By Canadian Catholic News staff
[Ottawa – CCN] – The Vatican is sending a new diplomat to Canada, with Pope Francis appointing Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič as the new apostolic nuncio to Canada on June 5, 2021.
Jurkovič’s appointment comes at a time when the relationship between the Canadian government and the Catholic Church has been strained recently and there have been renewed calls in Canada among politicians and Indigenous Canadians for the Vatican to officially apologize for the Church’s role in operating residential schools in Canada after 215 bodies were discovered on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., at the end of May.
Jurkovič, who has served as the Apostolic nuncio previously in Belarus, the Ukraine, the Russian Federation and Uzbekistan, has most recently served as the Vatican’s Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva since 2016 and also acted as the Vatican’s representative to the World Trade Organization and the International Organization for Migration.
CCCB statement on the appointment of Apostolic Nuncio for Canada: English / French
In a statement June 8, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) expressed gratitude for the appointment. ”
“The bishops acknowledge that this important mission constitutes a privileged channel that expresses the ecclesial and affective bond with Pope Francis himself,” said the CCCB statement.” Canadian bishops recognize particularly the Apostolic Nuncio’s crucial ecclesial mission entrusted to him with its two aspects: that of Representative of the Holy Father to the Church in Canada and that of Representative of the Holy See to the political authorities of this country. The Episcopal Conference, through its members, welcomes this much waited appointment and is eager to get to know him personally.
When contacted by Canadian Catholic News, staff members at the Apostolic Nunciature to Canada, which is located in Ottawa, said that at this point a date has not been set for when Jurkovič will arrive at the Holy See’s diplomatic mission in Canada.
Before Jurkovič’s appointment June 5, the post had been vacant in Canada since Dec. 10, 2020, when the previous nuncio in Canada Archbishop Luigi Bonazzi was transferred to Albania. Bonazzi was nuncio in Canada from 2013 to 2020.
According to the Vatican’s Catholic News Agency, Jurkovič was born in southern Slovenia in 1952 and was ordained as priest of the Archdiocese of Ljubljana in 1977 when he was 25. After training for the diplomatic service of the Holy See he served in South Korea, Colombia, and Russia before Pope John Paul II named him apostolic nuncio to Belarus in 2001.
According to the Vatican, Jurkovič’s mother tongue is Slovenian but he can also speak English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German, Serbian, Croatian and Ukrainian.
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