New nominations at the ‘bishop-making factory’

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Apostolic Nuncio Baldisseri has been appointed secretary of the Congregation for Bishops. Crucial times lie ahead for the nomination of the new Patriarch of Venice.

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

The new number two man in ‘bishop-making factory’, the Congregation for Bishops (the department that works together with the Pope to establish the new Catholic ruling class and that takes care of the nomination of new bishops for the Latin Church excluding mission territories), arrives from Brazil. The nomination of the new secretary of the Congregation for Bishops led by Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet has been announced. The nomination comes after the previous secretary, Manuel Monteiro de Castro from Portugal, was promoted to Grand Penitentiary on 5 January with his name featuring in the list of new Cardinals a few hours later. This time, the man chosen for the post of secretary, is the Apostolic Nuncio in Brazil, Lorenzo Baldisseri.

Baldisseri,71 years old, was born in Pisa on the 29 September 1940. A priest since 1963, he began working for the diplomatic service of the Holy See and became Apostolic Nuncio in 1992 when Pope John Paul II sent him to Haiti as his representative. There, Baldisseri directly witnessed the civil war. He was then moved to Paraguay in 1995, four years later he was appointed Nuncio in India and finally in 2002, almost ten years ago, he became the representative of the Holy See in the largest country of South America, Brazil.

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