogue. Launch helpline for abused children. Series of high-profile visits between UK and Vatican. Pope champions for race relations. Announce healthy living programme at all Catholic schools. 4 day sponsored silence in aid of battered wives. Greater Vatican involvement in Catholic schools. Go to safe house for abused women. Visit to AID/HIV clinic. Call for greater respect for old people. Go to orphanage. Visit to old folks home. Spend night in council flat in Bradford. Plant rubber trees. Do forward rolls with children to promote healthy living.