Longtime lay official of Roman Curia writes memoir
August 25, 2025
» Continue to this story on L'Osservatore Romano (Italian)
CWN Editor's Note: Guzmán Carriquiry Lecour, a Uruguayan layman who worked in the Roman Curia from 1971 to 2019, has published a memoir, Il testimone [The Witness].
Carriquiry, now Uruguay’s ambassador to the Holy See, was the first lay undersecretary of a Vatican dicastery (the Pontifical Council of the Laity). Pope Benedict XVI appointed him secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
“Carriquiry certainly doesn’t depict an idealized Vatican,” journalist Lucio Brunelli wrote in his review of the book. “He recalls what a wise German monsignor told him at the beginning of his work in the Curia: ‘here there are 10% saints, 10% demons, and 80%—’like you and me,’ he told me—poor sinners begging for God’s mercy.’ ‘But be careful,’ he concluded, ‘the saintly 10% are great saints, and the [other] 10% are terrible demons.’”
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