VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has named an American theologian as the Catholic Church’s second-highest official with responsibility for liturgy, the Vatican announced on Tuesday (June 16).
The Rev. Joseph Augustine Di Noia, 65, will serve as secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, where he will help oversee the introduction of a new English-language translation of the Mass.
A member of the Dominican order, Di Noia has served since 2002 as undersecretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which until 2005 was headed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.
Di Noia previously served as executive director of the doctrinal commission of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
On Tuesday, USCCB President Cardinal Francis George of Chicago called Di Noia’s appointment a “matter of pride for both the church in the United States and the Dominican Order.”
Di Noia, who will be ordained an archbishop next month in a ceremony in Washington, D.C., becomes one of the highest-ranking American officials at the Vatican, along with Cardinal William J. Levada, head of the doctrinal congregation, and Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, prefect of Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, known as the church’s “supreme court.”
Di Noia holds a doctorate in religious studies from Yale University, where he studied under George Lindbeck, a Lutheran theologian known for his work on ecumenism.