On 10 October 1985, Pope John Paul II named him pro-nuncio to Burundi and titular archbishop of Bellicastrum. In 1991 he was made pro-nuncio to Indonesia. On 6 June 1998 he was named to several positions concurrently: Nuncio to Israel and to Cyprus and Apostolic Delegate in Jerusalem and Palestine. In 2002, faced with problems constructing a statue in front of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, he was assisted by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, and they became friends. When the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem became the center of a stalemate between Palestinian Israeli forces, he negotiated a peaceful resolution. He also criticized Israel's construction of a wall to separate the Palestinian territories from Israel. In March 2003 he warned that Palestinian plans for self-government made no allowance for the practice of religions other than Islam. He also criticized the anti-Semitism found in Palestinian schoolbooks and successfully campaigned for Italy to discontinue support for educational initiatives that used such works. He campaigned for a special status for Jerusalem that would allow it to serve as the center of several major religions. In 2005, he complained that Israel was failing to implement agreements reached with the Holy See over church properties and the treatment of Catholic Arabs in Jerusalem more than a decade earlier.