Holy See of the East of Rome also claims the title of the Catholicos and the Holy Apostolic See of St. Thomas. Patriarch Mar Addai II, is the Catholicos of the Ancient Church of the East. The current Seat of the Catholicos of Ancient Church of the East is in Baghdad, Iraq. The official title of the Head & Father of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church is "the successor to the Holy Apostolic See of St. Thomas and the Gate of All India". The church is headed by the Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly, Cardinal Maran Mar George Alencherry. The current Seat of the Major Archiepiscopal Curia
Foreign relations of the Holy See accredited also to the Holy See. For reasons of economy, therefore, smaller countries accredit to the Holy See a mission situated elsewhere and accredited also to the country of residence and perhaps other countries. Massimo Franco, author of "Parallel Empires", asserted in April 2009 that the Obama administration had put forward three candidates for consideration but each of them had been deemed insufficiently pro-life by the Vatican. This claim was denied by the Holy See's spokesman Federico Lombardi, and was dismissed by Thomas Patrick Melady, former United States Ambassador to the Holy See, as being in conflict with diplomatic practice.