Vatican City – For more than two decades, he was Pope John Paul II’s confidant and the Vatican’s public face.
A usually unflappable Spaniard, Joaquin Navarro-Valls struggled to hold back tears as the Polish pontiff lay on his deathbed.
On Tuesday, the Vatican said Navarro-Valls had retired and announced that Pope Benedict XVI has a new spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.
“I know that over the years I received much more than I could ever give,” Navarro-Valls said in a statement the Vatican released.
Navarro-Valls, who turns 70 in November, had been expected to retire even though he was confirmed in his post shortly after Benedict assumed the papacy 15 months ago.
Benedict has been slowly putting together his team. The Vatican announced that the 63-year- old Lombardi, an Italian Jesuit, will remain head of Vatican Radio and the Holy See’s television center, effectively putting all media operations under one roof.
Navarro-Valls, a lay member of the conservative Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei, was appointed in 1984 while serving as correspondent in Rome of the Spanish newspaper ABC. He was given the mandate to make more Vatican information available quickly and to modernize media operations.
He made himself and his deputy more available than any past Vatican press representatives and computerized the media operation, moving Vatican information into the Internet era.
