BREAKING: Leo XIV Reorders the Curia with New Appointments
By Michael Haynes
Pope Leo XIV has moved the powerful number two in the Secretariat of State to be Nuncio to Italy and finally filled the role of head of the papal household, thus effecting a change believed to grant Leo more autonomy over his decisions and daily life.
Announced in the daily bulletin on March 30, Leo has enacted a veritable changing of the guard in a number of key Vatican posts, serving as one of the most significant moves of his pontificate so far.
Archbishop Peña Parra is leaving his post as “Sostituto” in the Secretariat of State, and taking up the role of Papal Nuncio to Italy and the Republic of San Marino.
The outgoing current Nuncio to Italy – Archbishop Petar Rajič – is brought to the very heart of the Vatican, becoming the Prefect of the Papal Household. This is a position left empty since the departure of Archbishop Georg Gänswein in February 2023.
Finally, to replace Peña Parra as Sostituto, Leo has brought in Archbishop Paolo Rudelli, who up until now has been the Nuncio in Colombia.
All such nominations have been expected in recent weeks, thanks to the investigative reporting conducted by Vaticanist Nico Spuntoni. But what does this three-fold change mean?
Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, a Venezuelan, is a long-time official in the Diplomatic Corps and then the Roman Curia. After joining in the early 1990’s, he served in several nunciatures before being made Nuncio to Pakistan by Pope Benedict and then Mozambique by Pope Francis.
He was then made Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State in October 2018 – a position which essentially puts, hierarchically, places him behind only the Secretary of State, and in fact affords more regular and guaranteed time with the Pope than the Secretary of State can count on. In essence, since 2018, Peña Parra has wielded immense power in the Holy See and consequently further afield.
Recently, Spuntoni reported that Leo XIV had sought to promote Peña Parra away from the Holy See, the time-honored ‘promoting to remove’ strategy. According to Spuntoni, Peña Parra refused the first two options offered to him but, as per protocol, was unable to refuse a third. That final offering from the Pope was to become Papal Nuncio to Italy. News of such negotiations was corroborated by additional Italian sources.
Peña Parra has been at the heart of a number of scandals in the Vatican – detailed below.
Papal Household now complete
But in filling the position of Prefect of the Papal Household, Leo thus corrects an error which has lasted some three years, following Ganswein’s ejection from the Vatican.
In the ensuing three years, Monsignor Leonardo Sapienza, as regent of the Prefecture of the Papal Household, has de facto led the Household as the ranking member. But in November, Leo showed signs of wanting to organize the Household according to his desires, and thus ensure who has access to him.
Indeed, the Prefect of the Household orchestrates the Pope’s diary, all his private and public audiences, any non-liturgical ceremonies, and any papal travel within Italy – an immensely important role. On November 10, the Holy See announced the appointment of Father Edward Daniang Daleng, O.S.A. as the Vice-Regent of the Prefecture of the Papal Household. This created a new role, and thus Vaticanists predict that Daleng might soon be promoted to replace Sapienza – meaning an entirely new team surrounding Leo in his most intimate daily life: his two secretaries, and the Prefect and Regent of the Household.
Continue Reading at Pelican Plus.
The Croatian Rajič also has a storied career as a Vatican diplomat. He has served as Nuncio to the Gulf States, Yemen and UAE, Angola and São Tomé e Principe, Lithuania and Estonia and Latvia, before most recently Italy and San Marino.
Rajič is fluent in a number of languages, including English, which is finding a natural prominence under the American pontiff. As a career diplomat for the Holy See he has tended to avoid giving more personal interventions, choosing instead to represent the pope’s message in his own public interventions.
But when pressed on Pope Francis’ words on LGBT individuals, Rajič sought a nuanced take, not condemning Francis’ apparent support for LGBT individuals, but reiterating Catholic teaching condemning homosexual actions. Indeed, in doing so he cited the direct words of the catechism, which have become contentious among some for their forthright character. “The official catholic teaching is that homosexual behaviour is a disorder, intrinsically. And therefore, due to its, let’s say, sinful nature, it cannot be condoned,” he said in 2020.
New Sostituto in the Secretariat
Archbishop Paolo Rudelli now assumes a role wielding immense power. The Italian Rudelli entered the Holy See’s diplomat training school in 1998, and then served in the Nunciatures of Poland and Ecuador, before office work in the Secretariat of State from 2006 to 2014.
Appointed then as Permanent Observer of the Holy See, he was in this role for Pope Francis’ visit to the EU. As a Nuncio he held positions in difficult environments: in 2020 he was named Nuncio to Zimbabwe, and in 2023 Nuncio to Colombia.
Crucially, he brings two aspects which are most useful for the role. He is Italian, and thus very able to handle the regular dealings he will have with the Italian state on behalf of the Pope. But also he is free from the cloud of scandal and controversy which has persistently built up over his predecessor.
In changing the Sostituto, Leo XIV thus leaves the Secretary of State unaltered. Cardinal Pietro Parolin continues in the role he has held since late 2013.
But some analysts have opined that swapping Peña Parra for Rudelli will allow Leo to make more changes in reality than had he removed Parolin but kept Peña Parra in place.
Certainly it appears in line with Leo’s desired style that his most regular meetings are with people he trusts – thus removing Peña Parra – while he also looks to continue the necessary structural continuity which Parolin offers at this still young stage of the pontificate.
Who is Peña Parra?
The Papal Household is thus taking shape, but more attention is needed on the figure of Peña Parra since he is one of the most controversial figures of the previous pontificate.
He assumed the role of Substitute after it was left vacant by scandal-ridden Cardinal Angelo Becciu. Peña Parra’s career climb is said to be linked to allegations of homosexual behavior. Peña Parra is also especially close with the equally scandal-ridden Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, a man embroiled in allegations of financial misconduct and open toleration of homosexuality. Indeed Maradiaga – a confidante of Pope Francis – was very influential in Peña Parra becoming Substitute.
Widely respected, and well connected, Vatican historian Henry Sire noted that Peña Parra:
“was dismissed from his first seminary as morally suspect, and he is said to have made his career under the cover of a circle of homosexual clergy who protected and advanced him. It has been alleged that he fled his native Venezuela and took refuge in Rome after a serious incident which incurred the intervention of the Venezuelan police.”
In his original explosive whistle-blowing testimonies of 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò added further weight to the allegations of Peña Parra’s connection to homosexuality. In 2020, the now-excommunicated prelate expanded on those claims, citing information about Peña Parra which he received when working as the Delegate for the Papal Representations.
Viganò’s 2020 allegations deserve reading in full, and for critics concerned that Viganò’s take is exaggerated or fictional, this correspondent had confirmation from another well-placed source who also read the dossier against Peña Parra. Viganò summarizes:
The young Edgar Peña Parra, on the eve of his priestly ordination, had already been reported as a notorious homosexual, to the point that in February 1985 Archbishop Roa Pérez told the Rector of the seminary, Leon Cardenas, that he had harbored doubts about the candidate for some time, and that he had just received reports of this nature, in addition to having learned that he had been expelled from San Tommaso d’Aquino Seminary in his third year of formation. According to the seminary spiritual director Father Leyre, the news of this expulsion had been hidden by another priest, Don Roberto Lückert Leon, who had falsified the report. In the meantime, Lückert Leon became the Archbishop of Coro (now emeritus) and the powerful President of the Commission for Social Communications of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference. The reports sent to Peña Parra’s superior did not prevent him from being ordained a priest on August 23, 1985, and subsequently sent to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, where future diplomats of the Holy See are trained.
On September 24, 1990, Peña Parra was accused of having seduced two minor seminarians from the parish of San Pablo, who were supposed to enter the Major Seminary of Maracaibo the same year. The event took place in the church of the Madonna del Rosario, where Rev. José Severeyn was the parish priest. Peña Parra was denounced to the police by the parents of the two young men and was examined by the Rector of the Major Seminary, Rev. Enrique Pérez, and by the spiritual director, Rev. Emilio Melchor. The Rev. Enrique Pérez, the former-rector of the Major Seminary, has confirmed this episode in writing.
In August 1992, when he was a student at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, Edgar Peña Parra was involved, along with the same José Severeyn, in the death of two people: a doctor and a certain Jairo Pérez, who were killed by an electric shock on San Carlos Island in Lake Maracaibo. The dossier adds the detail that the bodies were found naked, the victims of macabre homosexual practices. Severeyn was then removed from his parish by then-Archbishop Msgr. Roa Pérez and was appointed Chancellor of the Archdiocese, thereby finding himself in a position where he could destroy or falsify documents relating to these cases.
In January 2000, the Maracaibo journalist Gastón Guisandes López made grave accusations against several homosexual priests of the Diocese of Maracaibo, including Peña Parra. In 2001, Gastón Guisandes López twice requested to meet with the Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela, Msgr. André Dupuy, but the Nuncio refused to receive him. The following year, however, he reported these scandalous episodes involving Edgar Peña Parra to the Secretariat of State.
The relevant documentation is thus found in the archives of the Nunciature in Venezuela where, starting from that date, the successive Nuncios have been Archbishops Giacinto Berloco (2005-2009), Pietro Parolin (2009-2013) and the present Nuncio, Aldo Giordano. These men had the documents related to these accusations against the future Substitute at their disposal, and likewise the Secretaries of State, Cardinals Tarcisio Bertone and Pietro Parolin, were familiar with them, and also the Substitutes Leonardo Sandri, Fernando Filoni and Giovanni Angelo Becciu.
According to the source consulted by this correspondent – a source who has read the dossier Viganò cites – the evidence linking Peña Parra to the murders was lacking, but there was little doubt that Peña Parra is homosexual.
Critics have lamented that Peña Parra remains too geographically close to the Vatican, since he will move into the Nuncio’s residence in central Rome. However, some Vaticanists have argued that though physically close, Peña Parra’s influence will be more curtailed than might be imagined, especially with the changing of the personal in the Papal Household.
Either way, the handling of Peña Parra’s future will have been a tricky move for Leo XIV who seems intent on avoiding controversy, and thus making an obviously punitive move against Peña Parra would not have been expected.