Donnelly, who was raised in the Catholic Church and received his bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Notre Dame, said upon assuming his role as ambassador that “my family and I are proud to be members of the Catholic faith.” He added that “the Catholic Church has been a core part of my life and my values.”
As ambassador, Donnelly worked with the Holy See on a variety of foreign policy priorities for the United States, which included dialogue with the Vatican about the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza. Less than a month after becoming ambassador, Donnelly met with Ukrainian families who sought refuge in Italy.
On May 5, Donnelly met with a mother who had given birth to her child in a bomb shelter in Ukraine before coming to Italy. He said after the meeting that this is “the situation that the Russians created by attacking Ukraine.”
“Think about bringing a newborn child first, bringing a newborn child into this world, in a bomb shelter underneath a hospital, then a one-month bus ride to a country where you have never been before,” Donnelly said at the time. “And you are at Sant’Egidio now, to try to have the opportunity to have a place to sleep, to be able to make sure that your child is safe and that you can have something to eat.”
In a May 2023 interview with EWTN — about one year after becoming the ambassador — Donnelly said that religious freedom, particularly in China, was another issue on which he was focused.
“It is actually core to our work,” Donnelly said. “We’ve had a number of representatives from our government come over here to talk to the Vatican about various religious freedom subjects. One in particular met with the Vatican on the situation for the Uyghurs, where they’re in concentration camps in China because of their religious beliefs.”
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