Pope Leo XIV has appointed the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations to be his apostolic nuncio to the United States. Source: NCR Online.
The Vatican announced on Saturday that the Pope has chosen 68-year-old Italian Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, permanent observer of the Holy See to the UN in New York since 2019, to succeed Cardinal Christophe Pierre.
The nomination is one of the highest-profile personnel decisions of Pope Leo’s pontificate so far given the central role of nuncios in recommending bishop appointments to the Vatican.
After expressing concern over what he called the “weakness of multilateralism”, Leo’s decision to send the Vatican’s UN envoy to Washington sends a strong signal about his desire to revive diplomacy at a time when the US has increasingly turned inward.
As representative to the UN, the nuncio-designate has a track record as one of the Vatican’s fiercest advocates for multilateralism on the global stage. He has repeatedly called for nations to prioritise negotiation rather than resort to military solutions and has upheld the role of the UN as a valid and necessary instrument for peace.
In his UN interventions, Archbishop Caccia has consistently toed the Holy See’s diplomatic line on nuclear disarmament, poverty eradication, care for the environment and migration.
A veteran diplomat, the archbishop previously served in significant posts as nuncio to Lebanon and the Philippines, both countries with a significant Catholic presence in geopolitically sensitive areas.
Archbishop Caccia is also familiar with the inner workings of the Vatican bureaucratic machinery, which serves as an asset in bridging Washington with Rome. The archbishop served as “assessor” for general affairs in the Vatican Secretariat of State from 2002-2009, a position akin to a president’s deputy chief of staff.
During that time he worked alongside then-Archbishop Pietro Parolin, now the Vatican Secretary of State, who served as deputy in the secretariat’s section responsible for relations with states.
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Pope taps UN diplomat as Vatican ambassador to US in high-profile appointment (By Justin McLellan, NCR Online)
