Head of the Foreign Service Arkady Rzegocki visits Rome
25.10.2021
On 21-24 October, Head of the Foreign Service Arkady Rzegocki was in Rome on an official visit. The aim of the visit was to talk to heads of HR departments at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), as well as to representatives of Italian and Vatican diplomacies about diplomat training programmes and related areas of potential cooperation.
The Head of the Foreign Service met with Director Joyce Luma of WFP’s Human Resources Division and held a video conference with Director Greet de Leeuw and Deputy Director John Lackey of FAO’s Human Resources Division. The meetings sought to promote Polish candidates for positions at the UN and to discuss the situation of the Poles who already work at UN agencies.
Moreover, given that Poland’s accession to the IFAD became a fact on 29 January 2020, Mr Rzegocki met with Director Pierre Moreau-Péron of the Fund’s Human Resources Division to talk about possible employment of Poles at the IFAD.
Also on the Polish Head of the Foreign Service’s agenda was a meeting with Ambassador Renato Varriale, Director General for Human Resources, Budget and Innovation at the Italian Foreign Ministry. The two officials exchanged information on foreign service staff appointment and promotion systems and on prospects for cooperation to train either country’s diplomats.
While in Rome, Mr Rzegocki met with Archbishop Joseph Marino, President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, to learn about the formation system that applies to priests prepared for diplomatic service at the Holy See.
Mr Rzegocki’s visit to the Vatican involved the laying of a wreath at the tomb of Pope John Paul II at St Peter’s Basilica on the Friday of 22 October, which is a Church memorial day in honour of the Polish pope. The Head of the Foreign Service also met with Archbishop Jan Romeo Pawłowski, Secretary for the Pontifical Representations and head of the Third Section of the Secretariat of State, a unit in charge of all the nuncios and diplomats representing the Vatican.
As a sideline to the visit, Mr Rzegocki met with the metropolitan bishops of Warsaw, Gniezno, Łódź, and the Military Ordinariate of Poland, who were at the Vatican on a visit ad limina apostolorum, and he attended the inauguration of the academic year at the St. John Paul II Institute of Culture, a department of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome, and the opening of a photo exhibition "From Cracow to Rome: John Paul II in the Photographs of Adam Bujak," organised by the Institute in collaboration with the Polish Institute in Rome, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and the National Museum in Krakow.
MFA Press Office
