In Middle East, cardinal has shown political savvy, pastor's heart

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Although conventional wisdom says he is too young to become pope, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, began appearing on media lists of possible future popes soon after he was created a cardinal in September 2023.

While he turned 60 years old April 21, the day Pope Francis died, Cardinal Pizzaballa is widely admired for his closeness to the Middle East Catholics he shepherds amid turmoil and for his strong defense of religious freedom in a politically fraught environment.

He works closely with other Christian leaders in the region and is an active participant in interreligious dialogue with leaders of the Muslim and Jewish communities. He has been a consultant to the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews since 2008.

Another point in his favor is that other cardinals who have visited Jerusalem know him and, besides, he is Italian, and the Italian pundits who tend to drive the "papabile" list making are always looking for an Italian candidate. As they point out, the pope is, after all, the bishop of Rome.

Hours after Hamas militants crossed into Israel from Gaza, killing, raping and kidnapping hundreds of people, the Jerusalem patriarchate issued a statement saying, "The operation launched from Gaza and the reaction of the Israeli Army are bringing us back to the worst period of our recent history."

"The too many casualties and tragedies, which both Palestinians and Israeli families have to deal with, will create more hatred and division, and will destroy more and more any perspective of stability," the statement said.

The cardinal was able to visit Holy Family Parish in Gaza City only seven months after the fighting began. In a video message recorded in Gaza, he explained that first of all he wanted "to be with them, to embrace them, to hug them and to support them as much as we can and to verify their conditions and to see what we can do in order to improve their conditions and to help them in (any) way possible."

Pope Francis, in October 2020, appointed the-then Archbishop Pizzaballa as the first non-Arab Latin patriarch of Jerusalem since 1987.

At the time, he told Catholic News Service that it is "essential" for anyone in his new position to try to understand the different perspectives of all the residents of the Holy Land -- not an easy undertaking in a land marred by political and religious conflicts.

Cardinal Pizzaballa has ministered in the Holy Land since 1993, three years after his ordination as a priest in the Franciscan order. He earned his license in biblical theology from the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, a Jerusalem-based graduate school of Scripture and archaeology studies.

He speaks modern Hebrew and in 1995 coordinated the publication of the Roman Missal in Hebrew as well as translated many of the liturgical texts himself. He served as superior of the Sts. Simeon and Anne House of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community of Jerusalem from 2001-2004 and was appointed vicar of the Hebrew-speaking Catholiccommunity in 2005.

From 2004 to 2016, he served as Franciscan custos of the Holy Land, and in June 2016, Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

He was born in Cologno al Serio, a town near Bergamo in northern Italy and attended the minor seminary in Rimini before completing his high school studies at the archdiocesan seminary in Ferrara. He entered the Franciscan order in Ferrara in 1984 and did his novitiate at the Franciscan shrine in La Verna, where St. Francis of Assisi received the stigmata in 1224. He made his solemn profession of vows as a Franciscan in Bologna in 1989 and was ordained to the priesthood there a year later.