In March 2007, 15 sailors on a Royal Navy frigate were seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards while patrolling the Shatt al-Arab waterway. A new Middle Eastern crisis was averted by swift diplomacy – but the key player this time was not the United Nations but the Vatican, with a behind-the-scenes approach from Pope Benedict XVI obtaining the sailors’ release as an “Easter gift” from Tehran.It was a classic example of what two former ambassadors to the Holy See, Tim Fischer of Australia and Francis Rooney of the United States, call the Vatican’s “soft power” (assisted, in this case, by the astute Francis Campbell, the then British ambassador). Being ambassador to the Holy See is quite a lot of fun: all that dining with cardinals, Vatican ceremo