Today the Vatican Information Service announced the retirement of Archbishop Piergiorgio Silvano Nesti C.P., Secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Archbishop Nesti (shown here celebrating one of the Novendiales Masses after the death of Pope John Paul II) has been Secretary of the former Congregation for Religious since 1996, having spent the previous three years as Archbishop of Camerino San Severino Marche, a diocese well known to readers of any reliable biography of Saint Paul of the Cross as a place where Paul preached missions and retreats.
Before becoming a bishop, Monsignor Nesti lived for many years at the monastery of Saints John and Paul, the Passionist Generalate in Rome, where he was Rector for some time and where he later worked as Secretary of CIPI, the inter-provincial conference of Passionists in Italy. He was Secretary General (and later either President or Vice-President) of FIES, the Italian federation of retreat houses. During his years at Saints John and Paul, he also worked with other religious communities, particularly Mother Tecla and the Bridgettines (le Brigidine). He was at Saints John and Paul when I lived there in the 1980s and was one of four members of the community at that time to be raised later to the episcopate.
For the last two and a half years, he has been my line manager in the work I have been doing as Pontifical Delegate to the Passionist Contemplative Nuns in Italy. He followed the development of the new Federation for the Nuns very closely and was always very fraternal and welcoming; I was able to meet with him at short notice whenever the need arose. I hope he has a happy retirement, but I am sure he will keep himself busy, perhaps with retreat ministry, to which he was always very committed.
Laus Crucis 