Indian Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad, until now organizer of papal trips, has become the new prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. The Holy See Press Office made the announcement on January 24, 2025. Cardinal Koovakad succeeds Spanish Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, who passed away on November 25.
A surprise appointment
The atypical promotion to cardinal of the Pope's travel organizer, 51-year-old Indian priest George Jacob Koovakad, was one of the biggest surprises of the December 7, 2024, consistory.
According to Vatican sources consulted by I.MEDIA, the appointment came as a real shock to the priest himself. His role as a mere official in the Secretariat of State had been effectively upended in the hierarchy by his new title of “eminence,” to which he had never aspired.
His assumption of the post of head of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue gives a posteriori a new meaning to his cardinalate. He succeeds Cardinal Ayuso, the second prefect of this dicastery to die in office, after French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who passed away on July 5, 2018.
Dialogue with Islam and Hinduism
In recent years, deepening dialogue with Islam has been a priority issue for this dicastery. The Abu Dhabi Declaration of 2019 and Pope Francis' historic visit to Iraq in 2021 were among the fruits of the work of this dicastery. This department had only the title of “pontifical council” until the promulgation of the new Apostolic Constitution of the Roman Curia in 2022.
The appointment of an Indian cardinal — although not strictly speaking an expert on the subject — to this position may augur a strengthening of dialogue with Asian religions and Hinduism in particular. This could reinforce the hypothesis of a possible papal visit to India, considered for 2026.
For several years now, this project has been the subject of delicate negotiations involving the Holy See, the local episcopate, Narendra Modi's government, and the country's religious authorities, notably Hindus. Such a trip could give rise to a deepening of contacts between the Catholic Church and Hinduism. This latter religion has over a billion followers, but remains relatively unknown and little studied in the Catholic world.
Cardinal Koovakad's atypical background
George Jacob Koovakad was born on August 11, 1973, in Chethipuzha, in the Kerala region of India, into a devout Catholic family. Like all members of his church, the Syro-Malabars, he traces his faith back to the direct evangelization of St. Thomas the Apostle in the first century.
“I was brought up in an atmosphere where attending daily Mass was encouraged, and I never missed daily evening prayer with my family members,” he tells Vatican News.
George Koovakad was ordained priest on July 24, 2004, for the Diocese of Changanacherry. He has a degree in Canon Law. Fr. Koovakad immediately entered the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, an institution that trains future nuncios, i.e. Vatican ambassadors.
He began serving in the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 2006, working successively in the nunciatures of Algeria, Korea, Iran, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. In the latter country, he represented the Holy See as chargé d'affaires ad interim at the Caracas nunciature, at the delicate moment of Nicolás Maduro's controversial presidential inauguration on January 10, 2019.
Organizing papal trips
Fr. Koovakad joined the General Affairs section in Rome in 2020. Pope Francis appointed him as a pontifical travel organizer a year later. In five years, he organized 12 of the Argentine pontiff's trips to 18 different countries.
At Francis' side, he says he was struck by his “charisma,” which “deeply moves the people around him.”
“It's not the crowds that capture [the Pope's] attention, but rather the weak and vulnerable. A poor person in a wheelchair or a stranded child are the ones who catch his eye,” he notes.
Following the announcement of his cardinalate appointment, Fr. Kookavad received episcopal consecration on November 24 in India. Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabars, Mar Raphael Thattil, performed the consecration in the presence of Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, substitute for the Secretary of State. This choice allowed his family, whose circumstances are too modest to make the trip to Rome, to be there with him.
At 51, Cardinal Koovakad has become the youngest current prefect of the Roman Curia. He’s the second non-European to take up this post in the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. The first was the Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze (b. 1932), who held the post from 1984 to 2002.
Cardinal Duraisamy Simon Lourdusamy (1924-2014), Prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches from 1985 to 1991, was the first Indian cardinal to head a Curial dicastery. He was followed by Cardinal Ivan Dias (1936-2017), Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples from 2006 to 2011.
