Vatican insiders yesterday expressed mild surprise at the nomination of Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto as Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland.
Archbishop Lazzarotto is widely perceived as a diplomatic "heavyweight" as indicated by his current post, that of nuncio to Jordan and Iraq, a job that has seen him negotiate directly with President Saddam Hussein.
Many in the Vatican felt the 58-year-old prelate's next appointment would be to a position of responsibility within the Holy See rather than another diplomatic mission.
The archbishop is familiar with Irish problems as he served as desk officer for Ireland in the Secretariat of State's section for the relations with states between 1984 and 1994.
Ordained a priest in Padua in 1967, Archbishop Lazzarotto entered the Vatican's diplomatic service in 1971. He has worked in nunciatures in Zambia, Malawi, Belgium, Cuba and Jerusalem. Since 1994, he has held the difficult post of nuncio to Jordan and Iraq.
In 1999 his diplomatic energies were concentrated on the planning of the Pope's trip to Iraq, a trip that the Vatican had wished to include in the Pope's millennium visit to the Holy Land earlier this year.
After a series of negotiations conducted personally with President Saddam Hussein, however, the nuncio's efforts came to nothing.
Despite the last-minute cancellation of that papal visit, Archbishop Lazzarotto is perceived as having performed a minor diplomatic miracle in maintaining a direct line of communication between President Hussein and Pope John Paul II.
Archbishop Lazzarotto replaces Dr Luciano Storero, who died at the Mater Hospital in Dublin last month.
At 58, he is relatively young by comparison with several of his predecessors. Dr Storero, for example, was 69 when appointed Irish nuncio in 1995.
No date had been fixed for the new nuncio's arrival in Ireland as he has yet to conclude his mission in Jordan and Iraq.