As he gets to grips with his new job as the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin can count on the assistance of an English priest. The Pope’s right-hand man has appointed Mgr Robert Murphy, a priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, as his private secretary. Mgr Murphy, a Cambridge graduate, was ordained in 2001 by the then Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols. He spent time as an assistant priest and then trained at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome, which trains the Church’s diplomats. This was where he met the then Mgr Parolin, a professor at the academy. They kept in contact and it is understood Archbishop Parolin hand-picked the English priest for the role.Mgr Murphy’s first diplomatic posting was to Colombia, followed by Ar