Archbishop Gaspari Appointed as the 12th Apostolic Nuncio to Korea

Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Giovanni Gaspari as the 12th Apostolic Nuncio to the Republic of Korea, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea announced on the 2nd.

Pope Francis. [Photo by Yonhap News]

Archbishop Gaspari was born in 1963 in Pescara, Italy, and was ordained a priest in 1987.

He graduated from the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in 2001 and served at the Apostolic Nunciatures in Iran, Albania, Mexico, and Lithuania, as well as in the Secretariat of State's Section for Relations with States from 2001 to 2020.

Since 2020, Archbishop Gaspari has been serving as the Apostolic Nuncio to Angola and the West African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe.

After the retirement of the former Apostolic Nuncio to Korea, Archbishop Alfred Xuereb, on June 19 of last year, Fernando Duarte Barros Hues Monsignor, First Secretary of the Apostolic Nunciature in Korea, acted as the charg? d'affaires.

The Holy See has dispatched papal envoys to Korea since August 1947, prior to the official establishment of diplomatic relations with Korea.