Erwin Josef Ender

Erwin Josef Ender (7 September 1937 – 19 December 2022) was a German prelate of the Catholic Church who spent his career in the diplomatic service of the Holy See. He was an archbishop and had the rank of nuncio since 1990.

Biography Erwin Josef Ender was born on 7 September 1937 in Steingrund in Lower Silesia Province (now Kamienna, Poland).

As a seminarian Ender studied philosophy and theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster and then at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Collegium Germanicum in Rome. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Münster on 10 October 1965.

On 9 July 1997, John Paul named him Apostolic Nuncio to the Baltic States: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

On 25 November 2003, he was named Apostolic Nuncio to the Federal Republic of Germany.

On 15 October 2007, Pope Benedict XVI accepted Ender's resignation as Apostolic Nuncio in Germany and appointed Jean-Claude Périsset as his successor.

Pope Benedict named him a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples on 9 May 2009. On 2011 he led the delegation of the Holy See to a United Nations-sponsored conference in Moscow on discrimination and persecution of Christians.