New American Envoy to Vatican Presents Credentials to John Paul

Pope John Paul II on Thursday received the credentials of new U.S. Ambassador Frank Shakespeare as the replacement for one of President Reagan’s closest friends, William A. Wilson, who was several times rebuked by the State Department for his behavior as the American representative to the Vatican.

Wilson resigned last July after it was revealed that he had made an unauthorized visit to Libya to meet with Col. Moammar Kadafi during a time of crisis in U.S.-Libyan relations. He had earlier been warned by senior State Department officials after he became involved in controversial issues in the United States and Switzerland that were outside his diplomatic jurisdiction.

Like Wilson, the 61-year-old Shakespeare is a political appointee, although with more government and diplomatic experience than Wilson, a California real estate investor who was a member of Reagan’s “Kitchen Cabinet” when Reagan was governor of California.

Former USIA Director

The new U.S. envoy previously served as ambassador to Portugal and as director of the U.S. Information Agency under President Richard M. Nixon. He also held senior posts at CBS Television Services, Westinghouse and RKO-General. Like Wilson, he is a Roman Catholic.

During a private 30-minute audience with the pontiff, Shakespeare expressed pleasure and enthusiasm over plans for John Paul’s second visit to the United States in September.

“Your concern to know through the evidence of your eyes the hopes and fears of the people of the world has led you to travel to every corner of the Earth, and my government rejoices that you plan to come again in 1987 to my own country, this time to visit the southern and western United States,” Shakespeare was quoted as saying in prepared remarks released after the audience.

Recalling his first papal visit to the United States in 1979, the Pope extended through the new ambassador “warmest greetings to all your beloved fellow citizens” and called for “God’s blessing of peace and harmony upon all the beloved people of the United States of America.”

Generosity and Compassion’

He said America’s “distinguished record of generosity and compassion deserves the admiration of all.”

Shakespeare is the second American ambassador to the Holy See since formal diplomatic relations were re-established in January, 1984, after a suspension that lasted 117 years. In 1867, the U.S. Congress responded to criticism by American Protestants of the Vatican’s treatment of Protestant churches in Italy by cutting off funding for the U.S. Mission to the Holy See.