VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Nearing 80 years old, Italian Cardinal Mario Zenari has spent the past 16 years in the wartorn nation of Syria as papal nuncio.
When other countries closed their diplomatic missions in the Middle East nation over the years, the 79-year-old Vatican diplomat stayed. “Even if I am Italian, as the nuncio, my homeland is Syria. A son cannot tear himself away from his mother’s bedside when she is sick or dying — that is why I stay,” he told Vatican Insider in 2016.
Pope Francis also reinforced that mandate when he named him a cardinal in 2016, adding that the prelate would remain nuncio in the “beloved and martyred” nation even when traditionally a red hat for a nuncio usually signaled the archbishop was going to be transferred to head an archdiocese or department in the Roman Curia.
While generally considered too old to be elected pope, his commitment to the Syrian people and to peace throughout the Middle East give him influence within the College of Cardinals.
“If you have convictions and if you have, above all, faith, you are prepared to take risks,” Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican foreign minister, said about Cardinal Zenari in an interview with Catholic News Service in 2016. The cardinal “has made a very significant contribution” to multiple peacemaking efforts in Syria since the war erupted in 2011.
As nuncio, he also helped facilitate the distribution of $200 million of humanitarian assistance the Holy See and Catholic Church provided to more than 4.6 million people in the region.
A lifelong Vatican diplomat, he began his career serving in: Liberia between a 1980 coup and a 1985 failed coup attempt; Colombia during the height of the conflict between the government and guerilla groups in the mid- to late 80s; and Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall.
After also serving in Senegal and Romania, he led the Holy See’s permanent observer mission to United Nations offices in Vienna.
In 1999 St. John Paul II named him an archbishop and appointed him apostolic nuncio to Ivory Coast, Niger and Burkina Faso. Five years later, he was named nuncio to Sri Lanka and then nuncio in Syria in 2008.
Just three years later, mortar attacks, shortages of basic essentials, sanctions and poverty would become the norm after fighting broke out following pro-democracy protests. Even the nunciature was damaged by a mortar round in 2013.
The Assad regime collapsed in December 2024 after nearly two decades of fighting, which left at least 500,000 people dead, more than 7 million internally displaced and 16.7 million people who urgently needed humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations.
“I have witnessed destruction, death, amputated children and overwhelming suffering during the intense years of conflict,” Cardinal Zenari told Vatican News that December. “But now, a different bomb has exploded — the bomb of poverty, which leaves no room for hope.”
Ninety percent of the population lives below the poverty line, he said, and poverty cannot be fixed with handouts or aid. “A political solution” that brings peace, stability, reconstruction and development “is necessary.”
As dean of the foreign diplomatic corps in Syria, Cardinal Zenari met with the foreign minister of the new caretaker government and told Vatican News Jan. 1 that there is renewed, but cautious optimism in the country amid promises everyone, including Christian minorities, will be respected.
“As a church, as the Holy See, we have no military interests, no economic interests, no geopolitical strategies,” he said. “We — the church, the Holy See, the pope — are on the side of the people, of the people who suffer. We want to be the voice of those who have no voice,” he told the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in 2020.
Born in Verona, Italy, Jan. 5, 1946, the cardinal was ordained a priest in 1970 and earned a degree in canon law from Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University while attending the Vatican’s diplomatic school.
He received the Path to Peace Award in 2017 for his courage and commitment to the Syrian people, and he was awarded Italy’s highest-ranking honor, Commander of the Order of Merit, in 2018.
Accepting his Path to Peace Award, Cardinal Zenari said his role as nuncio has been like a soldier, but “using the weapons of charity and truth.”
“Spiritually, I feel that I take orders from the ‘commander in chief,’ Jesus Christ, and his lieutenant, the pope, who tells me: ‘Go there!’ and I go; ‘Come here’ and I come; ‘Stay there!’ and I stay,” he said.
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