Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Pietro Parolin to be the Cardinal Secretary of State to succeed Tarcisio Bertone. The appointment does not take effect until October 15. During that time Parolin will leave his office in Venezuela where he serves as the representative of the Holy See. And it will be necessary to raise him to the cardinalate. Being a cardinal is a requirement of the job.
Parolin is an Italian. He was born in Schiavon in Northern Italy. As mentioned, he is presently the Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela. He has a long history as a Vatican diplomat and was previously the Undersecretary of State for Relations with States.
The Secretary of State is considered the most important member of the Roman Curia. He will be the pope's most important adviser and will oversee all of the political and diplomatic relations of the Holy See and Vatican City.
Pope Taps Vatican Diplomat to be his
Top Aide
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on
Saturday tapped a veteran Vatican diplomat to be his top aide,
replacing the Holy See’s secretary of state who in recent years
increasingly became a divisive figure in a church hierarchy mired in
embarrassing scandal and financial probes.
The Vatican announced that Archbishop
Pietro Parolin, 58, an Italian and former deputy foreign minister at
the Vatican, on Oct. 15 will assume the post held since 2006 by
Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The cardinal will remain in the
position until then, giving Parolin, currently serving as papal envoy
to Venezuela, time to prepare for his new duties as the Vatican’s
No. 2 official.
Benedict XVI, who retired as pontiff
earlier this year, had relied heavily on Bertone as one of the few
advisers in his inner circle. Bertone, a Genoa archbishop, had served
the German pope for many years at the Vatican.
The Vatican noted that Bertone, 78, was
retiring under a church law that requires cardinals who hold top
curia posts to offer their resignations when they turn 75. Benedict
had kept him in place, reportedly to the irritation of a rival
faction of Vatican bureaucrats loyal to Bertone’s predecessor,
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a former longtime secretary of state.
A scandal during the latter years of
Benedict XVI’s papacy involving the theft of papal documents and
embarrassing revelations of alleged corruption and power plays at the
Vatican was widely seen as aiming to discredit Bertone. Some believe
it also was one reason that Benedict stepped down in February, the
first pope in 600 years to resign.
Most of the documents, leaked by
Benedict’s butler to an Italian journalist, were of interest only
to Italians, a reflection of centuries of dominance and intrigue by
Italians in the Vatican. The purloined papal papers concerned
relations between Italy and the Vatican, and a few local scandals and
personalities. The main aim of the disclosures apparently was to make
Bertone seem incompetent, unable to control the curia and unable to
protect Benedict, a theologian with little apparent skill for
navigating the political maneuvering around him.
Pope Francis will hold a special
audience on Oct. 15, the Vatican said, ‘‘in order publicly to
thank Cardinal Bertone for his faithful and generous service to the
Holy See.’’
Parolin, when deputy foreign minister,
shuttled between Rome and Hanoi in a partly successful bid to improve
decades of thorny relations between the Vatican and the communist
leadership of Vietnam. In 2009, Parolin told reporters in Hanoi that
the Holy See and Vietnam had created a ‘‘good basis’’ for
eventually establishing diplomatic relations. After the Philippines,
Vietnam has one of Asia’s largest communities of Catholics.
The incoming No. 2, a native of
northeast Italy, began his diplomatic career at the Vatican in 1986,
and served in papal missions in Nigeria and Mexico. He was posted to
Venezuela as papal nuncio in 2009.
In a statement, Parolin pledged that he
would give Francis his ‘‘complete availability to work with him
and under his guidance for the greater glory of God, the good of the
holy Church and the progress and peace’’ so humanity might find
‘‘reasons to live and to hope.’’
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/2013/08/31/pope-taps-vatican-diplomat-his-top-aide/v2x9nREhzjJ4piy7hLhjGJ/story.html
Updating this post with this blog article about the new chief Diplomat at the Vatican, Pietro Parolin. Interesting title...
Letter #82: The Peacemaker
Parolin is a man who, out of a profound
Christian faith (rooted in his Catholic family upbringing and his
parish formation as a child and youth in northern Italy), by means of
careful, patient study, hard work and much prayer, has, in many
difficult situations over a quarter century, worked efficaciously for
the freedom of the Church and for peace among men.
And so Parolin is a particularly
appropriate choice to be Vatican Secretary of State at this moment in
history, a moment of great tension and of simmering war (for there is
already war underway) in the Middle East (the situation in Syria in
particular, but also in Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Gaza, Saudi
Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere).
In a statement released this morning,
Parolin said “I feel the full weight of the responsibility placed
upon me” and “it is with trepidation that I place myself in this
new service to the Gospel, to the Church and to Pope Francis, but
also with trust and serenity.”
In 2006, Inside the Vatican magazine
named Parolin one of its “Top Ten” people of the year, citing his
work on nuclear disarmament, dialogue with Iran and North Korea, and
the fight against human trafficking. The magazine called Parolin “one
of the Church’s most tireless and effective diplomats.”.
Pope Francis, who came to know Parolin
especially in recent years in South America, where Francis was an
archbishop in Argentina and Parolin a papal nuncio in Venezuela, has
now echoed and validated that seven-year-old judgment.
And so the first stage of Pope
Francis’s pontificate — the six-month stage in which the
government of the Secretariat of State remained in the hands of the
man chosen by Pope Benedict, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, 78 — has
come to an end.
We have now transitioned from the “old”
to the “new.”
