Bruno Forte

Bruno Forte (born 1 August 1949) is an Italian Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto since 2004.

Biography Archbishop Forte was born in Naples. He was ordained a priest on 18 April 1973. He studied at Tübingen University, associated with Hans Küng, Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper. He also spent time in Paris, before gaining a Laurea degree in philosophy from Naples University.

He is described by the Catholic Herald as being known in Italy and the rest of the Catholic world as a "prolific and remarkably well-connected theologian", while Rocco Palmo considered him to be "more progressive" than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

In 2000, he oversaw the preparation of the Vatican document, "Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past", which led to the famous liturgy in St Peter's Basilica in which John Paul II asked God's forgiveness for 2,000 years of sins. John Paul II asked him to preach the Vatican's Lenten Spiritual Exercises in 2004.

On Monday, 14 October 2013, the Archbishop was appointed by Pope Francis to serve as the Special Secretary of the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on "The challenges of the family in the context of evangelisation", scheduled from 5–19 October 2014.

On Wednesday, 16 July 2014, Archbishop Forte was appointed by Pope Francis to serve a five-year term as a Consultant to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (for Religious).

In October 2014, Pope Francis added him to the group responsible for summarising the first week of discussions at the Synod on the Family. According to John L. Allen, the resulting document was "widely known to carry the imprint of Italian Archbishop Bruno Forte, one of the more noted theological minds in the Italian hierarchy".

In November 2016, Mgr. Forte was elected President of the Abruzzo and Molise regional section of the Episcopal Conference of Italy. On 11 January 2021 he was succeeded by the cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi.