Giuseppe Pasotto

Born in Bovolone, in the Province of Verona, still a young man Pasotto entered in the seminary of the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Stigmatines) and was ordained a priest on 12 May 1979 by Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves. In 1993, he went to Georgia, following a request by the Congregation of the Holy See of the Catholic presence in the Latin rite in the country (made possible by the dissolution of the USSR). In 1996 he was appointed Apostolic Administrator of the Caucasus of the Latins, exercising a pastoral role equivalent to that of bishop for Catholics of the Latin Rite of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Pasotto was appointed Titular Bishop of Musti by Pope John Paul II, from which he was ordained on 6 January 2000 in St. Peter's Basilica. In 2005 he convened the first diocesan synod Apostolic Administration of the Caucasus. In 2008, during the Russia-Georgia war between Russia and Georgia, Pasotto denounced that "the people's fear is to be left alone in front of the Russian giant, and that Westerners only know how to speak well".