(ANS – Roma) – In the course of the Summer Plenary Session, the Rector Major, with the approval of the General Council of the Congregation, appointed a new Provincial for the Italy-Sicily province for the six-year period 2014-2020. He is Fr Joseph Ruta, until now a member of the Provincial Council. He will succeed Fr John Mazzali.

Fr Ruta was born on 30 January 1959 at Modica, Italy. He entered the Salesian novitiate at Lanuvio in 1974, made his first profession as a Salesian of Don Bosco in 1975 and his perpetual profession on 12 September 1982 at the Generalate in Rome.

After his priestly ordination in 1986, he worked first in the Salesian House at Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (Italy), then in Messina and Catania. He was Rector in these last two. He did his doctorate in Catechetics at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome and from 1990 until this year he has been a teacher in the St Thomas Institute of Theology in Messina. He was also President of the Institute and Rector of the Community.

He was a member of the Provincial Council from 2003 to 2009 and from 2011 to the present, and will assume office as Provincial in January 2014.
 
Published 10/06/2013