Pope Francis today appointed the new Apostolic Nuncio to the Netherlands, the successor to Archbishop Andre Dupuy, who is now retiring. The new Nuncio is Archbishop Aldo Cavalli, an experienced diplomat who has been a Nuncio since 1997.
Archbishop Aldo Cavalli was born in 1946 in northern Italy and became a priest of the Diocese of Bergamo in 1971. Before enrolling in the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the Holy See’s “diplomacy school”, in 1975, he taught literature at the minor seminary of Bergamo and studied political and social sciences. In Rome he added canon law and theology to his studies. Subsequently he worked at the Holy See’s diplomatic mission in Burundi and at the Secretariat of State, before being appointed as Apostolic Delegate to Angola and Apostolic Nuncio to São Tomé and Principe in 1996. A year later, he became a full Nuncio to Angola. In 2001 he was transferred to Chile, in 2007 to Colombia and in 2013 he came to Malta, in what was once of the last appointments made by Pope Benedict XVI before the latter’s retirement. Like his predecessors, Archbishop Cavalli also became Nuncio to Libya a few months later, in addition to his appointment in Malta.
Archbishop Cavalli is the tenth Apostolic Nuncio to the Netherlands since 1967, the year that the diplomatic mission became a full nunciature. Since the archbishop is 68, he is about seven years away from his retirement, and we may assume that this will be his final posting.
The Apostolic Nuncio is not only the ambassador of the Holy See to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the liaison between the Dutch Church and Rome, but also plays a role in the appointment of new bishops. The previous Nuncio, Archbishop Dupuy, never had the opportunity to play his role in that field, but Archbishop Cavalli will. In the coming seven years three Dutch bishops will reach the age of retirement: Bishop Frans Wiertz in December 2017, Bishop Antoon Hurkmans in August of 2019 and Bishop Jos Punt in January of 2021. Archbishop Cavalli will oversee the appointments of new bishops for the two diocese with the largest number of Catholics (Roermond and ‘s Hertogenbosch) as well as the one containing the Dutch capital (Haarlem-Amsterdam). In Malta he was involved in the appointment of Archbishop Charles Scicluna, which is a comforting precedence.
In Caelo et in Terra 