Pope Francis named an Italian canon lawyer with many years' experience in handling Vatican operations to be adjunct secretary of his advisory Council of Cardinals.
The pope appointed Bishop-elect Marco Mellino, 52, to the international council, which was established "to assist the Holy Father in the governance of the universal church" and to study the current project of revising the 1988 apostolic constitution "Pastor Bonus," as part of the reform of the Roman Curia, according to a Vatican press release Oct. 27. The pope also made him a member of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.
Bishop-elect Mellino had been serving as vicar general of the northern Italian Diocese of Alba since June 2018. Before that he had worked since 2006 in the Vatican Secretariat of State's section for general affairs, which deals with coordinating the work of the Roman Curia.
Born in Italy's northern Piedmont region, the bishop-elect studied theology and specialized in canon law, working as a judge for a number of church courts.
Also Oct. 27, the pope appointed to the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, who is dean of the graduate school of education and information studies at the University of California-Los Angeles and is a leading expert on the impact of forced, mass migrations on families, children and young people.
Suarez-Orozco is a member of the board of governors of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Education and trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He has served as a special adviser to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. He was a co-founder and co-director of the Harvard Immigration Project and a founding member of the executive committee of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Suarez-Orozco completed his studies in California and taught at Harvard University and New York University before moving to UCLA.
He has been leading a major international study on the effects of modern day "catastrophic" migrations and violent family separations with an emphasis on the health, mental health, education and legal protections for forcefully displaced children and youth, according to a UCLA press release.
