Antonio Maria Vegliò (born 3 February 1938) is an Italian Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church, who has served as Vatican diplomat and in the Roman Curia. He is currently President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants. Vegliò was created a Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI on 18 February 2012.

Born in Macerata Feltria, Italy, he was ordained a priest for the diocese of Pesaro in 1962. He was summoned to Rome where he attended the elite Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy where he studied diplomacy. Besides his native Italian, he speaks English, French and Spanish.

He was appointed Titular Archbishop of Eclano in 1985 on was appointed Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. In 1989, Vegliò was appointed Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Mali and promoted to full Apostolic Nuncio in 1994. He served as Apostolic Nuncio to Lebanon and Kuwait from 1997 to 1999.

In 2001, Archbishop Vegliò became Secretary of the Vatican Congregation for the Oriental Churches and, in 2009, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants.

The Vatican announced on 6 January 2012 that Archbishop Vegliò would be created cardinal and on 18 February he became Cardinal-Deacon of San Cesareo in Palatio, the same titular church held by Pope John Paul II when he was cardinal-archbishop of Kraków. On 21 April 2012 Cardinal Vegliò was named, for the usual five-year period, a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

In 2009, he organised the first European meeting of the pastoral care of the streets (drug users, street women, children, the homeless. He has intervened several times in the public debate in support of the rights of migrants, refugees, immigrants, displaced persons, or other persons disadvantaged because of their status in mobility. He has spoken out against piracy infesting the seas and has launched a campaign of solidarity with seafarers and their families affected by the tsunami in Japan.

He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis.

Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Vegliò to the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State on June 1, 2013.

[September 2016]

Source: Wikipedia