The visit this week of Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the “Foreign Minister” of the Holy See, is one of the most significant visits by a curial official to the United Kingdom for several years, and additionally interesting because that official is a Briton himself. As Secretary for Relations with States, he is the second most influential Minister after Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State. His stopping points in Whitehall – the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and the Department for International Development – indicate where there is crossover between the global concerns of the Catholic Church and those of the United Kingdom.Full diplomatic status was recognised between the Holy See and Britain in 1981 on the reco