Pedro López Quintana


Pedro López Quintana is a Spanish prelate of the Catholic Church who has worked in the diplomatic service of the Holy See since 1984. Since becoming an archbishop in 2003, he has been the head of the papal offices in India, Nepal, Canada, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. He has been Apostolic Nuncio to Austria since March 2019.

Biography

Pedro López Quintana was born on 27 July 1953 in Barbastro, Spain. His parents were from Galicia. He entered the seminary in Compostela where he did his ecclesiastical studies and graduated in theology. He was ordained a priest on 15 June 1980 by Pope John Paul II.
To prepare for a diplomatic career he entered the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in 1980 He earned a licentiate in Dogmatic Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University and a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He joined the diplomatic service of the Holy See on 10 February 1984 and his early assignments included stints in Madagascar, the Philippines, and India. On 7 February 1998, he took up the post of Assessor for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State in Rome.
On 27 August 1986 Pope John Paul II appointed him a chaplain of His Holiness with the title monsignor.
On 12 December 2002, Pope John Paul II appointed him titular archbishop of Acropolis. He received his episcopal consecration on 6 January 2003 from Pope John Paul. On 8 February of that year, he was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to India and Nepal. On 10 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him nuncio to Canada, a post he resigned on 28 September 2013.
On 8 March 2014, Pope Francis appointed him apostolic nuncio to Lithuania. On 22 March 2014, Pope Francis also appointed him Nuncio to Estonia and to Latvia. This continues the recent practice of having a single apostolic nuncio representing the Holy See in the Baltic states but residing at the nunciature in Vilnius.
On 4 March 2019 Francis named him Apostolic Nuncio to Austria.