(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV has named Dutch Archbishop Hubertus van Megen as the new apostolic nuncio to Germany.

On Thursday, the Holy See Press Office announced that van Megen will become the new nuncio, following the end of Archbishop Nikola Eterovic’s term.

Van Megen has been a Vatican diplomat for decades, including postings in Somalia, Brazil, Israel, and Slovakia, as well as at the Vatican Mission to the United Nations.

In early 2014, Pope Francis appointed the Dutchman as apostolic nuncio to Sudan and titular Archbishop of Novaliciana (an honorary title for a papal nuncio). Shortly thereafter, he also became nuncio to Eritrea. In 2019, he was transferred to serve as nuncio to Kenya and South Sudan, as well as Permanent Observer to the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Human Settlements Program in Nairobi, Kenya.

Van Megen has criticized the moral and philosophical development of the Western World in recent decades. In September 2019, during a visit to the Association of Episcopal Conferences of East Africa (AMECEA) in Nairobi, he said: “Africans have a very special gift that they must not lose. If you lose it, you will follow the same path as the West, which means the end of a functioning society.”

“A society can only function if there is a sense of community, which is lacking in Western societies,” he stated, adding that, in the West, people take on no responsibility either at the governmental level or within the family.

“People do not care for others and not even for their own children,” said the nuncio.

He encouraged the African church to bring the culture of community to countries that have lost that sense. Despite all challenges, such as corruption, disease, war, or poverty, Africans still have a strong sense of the value of human life, van Megen attests.

During a bishop’s consecration in Kenya in 2024, the archbishop said: “Western society’s teachings on abortion, euthanasia, and gender theory are clear symptoms of a society that has lost its inner compass and is drifting helplessly on the stormy sea of human desires, tossed about and weakened in every respect.”

According to van Megen, it is evident that Western secular society has lost its strength and is increasingly preoccupied with itself. He echoed a statement by the Archbishop of Kinshasa, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, who had described the Church in Europe as “weakened” just a few months earlier.

In an interview with Vatican News, van Megen said that he tries to be a bridge builder between the Vatican and the local church in his role as nuncio in various countries. However, he said that “in the end, it all comes down to obedience to Peter; that is my primary responsibility.”

The Dutch archbishop will be put in a difficult position, as he will have to deal with the heretical German Synodal Way and the heterodox reform projects associated with it. On March 31, the new head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Heiner Wilmer, handed over the statutes of a proposed “Synodal Conference,” a body that would enable Catholic laity to share in the bishops’ authority, to the Vatican for approval.

His predecessor, Abp. Eterovic, while remaining diplomatic in his tone, has been a vocal critic of some German bishops’ attempt to change Church doctrine. In response to heterodox calls for “reform” in Germany, Eterovic repeatedly invoked Church teaching, canon law, and the authority of the pope, to which the bishops must submit.

The left-wing outlet of the German bishops, katholisch.de, concluded that, based on van Megen’s statements, he is likely to take a similar approach to that of his predecessor