Pope Francis today appointed Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio, Special Delegate to the Sovereign Order of Malta. The Special Delegate will be the interlocutor for the Order’s government in the reform process of its Constitutional Charter and Code. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi has also been instructed to receive the oath of the person who will be elected Grand Master of the Order of Malta on 8 November next, at the end of the Council Complete of State.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi succeeds Cardinal Angelo Becciu who held the office from February 2017 to October 2020.

During the Angelus on 25 October last, Pope Francis announced that Archbishop Tomasi would be raised to the rank of cardinal in the next consistory on 28 November.

‘I want to thank Pope Francis for having appointed as his interlocutor with the Order of Malta a person such as Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, whose experience and knowledge of the Order can only facilitate the reform process underway,’ said the Lieutenant ad interim Fra’ Ruy Gonçalo do Valle Peixoto de Villas-Boas.

Silvano Tomasi was born in 1940 in Casoni di Mussolente, province of Vicenza, and after studying theology, social sciences and sociology in the United States he was ordained priest on 31 May 1965.

In 1989 he was appointed Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, and in 1966 Pope John Paul II named him Apostolic Nuncio to Ethiopia, Eritrea and later to Djibouti. Titular Archbishop of Asolo in Veneto, up to 2016 Monsignor Tomasi held the role of Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Specialized Agencies in Geneva, and that of Permanent Observer to the World Trade Organisation. In 2011 he was also appointed the Holy See’s representative to the International Organization for Migration.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi has been Grand Cross Conventual Chaplain ‘ad honorem’ of the Sovereign Order of Malta since 2007.