Benedict XV's trust in him
Yamamoto was in Rome for more than two months from the beginning of August 1919, negotiating in detail with the Holy See.
During the negotiations, Yamamoto, at the behest of the Japanese side, i.e. the government, requested that a Japanese priest be appointed as the new missionary. On the other hand, the Vatican asked for a solution to the problem of the confiscation of church property by the Japanese. For these and other reasons, negotiations were difficult.
In the end, however, both Japan and the Vatican came to an agreement.
The papal side said that it is disappointed the expulsion of the missionaries, but promised that priests belonging to the Jesuit Spanish Congregation would be assigned to new missionary work.
The church property will be unconditionally handed over to the new Catholic prefect, and the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding on 14 October.
In his article in the Catholic magazine, Yamamoto attributed the success of the negotiations to the fact that everyone in the papal court, from the pope down, was sincere in their concern for "the future of Japan", and that the Japanese government showed no religious prejudice. On the other hand he also said.
"Because I believed that I and the Holy See, as believers, would not cheat or deceive each other."
The Vatican may have hoped that by treating Shinjiro Yamamoto as Japan's so-called "special ambassador", the Catholic would gain power in the navy and in the Japanese government.
It was this trust and expectation of Yamamoto that led the Vatican to allow him to send an envoy to Japan, as described in the previous two chapters, and to the Crown Prince's sudden visit to the Vatican, which Vatican accepted with ready reply.
On 16 October, two days after the negotiations were concluded, Yamamoto had an audience with Pope Benedict XV.
The Pope thanked Yamamoto for his hard work and bestowed on him the Grand Cordon of St. Gregory the Great, the same as Japan's Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun. About a month later, in mid-November, on his return to Japan, the Pope offered his condolences to Yamamoto's father Shotaro in an audience. Shotaro, who had just been baptised as a Catholic himself, had died on 11 November of that year, aged 88.
Eighteen years later, in the autumn of 1937, Yamamoto resigned from his post as Imperial Household Minister, a position he had held for nearly 20 years, starting at the Imperial Household Academy.
The reason for his resignation was that, at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Army, he was to tour the world, including Europe and the United States, as a semi-official "national envoy".
The aim was to make the Catholic community aware of Japan's position in the "China Incident".
