Pope Benedict XVI has named a new leader to head the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy: the institution that trains clerics for work in the Vatican diplomatic corps.

Archbishop Justo Mullor Garcia, who has been president of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy since 2000, retired at the age of 75. The Spanish archbishop, himself a veteran Vatican diplomat, had served in Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Mexico before his appointment to the academy in Rome.

Archbishop Beniamino Stella, an Italian native, will be the new president of the academy. Archbishop Stella has been serving as apostolic nuncio in Colombia; his previous assignments had included posts in Congo and Cuba.

Msgr Stella was secretary to the nuncio in Malta in the very difficult years of the early 1980s during the church schools issue with the MLP administration led by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.

At one point, he narrowly escaped injury when the Nunciature then in Attard was bombed.