Jordanian bishop appointed Vatican envoy to Pakistan

Pope Francis on Saturday named Jordanian bishop Ghaleb Bader as Apostolic Nuncio to Pakistan, the first envoy of the Holy See of Jordanian descent.

A statement by the Centre for Catholic Studies said Bader took over as the Holy See’s envoy to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Bader was born in 1951 in the village of Khirbet al Wahadneh in the northern Ajloun Governorate. He entered in the minor seminary in Beit Jala in 1963. Monsignor Bader was ordained a priest in Amman on June 13, 1975.

He became vicar of the Christ the King parish in the same city in 1976. He left his role as parish priest in 1979 and began a career as a canonist, participated in the Arabic translation of 1983 Code of Canon Law and became president of the Ecclesiastical Court of Jerusalem in 1988.

Bader became parish priest of the Annunciation parish in Amman, in the district of Jabal Al- Weibdeh in 1992, taking the presidency of the Ecclesiastical Court of Amman. In 1998, he left his curial task to devote himself exclusively to the chairmanship of the tribunal.

Bader was appointed Archbishop of Algiers by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 and was consultant to Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue from 1996 to 2001.

As a septalingual, he authored a number of books in addition to the Arabic translations.