ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 was the occasion (and the main reason) for the appointment of a British envoy on a “special mission to the Holy See”, after three and half centuries without a fully accredited representative at the Vatican. The essay analyzes the reasons that led to the establishment of the mission, the juridical nature and the tasks entrusted to it, the activities and issues that the British representation had to face in war time, the attempts of the Holy See to exploit the renewed relations with the British Crown to resume visibility and an active role on the international political scene and, above all, to try to bind the British Empire to its aspirations with respect to a possible internationalization of the Roman question, aimed to a different solution of the question at the post-war peace Conference.