The Vatican has vetoed three of Barack Obama’s potential nominees as US ambassador amid a growing dispute between the White House and the Roman Catholic church over the new administration’s support for abortion rights and the lifting of a ban on stem cell research.
Vatican sources told Italy’s Il Giornale newspaper that among those rejected were Caroline Kennedy and two other Roman Catholics who were unacceptable to the pope because they have publicly stood against church dogma.
The conservative Il Giornale described the vetoes as part of a “trial of strength between Barack Obama and the US church that involves the Holy See”, amid uproar among the church’s hierarchy after America’s principal Catholic university, Notre Dame, invited the president to give an address and receive an honorary degree next month.
Conservative Catholic groups called the potential nomination of John Kennedy’s daughter, who is a prominent Obama supporter, “inappropriate” and “a calculated insult to the Holy See” because of her outspoken support for abortion rights.
The Vatican also rejected another potential nominee, Douglas Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University and former head of the office of legal counsel for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. Kmiec, a Republican who endorsed Obama during the last election campaign, has said that Catholics who support the right to abortion need not follow the church’s admonition to vote for an anti-abortion presidential candidate.
The Vatican is maintaining the official line that there have been no formal rejections of Obama’s ambassadorial nominees because none has been officially put forward.