Legal status of the Holy See full subject of international law. The Lateran Treaty itself seems to support this view. In article 2, Italy recognized "the sovereignty of the Holy See in the international domain as an attribute inherent in its nature, in accordance with its tradition and with the requirements of its mission in the world." For a further group, the legal personality of the Holy See in international law arises from the Lateran Treaty, which, in their view, conferred international standing to the central government of the Catholic Church. In this sense, Oppenheim argued that "the previously controversial international position of the Holy See
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.