Pope Francis promotes Visayan priest in Tagle’s Vatican office

MANILA, Philippines – Pope Francis promoted Monsignor Erwin Jose Aserios Balagapo, a Visayan priest, to the rank of undersecretary in the Vatican office led by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.

The Vatican announced on Thursday evening, November 7 (Manila time), that Balagapo will serve as undersecretary of the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization.

This is the section led by Tagle as one of the dicastery’s pro-prefects. The other pro-prefect is Italian-born Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who heads the Section on Fundamental Questions regarding Evangelization in the World.

The Dicastery for Evangelization is the most significant Vatican department because it is the only one led by the Pope himself as prefect. Tagle and Fisichella, as pro-prefects, assist the pontiff in running the dicastery on a day-to-day basis.

Balagapo, 53, was previously an office head at the Dicastery for Evangelization. 

He has worked at the Vatican’s evangelization department since 2015, after finishing further studies in Rome. This means he came to the department four years before the Pope appointed Tagle, former archbishop of Manila and former bishop of Imus, as prefect of what was then the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. 

The Vatican announcement said Balagapo was born in Catbalogan, Samar, on March 8, 1971, although the website of the Archdiocese of Palo indicates he was born in Tacloban City, Leyte. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Palo on July 12, 1996.

He obtained his doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

Balagapo is one of the growing list of Filipinos in high positions at the Vatican, another indication that the Catholic Church’s center of gravity is now shifting to the global south. – Rappler.com