Archbishop Stanovnik, key figure in Zanchetta affair, retires at 75

February 24, 2025

On February 23, Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Archbishop Andrés Stanovnik, OFM Cap., as archbishop of Corrientes, Argentina. The 75-year-old prelate was succeeded by Archbishop José Adolfo Larregain, OFM, his coadjutor.

Archbishop Stanovnik was a key figure in the Zanchetta affair, as CWN previously reported.

On August 1, 2017, the Holy See Press Office announced that Pope Francis had accepted Bishop Zanchetta’s resignation as bishop of Orán, just four years after his appointment. On the same day, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Stanovnik as Orán’s apostolic administrator—a position he would hold for the next nine months. The choice of Archbishop Stanovnik seemed odd: Corrientes and Orán are over 500 miles apart, rendering the simultaneous governance of the two dioceses a significant challenge.

Stanovnik once recalled that he had first become acquainted with the future Pope before Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s priestly ordination in 1969 and said that “we had many other opportunities to meet and develop a closer relationship” over the years. Cardinal Bergoglio was the principal consecrator at Stanovnik’s Mass of episcopal ordination in 2001—just as Archbishop Stanovnik was the principal consecrator at Bishop Zanchetta’s own Mass of episcopal ordination in 2013.

In addition, Stanovnik, while leading his Argentine dioceses (Reconquista, then Corrientes), was secretary general (2004-07) and second vice president (2007-11) of CELAM, the Latin American Episcopal Council. In 2007, CELAM held its fifth major meeting since 1955; the Latin American bishops, gathered at Brazil’s principal Marian shrine of Aparecida, chose the future Pope as the editor responsible for the final document. The Aparecida document raised Cardinal Bergoglio’s profile worldwide and came to be seen as a precursor to the current pontificate.

Referring to two Capuchin Franciscan ministers-general by name, and then to Stanovnik (without naming him), Pope Francis hinted in 2018 that he had been responsible for St. John Paul II’s appointment of Stanovnik as a bishop in 2001:

First I met Flavio Carraro, with whom we were associates in the 1994 Synod; then, John Corriveau, who robbed us of a good Capuchin in Argentina to make him a counsellor, but then I vindicated myself and he was made bishop [laughter].

If Pope Francis and Archbishop Stanovnik were bound by longtime ecclesial ties, Stanovnik and Zanchetta were bound by far deeper spiritual ones. Stanovnik, who is fifteen years older than Zanchetta, is a Capuchin Franciscan friar who had served as novice master (1982-88) and provincial vicar (1987-92) of the order in Argentina. Zanchetta entered the Capuchin Franciscan order in Quilmes in 1984, left the order in October 1988, and entered the diocesan seminary in Quilmes in February 1990. Stanovnik, then, was the young Zanchetta’s novice master.

In 1989, while retaining his national position as provincial vicar of the order in Argentina, Stanovnik—in a remarkable coincidence—began a three-year term as pastor of the parish in La Cumbre, the remote rural town in central Argentina where Zanchetta had attended high school. Zanchetta’s résumé does not account for the 16-month gap between his departure from the Capuchin Franciscans in 1988 and his entry into the diocesan seminary in 1990, but if Zanchetta returned to his hometown or visited it, Stanovnik, his former novice master, would have been his parish priest.

Stanovnik, then, had known Zanchetta for nearly three dozen years and the Pope for some 50 years. Stanovnik was responsible for Zanchetta’s formation as a Capuchin Franciscan friar, would have known the circumstances that had led Zanchetta to leave the order in 1988, and likely helped pave the way for Zanchetta to enter the diocesan seminary in 1990. Stanovnik consecrated Zanchetta the bishop of the Diocese of Orán on August 19, 2013—and four years later, was appointed Orán’s apostolic administrator in the wake of his resignation.

“I was surprised, like everyone else, by the resignation of Monsignor (i.e., Bishop) Gustavo,” Stanovnik said on August 3, 2017.

On December 19, 2017, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Zanchetta the assessor of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA). Under the papal regulations in force, APSA managed the Holy See’s real estate and other assets and investments.

“Thanks to God and to the Virgin Mother, my health has been fully restored, and I can assume with joy and availability this new mission entrusted to me by the Holy Father to accompany him closely and help him in his ministry as universal pastor,” Zanchetta wrote in a message to Stanovnik.

On the day of the Vatican appointment, Mexican journalist Andrés Beltramo Álvarez wrote an article for the Turin-based newspaper La Stampa questioning whether Zanchetta had ever been sick, as the bishop had claimed less than five months earlier in his letter to the faithful of the Diocese of Orán. Beltramo reported that immediately after his July 29 letter, Zanchetta resided over 500 miles away from Orán in Corrientes as a guest of Archbishop Stanovnik, and that more recently, he was seen in Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Pope’s residence.

In 2022, Bishop Zanchetta was convicted by an Argentine court of sexually abusing two seminarians. He was sentenced to four and one-half years in prison.

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