Pierbattista Pizzaballa

Pierbattista Pizzaballa (Italian: [ˌpjɛrbatˈtista pittsaˈballa]; Latin: Petrus Baptista Pizzaballa; born 21 April 1965) is an Italian member of the Franciscan Order and a Roman Catholic cardinal who has been serving as the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 6 November 2020. After being received into the Franciscan Order in 1984, he spent his novitiate at the Franciscan Shrine of La Verna in Arezzo, Italy. In 1990, after having obtained a diploma in classical studies from the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Ferrara as well as a bachelor's degree in theology from the Pontifical University Antonianum and having been ordained a priest, he was called to service in the Holy Land. In Jerusalem, he went on to study Biblical Theology first at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum and then from 1995 to 1999 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He obtained a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and became an assistant professor of Biblical Hebrew and Judaism at the Franciscan Faculty of Biblical and Archaeological Sciences in Jerusalem as well as the Studium Theologicum Jerosolymitanum. At the same time, in 1999, Pizzaballa joined the Franciscans working at the Custody of the Holy Land founded in 1217 by Saint Francis of Assisi. In 1342, the Franciscans were officially declared by two papal bulls as the Catholic Church's custodians of the Christian Holy Places. In 2004, he was elected to the position of Custos of the Holy Land, the head of the Custody and all Franciscans in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and parts of Egypt. The title of Custos (guardian) likewise goes back to St. Francis. Pizzaballa was reelected twice as Custos and served in this position for twelve years until 2016. In 2016, he was ordained a bishop in Italy and appointed as the Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem. In 2020, he became the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, the head of Christianity's mother church including the areas of Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Cyprus. Three years later, in 2023, he was made a cardinal by Pope Francis. Following Francis' death, he was considered papabile (a possible candidate to be elected pope by the College of Cardinals) at the 2025 papal conclave despite his relatively young age.