{"id":1587,"date":"2009-08-05T17:11:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T17:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb.php"},"modified":"2009-08-05T17:11:11","modified_gmt":"2009-08-05T17:11:11","slug":"senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb","title":{"rendered":"Senate Confirms Diaz as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Senate on Tuesday (Aug. 4) confirmed a Cuban-born theologian as the ninth U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.<br \/>\nMiguel H. Diaz, 45, will be the first theologian and the first Hispanic to serve as American envoy since Washington established formal diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1984.<br \/>\nA relative unknown before President Obama tapped him in May, Diaz has taught theology at the College of Saint Benedict and St. John&#8217;s University in Collegeville, Minn., since 2004.<br \/>\nHe is a board member of the Catholic Theological Society of America and a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States.<br \/>\nA first-generation college graduate who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba as a child, Diaz speaks English, Spanish and Italian fluently.<br \/>\nAt confirmation hearings last month, Diaz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that his socially conscious scholarship gives him common ground with fellow theologian Pope Benedict XVI, which could enable him to further U.S. policies and interests in areas that include the Middle East peace process, dialogue with the Muslim world, bioethics and abortion.<br \/>\nDiaz was mum about his own views on abortion during those proceedings, but anti-abortion Catholics have criticized his support for Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic who supports abortion rights.<br \/>\nDiaz also campaigned for Obama last year as a member of the then-candidate&#8217;s Catholic advisory board.<br \/>\n<em>By Francis X. Rocca<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Senate on Tuesday (Aug. 4) confirmed a Cuban-born theologian as the ninth U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Miguel H. Diaz, 45, will be the first theologian and the first Hispanic to serve as American envoy since Washington established formal diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1984. A relative unknown before&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Senate Confirms Diaz as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Senate Confirms Diaz as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Senate on Tuesday (Aug. 4) confirmed a Cuban-born theologian as the ninth U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Miguel H. Diaz, 45, will be the first theologian and the first Hispanic to serve as American envoy since Washington established formal diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1984. A relative unknown before&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-05T17:11:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Senate Confirms Diaz as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Senate Confirms Diaz as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican","og_description":"WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Senate on Tuesday (Aug. 4) confirmed a Cuban-born theologian as the ninth U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Miguel H. Diaz, 45, will be the first theologian and the first Hispanic to serve as American envoy since Washington established formal diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1984. A relative unknown before&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-08-05T17:11:11+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb","name":"Senate Confirms Diaz as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-08-05T17:11:11+00:00","dateModified":"2009-08-05T17:11:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/senate-confirms-diaz-as-us-amb#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Senate Confirms Diaz as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}