Pope Leo XIV appointed Michele Di Tolve as bishop of Chioggia on September 16. Until that day he had been titular bishop of Orrea, auxiliary of Rome and rector of the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary. That same morning, Cardinal Vicar Baldo Reina announced the name of his successor at the head of the seminary: Monsignor Simone Renna, until now undersecretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy. Both decisions, made on the same day, close Di Tolve’s three years at the house where the future priests of the Pope’s diocese are formed.
The appointment appears in the Holy See Press Office bulletin of September 16. Di Tolve was born in Milan on May 19, 1963 and was ordained a priest on June 10, 1989. He spent almost his entire ministerial life in the Ambrosian archdiocese: parishes, then religious education and school pastoral work between 2007 and 2014, and later the direction of the diocesan seminary and the coordination of theological formation until 2020.
Three years leading priestly formation in Rome
The move to Rome was swift. Elected titular bishop of Orrea and auxiliary of Rome on May 26, 2023, he received episcopal ordination on September 2 of that year. By then he had already been entrusted with the direction of the Roman Major Seminary: Francis personally signed the decree on July 4, 2023 appointing him rector.
The assignment went beyond the seminary. Francis arranged for Di Tolve to strengthen relations among the various priestly formation realities present in Rome and to coordinate their activities. For matters of greater importance he was to report directly to the Pope.
In the diocese of Rome he was also the auxiliary bishop responsible for the Area for the care of the diaconate, the clergy, religious life and the Ordo Virginum, as well as interim director of the Office for the Clergy. He also served as delegate bishop for education, schools and universities in the Episcopal Conference of Lazio.
The Roman Major Seminary currently has 55 seminarians distributed across seven years of formation. Of these, 31 belong to the diocese of Rome and the rest come from other dioceses and ecclesial realities. There is no publicly available homogeneous series that allows this figure to be compared with the one existing when Di Tolve assumed the rectorship in 2023.
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Di Tolve’s first diocesan governance
Chioggia had been vacant since May 14, when Giampaolo Dianin was transferred to Gorizia, and since July it had been administered by Father Simone Zocca, appointed by the College of Consultors. It is one of the minor sees of Veneto, suffragan of the Patriarchate of Venice: 68 parishes and a little more than 120,000 inhabitants spread between the provinces of Venice and Rovigo.
It is Di Tolve’s first diocesan governance, which he assumes at the age of 63 after three years as auxiliary of the Pope’s diocese.
Neither the Holy See’s bulletin of appointments nor the information released about the change explains the reasons for the move. The coincidence of the transfer and the change at the seminary, however, links the two decisions: Di Tolve leaves the rectorship because he has been assigned to another see and Renna takes his place on the same day. The Pope’s diocese thus simultaneously loses the person responsible for the area dedicated to the clergy and the person responsible for the formation of its seminarians, who were the same individual.
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A canonist from the Curia for the Roman Seminary
His successor comes from the Curia and not from the clergy of Rome. Simone Renna was born in Lecce on July 10, 1974 and was ordained a priest on June 29, 2004 for his archdiocese of origin, where he served as parish priest, director of youth and university pastoral care, judge of the ecclesiastical tribunal and chancellor.
He holds a degree in Law from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan and a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Lateran University. He joined the Dicastery for the Clergy as an official in October 2019 and has been undersecretary since February 2022; since 2023 he has also been a consultor of the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life.
Upon learning of his appointment, Renna explained his bond with the institution in which he himself was formed: “I feel that I am coming home, because the Roman Seminary, for all its students, is home.”
The change thus places the formation of the clergy of Rome in the hands of a canonist with experience in the Curia since 2019 and with no previously known experience as a seminary rector.
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