Let's hope that whoever has the Vatican portfolio in the Obama administration can avoid stepping in it like the Clinton administration apparently did...
John Allen, the National Catholic Reporter's longtime Vatican observer writes in his column today "An open letter to President-elect Barack Obama":
In his memoirs, former Vatican Ambassador Raymond Flynn tells a depressing story from 1994 illustrating what I mean. During the lead-up to the U.N. conference on population in Cairo in 1994, Pope John Paul II called Flynn to the Vatican on a Saturday morning to personally request a telephone conversation with President Clinton. Flynn relayed the request urgently to the White House that afternoon, and got no response. He called again on Sunday and on Monday, both times with no results. Frustrated, Flynn then got on a plane to Washington on Tuesday. He cooled his heels outside the president’s office that night and most of Wednesday. Finally, he was admitted to the White House’s pre-Cairo war room, where he was told by Assistant Secretary of State Timothy Wirth that "nobody is getting a chance to lobby the president on this one." Dumbfounded, Flynn explained that the Bishop of Rome is not a lobbyist, and that it would be seen as a profound act of disrespect if the president wouldn’t even get on the phone. After almost a week, Clinton finally agreed to take the pope’s call.
There is a tendency to write off Roman Catholic relations because of some of the issues that are used as wedges (abortion, homosexuality), forgetting all the other justice issues that Democrats and Catholics hold in common.
Furthermore, 2009, as Allen points out, is shaping up to be the year of Africa, and God knows Obama's administration could provide credible leadership in advocating for some much-needed reform on that continent.
Besides, such a strategy is entirely consistent with the Team-of-Rivals philosophy that Obama likes to talk about "all the time."