Gualtiero Bassetti (born 7 April 1942 in Popolano in Marradi) is an Italian archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church.

Bassetti was ordained a priest on 29 June 1966 by Cardinal Ermenegildo Florit, Archbishop of Florence. On 9 July 1994 he was appointed bishop of Massa Marittima-Piombino and consecrated on 8 September 1994 by Cardinal Silvano Piovanelli, Archbishop of Florence. He was named bishop of Arezzo on 21 November 1998. He was named the archbishop of Perugia-Città della Pieve on 16 July 2009.

He was elected head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Umbria in 2012 and is deputy president of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

On 22 February 2014, the archbishop, along with 18 others, was inducted into the College of Cardinals by Pope Francis. Bassetti commented in response to his nomination: "My aims have not changed. I want to visit factories and hospitals, because as the Pope says, we must 'be pastors with the odor of sheep.' This is the time to roll our sleeves back." He also praised the Pope's nomination of Archbishop Loris Capovilla as "a direct reference the Second Vatican Council". La Stampa called it a "surprise nomination". It was the first time a bishop of Perugia had been named a cardinal since Gioacchino Pecci (later Pope Leo XIII) in 1853. His selection was seen, according to John L. Allen, as a demonstration of Francis' preference for "traditionally neglected locales" and for "political moderates". Another observer described him as "instantly papabile, a man cut from the same cloth as Francis". Giovanni Paciullo, Rector of the University for Foreign Students of Perugia, called the nomination a tribute to Bassetti's "constant concern for the least, the excluded, the foreigner ... which brought him into the paths of marginalization and suffering..."

Bassetti has been praised by traditionalists for being a strong proponent of the traditional Tridentine Latin mass.

[September 2016]

Source: Wikipedia