Moscow, Sep. 7, 2007 (CWNews.com) - An Italian priest will soon be named by Pope Benedict XVI as the next Latin Archbishop of Moscow, according to a report in the Italian daily Il Giornale.

Father Paolo Pezzi, who is currently serving as rector of the seminary in St. Petersburg, will be appointed this month to head the Mother of God archdiocese in the Russian capital, the newspaper reports. The report goes on to say that both the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church have quietly expressed their satisfaction with the appointment.

According to Il Giornale, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the current head of the Moscow archdiocese, will move to Minsk, Belarus. There he will succeed Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek, who stepped down last June at the age of 91.

If the Giornale report is accurate, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz would be returning to his native land; he was born in Belarus, and served briefly as apostolic administrator of the Minsk archdiocese before being named in 1991 as apostolic administrator in Moscow. In 2002, when the Mother of God archdiocese was erected in Moscow, he became its first leader.

In Minsk, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz would have the unusual distinction of returning to the archdiocese he once governed as apostolic administrator, and replacing the bishop he once ordained as his successor there. As he concluded his earlier stay in Minsk, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz presided at the episcopal consecration of the the future Cardinal Swiatek.

The priest identified by Il Giornale as a future archbishop, Father Pezzi, is a 45-year-old member of the priestly fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles. He would be the first bishop named from that community, which was founded in 1985 with backing from the lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.