The United States had
diplomatic relations with the
Papal States from 1797 to 1867. The Papal States ceased to exist in 1870, when its last territory (the city of Rome) was lost to the
Kingdom of Italy. After that, the international status of the Papacy
was controversial until 1929, when the Italian government
agreed to the establishment of
Vatican City as a sovereign city-state. The United States was slow to establish full diplomatic relations with the re-established Holy See, partly due to the prevalence of
anti-Catholicism in the United States. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Postmaster General
James Farley was the first high-ranking government official to normalize relations with the Holy See in 1933 when the Postmaster General set sail for Europe, along with Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs
Maxim Litvinoff on the Italian Liner
SS Conte di Savoia. In Italy Farley had an audience with Pope Pius XI, and dinner with
Cardinal Pacelli, who was to accede to the papacy in 1939. On October 20, 1951, Truman nominated
Mark W. Clark, a
U.S. Army general and
World War II hero, to be emissary to the Holy See. Clark later withdrew his nomination on January 13, 1952, following protests from U.S. Senator
Tom Connally from
Texas and
Protestant groups. Between 1951 and 1970, the United States had no official representative accredited to the Holy See. In 1970, President
Richard Nixon changed this when he appointed—as his personal representative—
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., a former
U.S. Senator from
Massachusetts, Nixon's 1960 Republican vice presidential running mate and a former U.S. ambassador (to the
United Nations,
South Vietnam, and
West Germany). In 1978, President
Jimmy Carter followed with the appointment of
Robert F. Wagner Jr., a former
mayor of New York City and
U.S. Ambassador to Spain. ==List of envoys serving prior to the establishment of diplomatic relations==