Bangalore 1 May 2020 (CCBI): His Holiness Pope Francis has appointed Rev Msgr Mitja Leskovar (50), Counsellor of the Apostolic Nunciature, New Delhi, as titular Archbishop of Benevento and Apostolic Nuncio in Iraq. This provision was made public in Rome on Friday, 1 May 2020, at noon, corresponding to 15.30 hours, Indian Standard Time.
Msgr. Leskovar was born on 3 January 1970 in the town of Kranj, Slovenia, where he has finished his primary school and gymnasium. In 1989 he entered the Seminary of the Archdiocese of Ljubljana and was ordained Priest in 1995. After a term as Assistant Parish Priest, he was sent to Rome where he completed the study of the Papal Diplomacy at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and obtained his PhD in Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in 2001. He was then appointed secretary of the Apostolic Nunciature in Bangladesh, where he served until 2003. For the following eleven years he worked in the Vatican in different offices of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. In 2015 he became First Counsellor of the Apostolic Nunciature in Germany, where he has served for the following three years until his transfer to the same position at the Apostolic Nunciature in India in 2018. He speaks English, Italian, German, French, Croatian and Spanish.