Pope Francis appointed Friday a coadjutor bishop of Urgell, a diocese in Spain whose leader is also co-prince of the tiny neighboring principality of Andorra.
The Holy See press office announced July 12 that Msgr. Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat, an official at the Vatican Secretariat of State, would serve as coadjutor alongside the Urgell diocese’s current head, Archbishop Joan-Enric Vives i Sicília.
Serrano will become the Bishop of Urgell and co-prince of Andorra when the pope accepts the resignation of Vives, who turns 75 on July 24.
Vives himself was initially appointed as a coadjutor bishop in 2001, succeeding Archbishop Joan Martí i Alanis as Bishop of Urgell two years later.
The Urgell diocese, which dates back to the fifth century, serves around 212,000 Catholics from its base in La Seu d’Urgell, a town in Catalonia.
But the diocese also covers Andorra, a prosperous microstate with a population of 80,000 people, nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains.
The country, whose official language is Catalan, has, by law, two heads of state — the Bishop of Urgell and the President of France (currently Emmanuel Macron) — who are styled as co-princes.
Andorra’s 1993 constitution defines the country as a sovereign parliamentary democracy. But it says that the co-princes are “the symbol and guarantee of the permanence and continuity of Andorra as well as of its independence and the maintenance of the spirit of parity in the traditional balanced relation with the neighboring states.”
The constitution notes that the co-princes can together exercise the power to pardon. They can also ask for preliminary judgments on the constitutionality of proposed laws.
Other powers can only be accessed together with the head of Andorra’s government, currently Xavier Espot Zamora, who congratulated Serrano on his appointment July 12. The jointly exercised powers include calling for elections or referendums, and the sanctioning and enacting laws.
Both co-princes act through personal representatives. Archbishop Vives is represented by the Spanish priest Fr. Josep Maria Mauri i Prior. Macron’s representative is senior civil servant Patrick Strzoda.
The Bishop of Urgell has important ceremonial functions. For example, Vives represented Andorra at the funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.
The new coadjutor bishop-elect was born in Tivissa, in the autonomous Spanish region of Catalonia, in 1977. He was ordained in 2002 as a priest of the Diocese of Tortosa, not far from the Urgell diocese.
After training at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the Vatican’s diplomatic school in Rome, he served as secretary at nunciatures in Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Brazil, before arriving at the Secretariat at State, which oversees the Holy See’s relations with other states.
Since 2019, Serrano has served as counselor of the nunciature in the Secretariat of State’s Section for General Affairs. He has also worked until now as special secretary to Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the second-ranking figure at the Secretariat of State after Parolin.
He served briefly in 2019 as a director of London 60 SA Limited, a company created and owned by the Secretariat of State to manage the luxury property whose purchase led to the sprawling Vatican financial trial.
The Secretariat of State posted a photo on its social media account July 12 showing Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin announcing Serrano’s appointment.
The 47-year-old coadjutor bishop-elect’s diplomatic background could be useful given the unique requirements of serving as the Bishop of Urgell.
Although the Church-state arrangement in Andorra has endured for centuries, there have been tensions.
A flurry of reports in 2018 suggested that Archbishop Vives might have to abdicate if the principality legalized abortion, likely prompting a constitutional crisis. But the crisis was averted and abortion remains illegal in all cases.
As Vives neared the typical episcopal retirement age of 75, there was speculation in the Catalan media about whether the Vatican would mark his departure by creating a separate diocese of Andorra, as a prelude to possibly eliminating the co-prince arrangement.
But during a visit to Andorra in September 2023, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin appeared to uphold the status quo. The appointment of a coadjutor bishop in his late 40s seems to be a further confirmation that the Holy See is committed to the historic arrangement. Serrano will be Spain’s youngest bishop and could serve as Bishop of Urgell for the next quarter-century.
In a message to his future diocese, Serrano said: “I thank the good God for this call, which I accept with obedience and peace, and I put myself at your disposal and at the service of those who most need God’s affection, and always together with Archbishop Joan-Enric, helping him in the pastoral care of the diocese, as well as maintaining his good relations with public institutions.”
Welcoming Serrano’s appointment, Vives said: “Now we will work in communion, complementarily, we will live together and we will communicate things and criteria to better serve the diocese and the principality of Andorra.”
“This is what I learned to do with Archbishop Joan Martí when I arrived in La Seu d’Urgell in 2001, and this is what we will try to do now with Bishop Josep-Lluís, counting on the collaboration of the priests and deacons, the consecrated people and the lay men and women of the diocese.”