US Ambassador to the Holy See Joseph S. Donnelly is stepping down, it was announced Thursday.
“Ambassador Donnelly will leave his post as US Ambassador to the Holy See and return home to Indiana on July 8,” the US Embassy to the Holy See announced on X. “He says, ‘It has been an honor and a privilege to serve my country in this unique way.’”
The announcement said that Laura Hochla will assume the role of Charge d’Affaires.
Donnelly previously said he would stay in his post this year amid talk that the former senator and congressman was weighing a return to politics, running for senate or governor, Politico noted.
President Joseph R. Biden appointed Donnelly, a member of St. Anthony of Padua parish in South Bend, Indiana, as ambassador on October 8, 2021. The Senate confirmed his nomination on January 20, 2022.
“The Hoosier Democrat and devout Catholic has found himself at the center of President Joe Biden’s administration’s efforts to manage diplomacy with Pope Francis amid Russia’s war against Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza,” said Politico. “Last July, Donnelly accompanied Cardinal Matteo Zuppi to Washington for a meeting with Biden about providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine and the Vatican’s efforts to repatriate Ukrainian children.”
Notre Dame alumnus
Donnelly, 68, was born in New York City and reared on Long Island. He a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Notre Dame in 1977 and a law degree there in 1981. He worked for a law firm in South Bend before opening a printing business in nearby Mishawaka in 1996. He served on the state election board for a year (1988–89) and then on a local school board for four years (1997–2001).
He met his wife, Jill [in file photo, above], while attending the University of Notre Dame; the two married in 1979. They have two children.
Donnelly served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007–2013 and ran for the Senate in 2012. His victory made him the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Indiana in more than 10 years. He served until 2019.
In March, Donnelly told Catholic News Service that his Rome post was “very different” from a typical embassy. The Holy See’s “unique diplomatic mission” is “not to be an instrument of a nation-state, but to promote moral and humanitarian values and human rights in line with the position of the Catholic Church.”
The Church’s nuncios to various nations, including the US, “are bishops, and they are diplomats, and they also can get to the point in a hurry,” he said. “And they’re incredibly talented, very, very smart. And I have incredible respect for the people who work in the Vatican,” even while they may not always agree on everything.
For its part, the US mission is to work with the Vatican to create “a safe world,” he said, to save lives in areas of conflict, to prevent human trafficking, and to safeguard the environment.
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