Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, who served as the Vatican’s diplomatic envoy to the Philippines during the tumultuous years of President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial anti-drug campaign, has been appointed Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.
According to Vatican News, Pope Leo announced the appointment on Saturday, March 7, naming the Italian prelate as the Holy See’s ambassador to Washington.
Caccia succeeds Cardinal Christophe Pierre, whose resignation was accepted after he turned 80 on January 30, reaching the canonical age limit for Vatican diplomats.
Caccia served as Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines beginning in 2017, a period when the country drew intense global scrutiny over thousands of killings linked to Duterte’s anti-drug operations.
After two years in Manila, Pope Francis appointed him in 2019 as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in New York, a post he held until his latest assignment.
Responding to his appointment, Archbishop Caccia said he was “honored and deeply humbled by the decision of the Holy Father” to appoint him as nuncio “to the Country and the Church” where the Pope was born and raised.
“I receive this mission with both joy and a sense of trepidation,” he underlined, while highlighting that this is a “mission at the service of communion and peace” and that it begins in the year in which the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding.
He added that he feels “encouraged by the warmth and openness” he has received from the local Church, the people, and the institutions of the United States, which he has come to know during his years of service at the United Nations in New York.
Born in Milan on February 24, 1958, Caccia was ordained a priest in 1983 by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. He initially served in the parish of San Giovanni Bosco in Milan before entering the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome, the Vatican’s diplomatic school. He later earned a doctorate in theology and a licentiate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University.
He joined the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1991, beginning with an assignment to Tanzania. Two years later he was called to work in the Secretariat of State’s Section for General Affairs, and in 2002 he was named Assessor for General Affairs.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Apostolic Nuncio to Lebanon and titular archbishop of Sepino. He received episcopal ordination from the Pope himself on September 12 that year.
After his diplomatic mission in the Philippines and subsequent posting to the United Nations, Caccia now moves to one of the Holy See’s most influential diplomatic assignments: representing the Vatican to both the US government and the American Catholic Church.
His appointment comes at a moment of renewed global attention to diplomacy and peacebuilding, roles that papal nuncios traditionally play as both ambassadors of the Holy See and liaisons with local Catholic communities.