Holy See–Iran relations
bilateral diplomacy
Holy See–Iran relations refers to the diplomatic relations between the Holy See, which is sovereign over the Vatican City, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Relations, or similarities, have also been noted between Roman Catholicism and Shia Islam, which are the official religions of the Holy See and Iran, respectively. A few Iranian presidents and diplomats have visited Vatican City, including Mohammad Khatami in 1999 and Hassan Rouhani in 2016.
History
Early relations began during the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, when the Persian embassies visited the pope. The two countries have had formal diplomatic relations since 1954, since the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. Relations have been maintained during the Iranian Revolution. Iran has a large diplomatic corps at the Vatican, with only the Dominican Republic having more diplomats accredited to the Holy See. Pope Paul VI was welcomed to Tehran by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during an airport visit on 26 November 1970.
In 1979, Pope John Paul II sent envoy to Iran to help to solve the Hostage Crisis. In 2008, relations between Iran and the Holy See were "warming", and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "said the Vatican was a positive force for justice and peace" when he met with the Papal nuncio to Iran, Archbishop Jean-Paul Gobel.
According to an online news story article by Carol Glatz of Catholic News Service posted on the CNS website on Thursday, 7 October 2010, President Ahmadinejad "told Pope Benedict XVI that he would like to work more closely with the Vatican in an effort to stop religious intolerance and the breakup of families.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15944620. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2016, 1954 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Holy See–Iran relations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.