All the headlines about the memoirs of the former ambassador Christopher Meyer have obscured an event that could have more lasting significance for Britain's diplomatic service: the appointment of Francis Campbell as our new man in the Vatican.
Not only is Campbell, at 35, our youngest ambassador, but he is also both the first Roman Catholic in this post since the Reformation, and the first Irish-born Catholic envoy since partition in 1921. Perhaps even more significant, however, is that Campbell is the first to have got the job of ambassador by answering a newspaper advertisement - to the chagrin of traditionalists and the delight of reformers at the Foreign Office.
While supporters of this change acknowledge that the Holy See is not one of the most high-profile appointments, they insist the process used to fill the post sets an important precedent that will be hard to reverse. The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is said to be determined to make sure that Campbell's appointment sets a precedent to be followed in the grandest embassies of the world - Paris, say, even Washington - ending what one official calls "the last closed shop in Whitehall".
The new approach helps explain how a Catholic in his mid-thirties, more comfortable in a shirt and jumper than in a pinstriped suit, got the job. Yet Campbell is more worldly than he may appear. Educated in Belfast, Belgium and the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the Foreign Office in 1997 and moved to Downing Street two years later. There he worked alongside (among others) Roger Liddle, then the Prime Minister's adviser on Europe.
According to Liddle, Campbell "treated Downing Street as an Irish village. He valued the cleaners and the messengers as highly as the coterie of the PM's closest advisers - and as a result he knew more about what was going on than anyone else." Liddle believes Campbell's combination of intellect with an ability to get on with people makes him perfectly suited to his new job.
Campbell also combines politics with strong religious convictions. He has already been labelled as one of "Tony's cronies", but apparently had misgivings about the direction of Blair's foreign policy after 9/11.
A friend from Ireland says that Campbell was active in the Social Democratic and Labour Party and, like its founder John Hume, once trained to be a priest. Another acquaintance says Campbell may have been "better suited to the priesthood than to politics", but Liddle disagrees: "He certainly would have been a wonderful priest, but the real question is why he is not a priest. Francis is actually extremely political."
Campbell seems to be the right man in the right place, chosen in the right way.
