Pope Francis has appointed a Sri Lankan as the secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID).

Monsignor Indunil Janakaratne Kodithuwakku Kankanamalage, currently the under-secretary of the council, is a priest of the Diocese of Badulla, Sri Lanka.

Monsignor Indunil was born in 1966 of a Buddhist mother who converted on marrying a Catholic. Two years after his priestly ordination on December 16, 2000, he was sent to Rome where he obtained a doctorate in missiology from the Pontifical Urban University. The university later hired him as a professor at its Faculty of Missiology.

On June 12, 2012. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Monsignor Indunil succeeds previous secretary, Spanish Bish-op Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, whom Pope Francis on May 25 appointed the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, following the death of Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran on July 5, 2018.

The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue was established by Paul VI on Pentecost Sunday 1964, with the aim of promoting dialogue with persons of other religions, in line with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, especially its declaration, “Nostra Aetate.”