Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the Organization of American States


The Organization of American States was founded in 1948 and the first Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the Organization of American States was appointed in 1978. For the next thirty years, the person named permanent observer was the same Vatican diplomat who served as papal representative to the United States even as that diplomat’s title changed from apostolic delegate to apostolic pro-nuncio to nuncio. In 2012, with Pope Benedict XVI's second appointment of a permanent observer to the OAS, the first under Tarcisio Bertone as Vatican Secretary of State, the title went instead to the Holy See's Permanent Observer to the United Nations in New York. Pope Francis and Secretary of State Pietro Parolin maintained that new pattern in 2014, and then in 2019 appointed the first observer to hold only that position.
;Observers