VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Pizzaballa has been given a new position in the Roman Curia.

On Thursday, July 3, 2025, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo XIV had appointed Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, to the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.

Other appointees include Cardinal Frank Leo, the Archbishop of Toronto; Archbishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski of Saint Louis; Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, England; Bishop Brendan Leahy of Limerick, Ireland; Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, S.V.D., the Archbishop of Tokyo; Bishop Bertram Johannes Meier of Augsburg, Germany; Cardinal Dominique Joseph Mathieu, O.F.M. Conv., the Archbishop of Tehran; and Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

Leo has also appointed bishops in Syria, Thailand, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

On June 24, Pope Leo appointed Pizzaballa to the Dicastery for Consecrated Life.

READ: Pope Leo appoints Cardinal Roche, same-sex ‘blessing’ supporters to Dicastery for Consecrated Life

Pizzaballa, 60, has been the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 2020. Born in Bergamo, Italy, he joined the Franciscans as a teenager in 1984, having gone into a Franciscan minor seminary at the age of 11. He was ordained in 1990 in Bologna by Cardinal Biffi. Only a few weeks afterwards, he was sent to serve and study in Jerusalem. He was ordained a bishop in 2016.

During the current conflict in Gaza, Pizzaballa has provided leadership and a voice for Palestinian Christians, in particular. In May, after Leo XIV called for humanitarian aid for Gaza, where Christians and Muslim Palestinians are starving, the Latin Patriarch issued a pastoral directive: “We cannot afford the luxury of giving up and stopping; we owe it first and foremost to our local Christians, and to all those who are there; we must do everything possible to bring aid.”

The cardinal, who speaks both Hebrew and Arabic and has served as an assistant professor of Biblical Hebrew and Judaism, warned the world as early as 2023 that the frequency of  attacks by Israeli extremists upon Christians had increased, thanks to a new spirit of licence.

“The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new. These people feel they are protected … that the cultural and political atmosphere now can justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians,” he said.

READ: Cardinal Pizzaballa backs Leo XIV’s call for peace, urges action for Gaza Christians