Pope Francis appoints a new personal secretary

Pope Francis appointed an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State as his new personal secretary on Saturday.

The press office of the Holy See declared on 1 August that the 41-year-old Fr. Fabio Salerno will succeed Msgr. Yoannis Lahzi Gaid, who has held the role since April 2014.

Salerno currently works in the Secretariat of State for relations with States section, also known as the Second Section. In the new role he will become one of the Pope's closest collaborators.

Gaid, a Coptic Catholic priest born in the Egyptian capital Cairo, was the first Eastern Catholic to hold the post. The 45-year-old will now focus on his work with the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, a body formed after the pope and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar signed the Human Fraternity Document in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in February 2019. .

Salerno was born in Catanzaro, the capital of the Calabria region, on 25 April 1979. He was ordained a priest in the metropolitan archdiocese of Catanzaro-Squillace on 19 March 2011.

He holds a doctorate in civil and ecclesial law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. After studying at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, he was Secretary of the Apostolic Nunciature in Indonesia and of the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.

In his new role, Salerno will work alongside Fr. Gonzalo Emilio, a Uruguayan who previously worked with street children. The pope appointed Emilio as his personal secretary in January, replacing the Argentine Mgsr. Fabián Pedacchio, who held the post from 2013 to 2019, when he returned to his position at the Congregation of Bishops