Pierbattista Pizzaballa

Pierbattista Pizzaballa (born 21 April 1965) is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who has been the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 6 November 2020. A Franciscan friar, he served as Custos of the Holy Land from 2004 to 2016, Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate from 2016 to 2020, and was made a cardinal by Pope Francis on 30 September 2023. Pizzaballa has criticized Israel's construction of a barrier between the West Bank and Jerusalem. On 16 October 2023, he condemned Hamas as barbaric and offered himself as a hostage in exchange for captive Israeli children held in Gaza during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. Early life and education Pizzaballa was born in Cologno al Serio, Bergamo, on 21 April 1965, son of Pietro and Maria Maddalena Tadini. He entered the Franciscan minor seminary in Bologna in September 1976 and on 5 September 1984 entered their novitiate in La Verna. He made his first vows there on 7 September 1985 and his perpetual vows in Bologna on 4 October 1989. He earned his bachelor's degree in theology at the Pontifical University Antonianum and was ordained a priest on 15 September 1990, in the Cathedral of Bologna by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi. He obtained his diploma in classical studies at the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Ferrara. He studied in Biblical Theology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem in 1993 and then taught biblical Hebrew at the Franciscan Faculty of Biblical Science and Archeology in Jerusalem.