The Vatican in the World: C21 Center Hosts Conversation with Ambassador Ken Hackett

Boston College’s Church in the 21st Century Center (C21) hosted Kenneth Hackett, a BC alumnus, former ambassador to the Vatican, and lifelong activist in the Catholic Church’s outreach to the impoverished and endangered.

The event, “A Conversation with Ambassador Ken Hackett ’68: Serving God and Country Around the World,” covered Hackett’s personal life experiences as well his newly published book, The Vatican Code: American Diplomacy in the Time of Francis. Hackett spent one hour answering questions posed by Peter Martin, special assistant to BC President Fr. William Leahy, S.J., and a former diplomatic advisor.

One of Hackett’s anecdotes covered his entry into the Peace Corps, the start of his career in foreign service. Contrary to the usual university experience of strict and delicate planning, Hackett, utterly without premeditation, signed up for the Peace Corps in 1968, late in his senior year at BC.

Hackett recounted the transformative experience of his subsequent work in Ghana and Sierra Leone. “So many people I met were very much like those in West Roxbury.” Despite the difficulty of a dramatic change in local culture, he found himself drawn toward international aid work.

Hackett explained how his time in the Peace Corps eventually led him to work for the Catholic Relief Service (CRS) in Ethiopia and Rwanda at the very height of their infamous disasters; the former’s 1980s famine and the latter’s genocide. He witnessed firsthand the global scale of the response from the CRS and the Vatican and their vast knowledge of world crises in every part of the globe.

Furthermore, Hackett emphasized the effect that the crises in Ethiopia and Rwanda had on the application of Catholic Social Teaching and the approach CRS took to their efforts to address the severe trauma these events caused. He personally emphasized the critical role his faith, “simple as it is,” played in sustaining him and his peers during those difficult times.

It was partly through the network of BC that Hackett was chosen as the United States Ambassador to the Vatican. Senator John Kerry, a BC Law alumnus, recommended Hackett for the job in 2013. 

Hackett’s experience gave him an insider perspective on the intricacy and delicate touch of ambassadorship. He recounted multiple ‘surprises’: for example, the friction caused by the US-Syria ‘Red-Line’ crisis and Pope Francis’ Day of Prayer in protest. Most important to the navigation of all these events was communication and cooperation.

Communication played a further role in the Vatican itself. Hackett explained how he had to learn by experience the inner workings and attitude of the Curia, the Vatican government; “It’s not transactional, it’s all relational,” he described. Diplomacy for him meant synthesizing information and bringing experts together for a complete vision of the situation and the necessary responses.

Hackett also recounted his experiences in assisting with mutual visits between President Obama and Pope Francis, particularly in matters of security and courtesy. Concerning the Pope’s visit to America in 2015 he said, “He made Catholics be proud to be Catholics.”

Several different functionaries and groups were named as especially critical, yet also underappreciated, in the Vatican’s work. Hackett particularly highlighted the effort of religious sisters—hidden, yet irreplaceable in combating human trafficking.

Hackett’s presentation highlighted not only the Church’s manifold works of charity throughout the world and the inner workings of its networks, but also the wisdom and cooperation that underlie the Vatican’s international work.