WASHINGTON — President Obama has nominated Hispanic theologian Miguel H. Diaz as the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
Diaz, a professor of theology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota, was nominated as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See on Wednesday (May 27).
If the nomination is approved by the Senate, Diaz, 45, would be the ninth ambassador and the first Hispanic in the post since Washington and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations in 1984.
Diaz was Obama’s second high-profile Hispanic Catholic nominee in as many days, following the president’s choice of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court. Observers said Diaz is a subtle, if perhaps unintentional, acknowledgment of the growing ranks of Hispanics in the U.S. church.
The Cuban native is a board member of the Catholic Theological Society of America and a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States.
The Rev. James Martin, associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, hailed Diaz as a “superb choice,” and fellow Jesuit Thomas Reese of Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center said Diaz’s “familiarity with Catholic social teaching will allow him to be sensitive to the areas where there will be agreement and friction.”
Massimo Franco, a Rome-based expert on U.S.-Vatican relations and author of the book “Parallel Empires,” called Diaz a “shrewd choice” by the administration, which has weathered rocky relations in recent weeks with conservative Catholics and a number of U.S. bishops.
The most recent U.S. envoy to the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon, turned down a prestigious honor from the University of Notre Dame after the school invited Obama, who supports abortion rights, to address its graduating class and received an honorary degree.
“The Vatican doesn’t want to pretend to agree with the White House where agreement doesn’t exist,” Franco said. “They want an interlocutor with the administration and a representative of Obama, and I think he (Diaz) will be a representative of Obama.”
The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, meanwhile, criticized the administration for not finding a nominee who was “unequivocally” opposed to abortion. Diaz was one of 26 Catholics to sign a petition supporting Obama’s choice of Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Obama also nominated another theologian, the Rev. Michael A. Battle Sr. of Atlanta, to serve in an ambassadorial role as U.S. representative to the African Union.
Battle, 58, is the president of the Interdenominational Theological Center, a consortium of African-American seminaries. Prior to that role, Battle was vice president of the American Committee on Africa and a U.S. Army Reserve chaplain.
In April 2008, the seminary issued a statement urging black churches to take proactive steps to address the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
(Francis X. Rocca contributed to this report.)
