Background
A native of Brooklyn, Archbishop Balvo grew up in Suffern, where he graduated from Sacred Heart School.
archbishop Diplomat Catholic priest
A native of Brooklyn, Archbishop Balvo grew up in Suffern, where he graduated from Sacred Heart School.
He studied at Cathedral College, both in Manhattan and in Queens. He studied for the priesthood at the North American College in Rome, obtained a baccalaureate in sacred theology and a licentiate in biblical theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
He then pursued his studies in canon law and obtained his licentiate at the Catholic University of America and doctorate at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He previously served in the apostolic nunciatures in Lithuania, Jordan, the Czechoslovakian Republic and Ghana. He served at Sacred Heart parish, Newburgh, 1976-1981, and then at Saint John the Evangelist, Mahopac, for a year.
On 1 April 2005 he was appointed Titular Archbishop of Castello and Apostolic Nuncio to New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Western Samoa, Tonga, Palau and Vanuatu.
Balvo was consecrated by Cardinal Egan at a Mass in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on June 29, 2005. He was appointed nuncio to Kenya on 17 January 2013 and on 21 December 2013 was appointed as the first apostolic nuncio to South Sudan.
Archbishop Balvo, speaking on the crisis in South Sudan said civil society needs to be involved not just in negotiations on the government level but “should be actively involved always.” Speaking to Certified Information Systems Auditor news agency February 17, the Holy See diplomat said civil society and the Church have already asked the warring factions to lay down their arms and work out their differences, adding that in the end it is the people who are suffering.
“In a country that has a lot of resources, it will not be easy to develop them unless there is peace,” he said.
He said the Church was doing much to help people in new country through promotion of their welfare and would continue to ensure that peace prevails in the nation. “lieutenant is very hard to promote and create a society with generations of people that all they have known is violence,” he said.
Quotations: “In a country that has a lot of resources, it will not be easy to develop them unless there is peace,”. “lieutenant is very hard to promote and create a society with generations of people that all they have known is violence,”.
Archbishop Balvo has been a member of the Vatican diplomatic corps since 1987.