Patrick Coveney

Patrick Coveney (born 29 July 1934) is a Roman Catholic Archbishop. He is the current Papal Nuncio (that is, ambassador of the Holy See) to Greece.

Coveney was born in Cork, Ireland, and was ordained as a priest on 21 February 1959 by Luigi Cardinal Traglia, aged twenty-four. On 27 July 1985 he was appointed titular Archbishop of Satrianum and Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to Ethiopia^[1] — his title of Archbishop derives from this appointment, not from a bishopric in Greece — and ordained an Archbishop on 15 September 1985. The Principal Consecrator was Agostino Cardinal Casaroli; his Principal Co-Consecrators were Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi and Bishop Michael Murphy who then served as the Bishop of Diocese of Cork and Ross.

He became Nuncio to New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, and the Marshall Islands on 13 August 1996. His remit was expanded to include Fiji, Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, Vanuatu, and Nauru later that year, and to include the Cook Islands and Palau in 2001. As the longest-serving diplomatic representative to New Zealand, Archbishop Coveney served for a time as Dean of the Diplomatic Corps. He was then appointed Nuncio to Greece in 2005.