Dublin diocesan priest Monsignor Paul Tighe (57) has been appointed a bishop and secretary of the Vatican's Council for Culture by Pope Francis.
It makes him one of the most senior Irish people in Rome. Familiar to many in the Irish media, he has been secretary to the Vatican’s Council for Social Communications in Rome for the past eight years and was central to its advances in social media in particular.
Msgr Tighe expressed his delight at his new appointment “I am both surprised and enthusiastic about the new appointment. I very much look forward to working with Cardinal Ravas [Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council of Culture] in an office which tries to understand how faith and culture interact in today’s world.”
More recently he has been secretary to the working group to reform Vatican media chaired by former BBC Trust chairman Lord Chris Patten. It led to the establishment last July last of a new secretariat for communications at the Vatican which will oversee all of the Vatican's communications offices. It will bring together the work of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, the Holy See Press Office, Vatican Radio, Vatican TV and the Vatican's various social media services.
Well known and well liked by the Holy See's resident press corps, Monsignor Tighe has tended to keep a low profile in relation to many of the important initiatives he has handled for the Council for Social Communications, particularly the most recent Patten Commission.
As part of his work for Social Communications, he has travelled to African, Asia, North America and Latin America to advise church bodies and church media on best practises in relation to inter-facing with social media. Msgr Tighe was also part of the team which promoted and instigated the Pope's twitter handle,@Pontifex
Giving the keynote address at an event in Maynooth last month to mark the 40 th anniversary of the Catholic Communications Office in Ireland, Msgr Tighe memorably described social media as "postmodernism on speed".
"Digital is real," he said, advising people to "avoid the dualism" of "a real world and a digital world". He also recalled how Pope Benedict said people "should 'try and give the internet a soul', not that we are the soul of the internet."
Born in 1958, he attended school in Navan Co Meath and Summerhill College, Sligo, a county with which he has family connections. He was ordained a priest of the Dublin archdiocese in 1983. Afterwards and prior to further study in Rome he was chaplain and teacher in Ballyfermot.
From 1990 he was lecturer in moral theology at the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin, becoming head of the department in 2000. In 2004 he was appointed director of the Communications Office of the Dublin archdiocese and established the office for public affairs there.
In November 2005 Pope Benedict announced his appointment as secretary of the Vatican’s Council for Social Communications in Rome.
Commenting on Msgr Tighe’s promotion, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said it was a sign of the personal appreciation of Pope Francis for the priest’s work in Rome. He also noted the important contribution that Msgr Tighe had made to the work of the archdiocese of Dublin and the Church in Ireland before his appointment to Rome.
Msgr Tighe is expected to be ordained a Bishop of Drivasto (Albania) in the Basilica of St Peter's sometime in the New Year, at a ceremony presided over either by Pope Francis himself or by the Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin.
