Loss
Card. Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, died in the USA yesterday afternoon, aged 75. He had gone to Connecticut to treat the disease he had been suffering form for some time, Parkinson’s Disease. He stayed with the community of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, in the archdiocese of Hartford. On March 13th 2013, he had been the one to announce the election of Pope Francis, from the Central Loggia at St Peter’s Basilica. He had been ordained on September 20th 1969. Called to Rome in 1973, he attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, where the Vatican diplomatic staff are trained, and the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he graduated in Canon Law. Since March 1975, he had joined the Vatican diplomatic service. Appointed Apostolic Nuncio to the Dominican Republic until 1979, he had then been moved to Lebanon, also as an Apostolic Nuncio. He stayed there until July 1983, when he was called to work at the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church. Appointed titular archbishop of Thelepte, he was appointed Secretary of the Council, renamed a few months later into Section for Relations with States of the Secretariat of State, where he worked 13 years. John Paul II made him a cardinal in the Consistory of October 21st 2003. On June 25th 2007, Benedict XVI appointed him president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, while, on June 26th 2013, Pope Francis appointed him member of the Pontifical Commission reporting to the Institute for the Works of Religion.
