Honour for ambassador to Vatican

FRANCIS CAMPBELL, the British ambassador to the Vatican who is from Rathfriland in Co Down, has received an honorary degree from Queen’s University, Belfast.

Mr Campbell, the first Catholic from Northern Ireland to hold a UK ambassadorial post since the Republic of Ireland gained independence in 1921 and also Britain’s first Catholic Ambassador to the Holy See since the Reformation, was awarded the doctorate for distinction in public service at Queen’s yesterday.

He worked at 10 Downing Street, first as policy adviser and then as private secretary to the former prime minister Tony Blair. He was also first secretary at the British embassy in Rome and senior policy director with Amnesty International in London. He was appointed ambassador to the Vatican through open competition – the first British ambassador to be so appointed.

Pro-vice chancellor Prof Gerry McCormac said in appointing Mr Campbell, the British Foreign Office overturned the unspoken rule about not appointing Catholics as ambassadors to the Vatican.

Meanwhile, at the University of Ulster’s Magee campus in Derry the Burmese pro-democracy campaigner and leader of the opposition Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under continuing house arrest in Burma, was conferred with an honorary degree in her absence for her services to human rights. The award was accepted on her behalf by fellow pro-democracy campaigner Mra Raza Linn.