Salvatore De Giorgi

Salvatore De Giorgi was born in Vernole, Apulia, on 6 September 1930 and ordained a priest for Lecce on 28 June 1953, serving as secretary to Bishop Minerva before a decade as parish priest. Appointed auxiliary bishop of Oria in November 1973 (consecrated 27 December by Minerva), he became Bishop of Oria in 1978, Archbishop of Foggia (later Foggia-Bovino) in 1981, Archbishop of Taranto in 1987, and in 1990 General Chaplain of Italian Catholic Action. Within the Italian bishops' conference he led the liturgical and laity commissions.

On 4 April 1996 John Paul II appointed him Archbishop of Palermo, where — in the city of the anti-Mafia martyrs — he was outspoken in condemning organized crime; he also presided over the Sicilian bishops' conference. He retired on 19 December 2006, was created a cardinal on 21 February 1998 with the title of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and voted in the 2005 conclave. In 2012 he sat on Benedict XVI's Vatileaks investigation commission, and in May 2013 Pope Francis chose him — a selection widely noted as unprecedented — to officiate at the beatification of Fr. Pino Puglisi, the Palermo priest murdered by the Mafia in 1993. His motto is In charitate pax — “peace in charity.”