Remembering Joaquín Navarro-Valls
(Vatican Radio) The former Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, passed away on Wednesday, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old.
Navarro trained as a medical doctor with a specialization in psychiatry, as well as in journalism, moving to Rome in the early 1970’s, becoming a foreign correspondent and eventually being elected president of the foreign press association in the city.
In 1984, he accepted an offer from Pope St. John Paul II to become the new head of the Press Office of the Holy See, a position he held until 2006.
A statement on the website of Opus Dei, of which Navarro was a member, informs that a vigil is scheduled for Thursday, July 6, starting at 4pm in the sacristy of the basilica of the church of St. Eugene (Viale delle Belle Arti 10, Rome), and that Msgr. Mariano Fazio, Vicar General of the Prelature of Opus Dei, will celebrate a funeral Mass for him on Friday, July 7 at 11am Rome Time.
Click below to hear our conversation with Joaquín Navarro-Valls’ successor in the directorship of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi SJ, who remembers his predecessor as a multi-faceted man of many talents, highly professional, and capable of great warmth in his personal relations, who was also a man of deep faith and devotion to the Church…
