By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, Jan. 9, 2019: Archbishop Giorgio Zur, who served the Vatican diplomatic services for more than five decades, including two times in India, died on January 8 in Rome, the Secretariat of State in the Vatican has informed.
The German prelate would have turned 89 on February 15.
Archbishop Zur served Vatican embassies or nunciatures in India, Burundi and Uganda. In India, he was first the secretary of the apostolic nunciature..
In 1972, he joined the Secretariat of State in the Vatican. He became a full-fledged ambassador when he was appointed the apostolic pro-nuncio in Zambia, Africa, in 1979.
In 1985, he was transferred as apostolic nuncio to Paraguay. In 1990, he returned to India as apostolic nuncio, a post he kept for eight years. In 1998, he became the president of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome.
Two years later he was appointed apostolic nuncio to the Russian Federation, and in 2002 to Austria. He retired on in 2005.
He was born on February 15, 1930, in Görlitz, Germany, and was ordained a priest on in 1955. He studied Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University and Lateran University in Rome. After being an assistant priest, on July 1,1962, entered the diplomatic service of the Holy See.