[ad_1]
Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti with Cardinal Vincent Nichols at this year’s Good Friday liturgy at Westminster Cathedral.
Conference of Catholic Bishops of England and Wales/Mazur
The apostolic nuncio to Great Britain is leaving his post after more than two years to become prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.
Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti succeeds 79-year-old Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who has headed the dicastery since 2007.
The Dicastery is responsible for 23 Eastern Churches in contact with Rome, including the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Syro-Malabar Church, and the Maronite Church.
On July 4, 2020, Pope Francis appointed Italian Archbishop Gugerotti as the Holy See’s ambassador to Great Britain. His academic background is in Eastern liturgy: he studied Oriental languages and literature at Ca Foscari University in Venice, and earned a doctorate in Oriental studies. in Ecclesiastical Sciences from the Pontifical Oriental Institute.
From 1981 to 1985, he was professor of Eastern liturgy at the Institute for Ecumenical Studies in his native city of Verona.
Since then, he has served in the diplomatic service of the Vatican, including as a former president of the Dicastery – Congregation of the Eastern Churches, and in 1997 he became deputy secretary.
Archbishop Gugerotti’s appointments include the nuncios of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. He was appointed apostolic nuncio to Belarus by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, and apostolic nuncio to Ukraine by Pope Francis in 2015.
in an interview with Tablet Earlier this year, Archbishop Gugerotti responded to Pope Francis’ criticism of the war in Ukraine, saying Vatican diplomacy should offer mediation in the world’s “desert of decent people.”
“The Holy See’s intention is always to be an extreme option when all other options have expired,” he said.
Commentators say his experience in post-Soviet politics is a good fit for his new appointment. As Nuncio to Georgia, Archbishop Gugerotti was in Tbilisi during the 2008 Russian invasion, and during his tenure in Belarus, he visited political prisoners and held direct talks with the country’s dictatorial president, Alexander Lukashenko.
In 2020, he worked as a special representative to negotiate the return to Minsk of the exiled Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrušević, who has been banned from returning to the country for several months.
His five years as nuncio to Ukraine were dominated by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the ongoing conflict in Donbass. He visited the region and was responsible for the distribution of 16 million euros collected by the pope in 2018 for Ukrainians across Europe.
At a rally in Trafalgar Square in March this year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Archbishop Gugerotti addressed thousands of protesters: “Today we are all Ukrainians, we all stand with you.” He also prayed in English and Ukrainian.
While in the UK, he has repeatedly expressed concern about the plight of migrants, visiting asylum seekers at Napier Barracks and receiving the blessing of Pope Francis.
The bishops of England and Wales have asked Archbishop Gugerotti to pray for him “as he prepares to serve the Roman Curia in this important role”.
[ad_2]
Source link