Peña Parra Appointment: Exile or Probation?

Pope Leo XIV on Monday ordered the biggest curial personnel change of his first year in office, transferring the sostituto of the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, to serve as apostolic nuncio to Italy and San Marino.

Peña Parra has served as sostituto, who functions effectively as papal chief of staff in day-to-day curial operations, since 2018, when he was appointed to replace then-archbishop, soon to be Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was promoted to lead the Congregation for Causes of Saints.

The archbishop’s eight year tenure as sostituto was a period of remarkable upheaval, both for the curia and the office, with Peña Parra having immediately to step into the throws of the Secretariat of State’s financial scandal, as well as help bed in a new apostolic constitution in 2021, reorganizing the Roman curia.

During his time in office, he emerged as a quiet pole of obvious influence and power under Pope Francis, clearly trusted by the late pontiff. However, Peña Parra also appeared at the center of several controversies in which he appeared to act well outside his own, or indeed any, legal scope of action.

His new assignment appears to emphasize Pope Leo’s emerging preference for by-the-book governance and the rule of law, though it also provides a position of considerable prestige for the archbishop. And, even if it likely constitutes an effective side-lining for one of the curia’s previously most influential operators, it could yet hold out the promise of prospects for the future.

Continue reading at The Pillar