Papabili: Zuppi, Ukraine Envoy on a Mission from Francis

Vatican City: One of the top papabili (likely popes) among the conclave cardinals is a man on a mission from late Pope Francis, Ukraine envoy, Bologna Archbishop and Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) Chair Matteo Zuppi. A trusted man of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and always committed to social work to help the homeless and needy, Zuppi is the cardinal who, perhaps more than anyone else, represents continuity with Francis.

According to Ansa News Agency, born in Rome in 1955, Zuppi is the son of a Catholic journalist and the niece of Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri. The fifth of six children, he took his first steps in 1973 alongside Andrea Riccardi in the community of Sant’Egidio, an organization that had been established just five years before. The two met at the Virgilio high school where, among others, Francesco De Gregori and David Sassoli also studied. It will be him, as a cardinal, who will celebrate the funeral of the journalist and MEP in 2022.

At twenty-two, after graduating in Literature and Philosophy at Sapienza, he entered the seminary of Palestrina, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University. Known to all as ‘Don Matteo,’ Zuppi was ordained a priest in 1981, immediately becoming assistant parish priest of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where he remained for 19 years. In 2000, he became parish priest, taking the place of the new bishop Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia.

In his second five-year term as parish priest in Trastevere, from 2005 to 2010, Zuppi was also prefect of the third prefecture of Rome and from 2000 to 2012 general ecclesiastical assistant of Sant’Egidio, after having also played a mediation role with Riccardi in Mozambique in the process that led to peace after more than seventeen years of bloody civil war. On January 31, 2012, Benedict XVI appointed Zuppi titular bishop of Villanova and auxiliary of Rome.

He received episcopal ordination on April 14, 2012, from the hands of the then cardinal vicar Agostino Vallini. In 2015, two years after the arrival of Pope Francis, he was promoted to the metropolitan see of Bologna. On October 5, 2019, he was created cardinal, a role with which he will then lead – from 2022 to today – the Italian Episcopal Conference. Since June 2023, he has also been a judge of the Vatican Court of Cassation. Under the pontificate of Francis, he has done much to bring the Pope’s message to Kiev and Moscow, in an attempt – unfortunately still in vain – to achieve peace.