The Secretariat of State

A "papal secretariat", not an ordinary dicastery

Praedicate Evangelium carefully distinguishes the Secretariat of State from the sixteen dicasteries of the Roman Curia: article 12 of the constitution lists the Curia as composed "of the Secretariat of State, the dicasteries and the organisms, all juridically equal"^[6], thus placing the Secretariat first in the enumeration, ahead of the dicasteries themselves. Article 44 specifies its proper nature:

"The Secretariat of State, as the papal secretariat, closely assists the Roman Pontiff in the exercise of his supreme mission." — Praedicate Evangelium, art. 44^[7]

This formula — "papal secretariat" (secretariatus papalis) — signals a difference of nature, not of mere protocolar precedence. A dicastery governs a defined field of the Church's life (doctrine, evangelization, clergy, liturgy...); the Secretariat of State, for its part, serves the very person of the pope in the daily exercise of his office, with no a priori limited field of competence. That is what explains its role of transversal coordination among the other curial institutions.

Distinguishing the Secretariat of State, the Holy See, the Roman Curia and the Vatican State

Everyday language frequently confuses these four juridically distinct realities. The Holy See is the subject of international law constituted by the pope and the bodies assisting him — a sovereignty several centuries older than any territory. The Roman Curia is the complete apparatus of pastoral government of the universal Church, composed of the Secretariat of State and sixteen dicasteries. The State of Vatican City is the 44-hectare sovereign territory created by the Lateran Agreements of 11 February 1929, administered by the Governorate — an entity entirely distinct from the Secretariat of State, even though both seats share the same territory. The Secretariat of State, the subject of this article, is therefore only one component — albeit the closest to the pope — of the vaster whole that is the Roman Curia.

The Cardinal Secretary of State, the pope's foremost collaborator

The Cardinal Secretary of State is traditionally described as the "prime minister" of the Holy See, although the analogy remains imperfect: unlike the head of a democratic government, he possesses no legitimacy of his own and derives the whole of his authority from a revocable delegation by the pope^[8].

Innocent VIII and the birth of the apostolic secretariat (1487)

Before the fifteenth century, the pope's correspondence and everyday business were handled by a college of apostolic secretaries with no stable hierarchy. On 31 December 1487, Pope Innocent VIII promulgated the constitution Non debet reprehensibile, which organized these secretaries into a genuine apostolic secretariat charged with the most important matters of general policy, ecclesiastical questions and the faith^[9]. This is the birth certificate of the institution that would become, five centuries later, the Secretariat of State.

At the turn of the sixteenth century, under the pontificate of Leo X, the office of intimate secretary (secretarius intimus) appeared, charged with pontifical correspondence written in the vernacular languages — as opposed to briefs and bulls in Latin, handled by other offices. This office would gradually become the nucleus of the Holy See's diplomatic business, in particular under the authority of the cardinal-nephews during the seventeenth century^[10].

The century of the cardinal-nephews: a secretariat under family tutelage

From the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, the office of secretary to the pope remained subordinate to the cardinal-nephew (cardinalis nepos), a relative of the reigning pope raised to the cardinalate and placed at the head of ecclesiastical affairs^[11]. Pius V institutionalized this office in 1566 as a superintendency of ecclesiastical affairs, opening what historians call the "golden age" of curial nepotism, which culminated in figures such as Cardinal Scipione Borghese under Paul V or Cardinal Francesco Barberini under Urban VIII^[12].

"For more than a century, the cardinal-nephew was the channel through which benefices flowed one way, and gold the other." — Synthetic description of the office as reported by the historiography of pontifical nepotism^[13]

The pope's secretary, under this tutelage, was still only an executor of the cardinal-nephew, who was himself often more concerned with family politics than with the government of the universal Church.

Innocent XI, Innocent XII and the end of nepotism (1678-1692)

The decisive break came in two stages. On 1 April 1678, the constitution Romanus Pontifex of Innocent XI suppressed the college of apostolic secretaries inherited from the fifteenth century, initiating the centralization of the office^[14]. Then, on 22 June 1692, the bull Romanum decet Pontificem of Innocent XII definitively abolished pontifical nepotism: henceforth no relative of a reigning pope could receive benefices, offices or pensions by the sole fact of kinship^[15]. The last cardinal-nephew in history, Pietro Ottoboni, had been created in 1689, three years before this abolition^[16].

This reform profoundly transformed the pope's secretariat: freed from its family tutelage, the Cardinal Secretary of State became, from 1692 onward, the pope's principal direct collaborator in the interior and exterior government of the Church — a professional and no longer dynastic office^[17].

The French Revolution and the birth of modern pontifical diplomacy

The direct ancestor of today's Section for Relations with States was born in the revolutionary turmoil. On 28 May 1793, Pius VI instituted the Congregatio super negotiis ecclesiasticis extraordinariis Regni Galliarum — an extraordinary congregation charged exclusively with the ecclesiastical affairs raised by the French Revolution and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy^[18]. After Napoleon's fall, Pius VII extended its competence to all the governments of the world and renamed it Congregatio extraordinaria praeposita negotiis ecclesiasticis orbis catholici^[19].

This period saw the emergence of Ercole Consalvi (Secretary of State from 1800 to 1806 and then from 1814 to 1823), regarded by historiography as the true founder of the modern institution^[20]. Negotiator of the 1801 Concordat with Napoleon and then artisan of the restoration of the Pontifical States at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), Consalvi transformed the Secretariat from one curial office among others into a genuine, structured instrument of foreign policy.

The government of the Secretariat then underwent institutional variations: under Gregory XVI (1831-1846), the office was temporarily split into two distinct offices for interior and exterior affairs, before Pius IX reunited it in 1846 into two sections placed under different substitutes — prefiguring, a century ahead, the present structure^[21].

Sapienti Consilio (1908): Pius X organizes three sections

On 29 June 1908, Pius X promulgated the constitution Sapienti Consilio, launching the first great modern reform of the Roman Curia^[22]. This reform reorganized the whole curial apparatus and, within that framework, the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs — the direct heir of the institution of Pius VI and Pius VII — was integrated in 1909 into the Secretariat of State as one of its sections, alongside a section for ordinary affairs and an office of the chancery of apostolic briefs^[23].

This reform lastingly marked the history of the office. The first holder to feel its full effects was Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, Secretary of State from 1903 to 1914, whose name remains associated with the intransigent doctrinal line of the anti-modernist struggle under Pius X^[24].

Pius XII's long interregnum: when the pope is his own Secretary of State (1944-1958)

The most singular episode of the twentieth century occurred on the death of Cardinal Luigi Maglione, Secretary of State since 1939, on 22 August 1944. Pius XII, who had himself held the office from 1930 to 1939 before his election, decided to appoint no successor and to govern the Secretariat personally, assisted by two pro-Secretaries of State without the cardinalatial title: Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI), responsible for ordinary affairs, and Domenico Tardini, responsible for extraordinary affairs^[25]. In 1953, Pius XII tried to create them both cardinals; both declined the honour^[26]. Montini finally left the Curia in 1954 to become Archbishop of Milan, never having received the purple in Pius XII's lifetime.

The office of Cardinal Secretary of State thus remained vacant for fourteen years, until the election of John XXIII in 1958, who at once appointed Tardini Secretary of State with the full cardinalatial title^[27]. This episode shows how entirely the office remains, by nature, a revocable delegation of pontifical authority: the pope can, in theory as in practice, do wholly without a holder and exercise the office himself.

Regimini Ecclesiae Universae (1967): Paul VI and the Council for Public Affairs

Having become pope in 1963, Paul VI undertook the reform of the Curia willed by the Second Vatican Council. The apostolic constitution Regimini Ecclesiae Universae of 15 August 1967 gave a new face to the Secretariat of State: it suppressed the chancery of apostolic briefs (the old third section) and transformed the former Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs into a body distinct from the Secretariat, though closely linked to it, under the name of the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church^[28].

This period saw the rise of a central figure of the modern curial government: Mgr Giovanni Benelli, appointed Substitute for General Affairs in March 1967, a post Montini himself had held twenty years earlier under Pius XII^[29]. Alongside Cardinal Secretary of State Jean-Marie Villot (1969-1979) and Mgr Agostino Casaroli, secretary of the Council for Public Affairs, Benelli became so central a cog of the Curia that the Roman press sometimes nicknamed him the "vice-pope"^[30]. All relations between the pope, the Roman congregations, the worldwide episcopate and foreign governments then passed through this trio^[31].

On 29 June 1988, John Paul II promulgated the apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus, which reunited the Secretariat of State and the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church into a single institution with two sections: the Section for General Affairs (heir of the historic first section) and the Section for Relations with States (heir of the Council for Public Affairs)^[32]. This two-section architecture, in force for nearly thirty years, is the direct foundation of the present structure.

Under this constitution, the Cardinal Secretary of State remained the common superior of both sections, each headed by a distinct prelate: a Substitute for General Affairs (an archbishop, assisted by an assessor) for the first, a Secretary for Relations with States (an archbishop, assisted by an under-secretary) for the second^[33]. It was under this regime that the great diplomatic pontificates of the late twentieth century unfolded, in particular that of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli.

Three sections, one service of the pope

After nine years of consultations, Francis promulgated on 19 March 2022 the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, which recast the whole Roman Curia while preserving, for the Secretariat of State, the architecture inherited from 1988 — enriched by a third section created in 2017. Article 45 § 2 fixes its three-section structure: General Affairs, under the direction of the substitute assisted by the assessor; Relations with States and International Organizations, under the direction of their own secretary, assisted by the under-secretary and an under-secretary for the multilateral sector; and the Diplomatic Personnel of the Holy See, under the direction of the secretary for pontifical representations, assisted by an under-secretary^[34].

The Section for General Affairs: the pope's daily service

The Section for General Affairs ensures, according to article 46, "the handling of matters concerning the daily service of the Roman Pontiff" and fosters "coordination among these same dicasteries, organisms and services"^[35]. Its competences, detailed in article 47, are vast: drafting apostolic constitutions and pontifical documents, publishing official acts in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, transmitting orientations to the Dicastery for Communication, and keeping the pontifical seals^[36]. Article 48 adds the organization of periodic meetings of the heads of curial institutions, the handling of appointments, the preparation of acts concerning pontifical orders and the publication of worldwide ecclesial statistics^[37].

Since the creation of the Dicastery for Communication in 2015, the Section for General Affairs no longer directly administers the Holy See's media (Vatican Radio, L'Osservatore Romano): it keeps a role of orientation of pontifical communication policy, but operational management now falls to a distinct dicastery^[38].

At the head of this section stands the Substitute for General Affairs, traditionally appointed ad nutum Sanctitatis Suae ("at the pleasure of His Holiness"), that is, revocable at any moment by the pope without any particular procedure — an office unique in the Curia for its combined proximity and protocolar precariousness^[39]. Holders of this post across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries include, in succession, Montini, Benelli, Eduardo Martínez Somalo, Giovanni Battista Re, Leonardo Sandri, Fernando Filoni, Angelo Becciu (2011-2018), then Edgar Peña Parra from 2018.

The Section for Relations with States: pontifical diplomacy

The Section for Relations with States and International Organizations, according to article 49, handles "matters which must be dealt with with civil authorities" and represents the Holy See before international organizations^[40]. It is this section that negotiates concordats, prepares the pope's official visits, accredits apostolic nuncios and carries the voice of the Holy See into multilateral forums — the United Nations Organization, where the Holy See has held permanent observer status since 1964, the OSCE, the IAEA, the UPU and the ITU. This section functions as the Holy See's true ministry of foreign affairs, while pontifical diplomacy as a whole — nunciatures, international status, network of representations — is treated in its own right in the article The Holy See.

Since January 2020, this section has also included, for the first time in its history, a laywoman in a position of responsibility: Francesca Di Giovanni, a Sicilian jurist born in 1953, appointed Under-Secretary for the multilateral sector. She thus became the first woman — and the first non-ordained person — to hold a directing office within the Secretariat of State, a post hitherto always reserved to a cleric^[41].

"Excellent news for three reasons" — because a woman is reaching a directing office at the Secretariat of State for the first time, because a laywoman is reaching it, and because this appointment forms part of a broader recognition of the role of women in the government of the Church. — L'Osservatore Romano, French edition, 15 February 2020, commenting on the appointment of Francesca Di Giovanni^[42]

The Section for the Diplomatic Personnel of the Holy See (2017)

On 21 November 2017, Francis created by motu proprio decision a third section, devoted exclusively to the diplomatic personnel of the Holy See — selection, initial and continuing formation, living and service conditions of agents posted in nunciatures around the world^[43]. This creation answered an explicit pastoral concern: to show the attention of the pope and of the superiors of the Secretariat toward diplomats who are often isolated, posted in sometimes difficult, even dangerous contexts^[44]. The section strengthened the former office of the delegate for pontifical representations, now raised to the rank of head of a section in its own right^[45].

An office of delegation, never of proper right

Unlike a minister in a democratic government, the Cardinal Secretary of State holds no parcel of sovereignty of his own: all his authority proceeds from a delegation by the pope, revocable at any moment^[46]. That is precisely what the 1944-1958 vacancy illustrates: the pope may substitute himself for his Secretary of State without any constitutional rule preventing him.

Eleven Secretaries of State in a century and a quarter

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the office has been held by the following eleven cardinals — with a fourteen-year vacancy under Pius XII, recalled in the table:

This table retains only the holders of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; the complete list, from Innocent VIII onward, runs to several dozen names and remains consultable in the official archives of the Secretariat of State^[47].

Pietro Gasparri and the end of the Roman Question (1929)

Cardinal Secretary of State from 1914 to 1930, Pietro Gasparri led the negotiations that resulted, on 11 February 1929, in the signature of the Lateran Agreements, ending nearly sixty years of the "Roman Question" born of the capture of Rome in 1870. This episode, already treated in detail in the article devoted to the Lateran Agreements, illustrates the historic leading role a Secretary of State can play in resolving a centuries-old crisis between the Holy See and a State.

Agostino Casaroli and the Vatican Ostpolitik

Having entered the Secretariat of State in 1961 under John XXIII, Agostino Casaroli became, from the 1960s onward, the principal architect of what the press called the Vatican Ostpolitik: a policy of prudent dialogue with the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, aimed at preserving a minimum of sacramental life for Catholics living behind the Iron Curtain^[48]. He signed agreements with Hungary in 1964 and Yugoslavia in 1966, and represented the Holy See at the opening of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe on 3 July 1973^[49]. Adviser to three successive popes — John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II — for thirty years, Casaroli became titular Cardinal Secretary of State from 1979 to 1990.

His objective, which he himself summed up as seeking a "way not to die" for the Church under atheist regimes, consisted in favouring discreet negotiations over the appointment of bishops rather than public confrontation, even at the cost of exposing himself to criticism from Catholics who saw in it a form of compromise^[50].

Angelo Sodano and Tarcisio Bertone: continuity and crises

Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State from 1991 to 2006 under John Paul II and then at the start of Benedict XVI's pontificate, served the longest tenure since Gasparri's. Tarcisio Bertone, who succeeded him from 2006 to 2013, had to face in 2012 the so-called Vatileaks affair — the leak of confidential documents from the pope's own office, revealing tensions internal to curial governance and feeding, in the international press, an image of administrative dysfunction at the summit of the Holy See.

Pietro Parolin and the provisional agreement with China

Appointed Cardinal Secretary of State on 15 October 2013 by Pope Francis, at 58 — the youngest holder of the office since Pacelli in 1930 —, Pietro Parolin led the most delicate diplomatic dossier of the pontificate: the provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops in China, signed on 22 September 2018^[51].

This agreement, whose precise terms have never been made public, establishes a joint process of validation of episcopal appointments between Beijing and the Holy See, in theory putting an end to the Chinese practice of unilateral episcopal ordinations without pontifical mandate^[52]. Renewed in 2020 and 2022, then extended by four further years in October 2024, the agreement remains the object of lively debate within the Catholic Church itself, some observers welcoming a minimal protection of ecclesial communion in China, others denouncing concessions to the authorities of the Chinese Communist Party^[53].

The Mincione fund investment and the purchase of 60 Sloane Avenue

From 2014, while holding the post of Substitute for General Affairs — the number-two office of the Secretariat of State —, Mgr Angelo Becciu committed Secretariat funds to an investment managed by the Italian financier Raffaele Mincione, which acquired about 45% of a luxury building located at 60 Sloane Avenue, in London's Chelsea district^[54]. The subsequent restructuring of the deal, supposedly meant to clarify its ownership, in reality aggravated the loss: the operation as a whole cost the Holy See up to 200 million dollars, according to estimates reported by the press at the time of the trial^[55] — other assessments, retained by the Vatican's appellate court in 2025, put the net loss at around 139 million euros on a total investment approaching 350 million pounds sterling^[56].

The 26 December 2020 motu proprio: the Secretariat stripped of its assets

Faced with the scale of the scandal, publicly revealed from 2019 onward, Pope Francis decided to remove from the Secretariat of State the management of all its financial assets. On 26 December 2020, he promulgated the apostolic letter in the form of a motu proprio Concerning certain competences in economic and financial matters^[57]:

"Ownership of funds and bank accounts, moveable and immoveable investments, including shareholdings in companies and investment funds, hitherto held in the name of the Secretariat of State, is transferred to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See." — Pope Francis, Motu proprio of 26 December 2020, art. 1 § 1 (official English text)^[58]

The text states that the reason for the reform is "a better organization of the administration, control and supervision of the economic and financial activities of the Holy See, with a view to transparent and efficient management and a clear separation of competences and functions"^[59]. The Secretariat of State was to transfer the whole of its liquid assets held at the Institute for the Works of Religion (the "IOR", often called the "Vatican bank") and in foreign banks no later than 4 February 2021^[60]. Supervision of this new organization was entrusted to the Secretariat for the Economy, erected on that occasion into a true papal secretariat for economic and financial affairs^[61].

The Becciu trial (2021-2023): the Vatican's first criminal conviction of a cardinal

The criminal investigation opened by the Vatican promoter of justice led to the opening, in July 2021, of an extraordinary trial dubbed by the press the Vatican "trial of the century": ten defendants, including a cardinal — an absolute first in the judicial history of the Holy See —, eighty-six hearings spread over more than two years^[62]. On 16 December 2023, the Vatican court delivered its verdict:

"Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the first person of cardinalatial rank tried and convicted by a Vatican criminal court, is found guilty on two counts of embezzlement and one count of aggravated fraud, and sentenced to five years and six months in prison." — Summary of the Vatican court verdict, 16 December 2023, as reported by international agencies^[63]

Becciu was acquitted on the counts of abuse of office and subornation of a witness, but found guilty of embezzlement for the initial 200-million-euro investment in the Mincione fund as well as for a 125,000-euro donation of Vatican funds to a charitable association run by his own brother^[64]. Five other defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to seven years, with an obligation to repay several million euros in damages to the Holy See; three others were found guilty on lesser counts and sentenced to fines^[65].

The 2025 appeal: a procedural twist, not a quashing

The appeal trial opened in September 2025. On 17 March 2025 — prior to the opening of the appeal hearings proper —, the Vatican court of appeal, presided over by Mgr Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, issued a sixteen-page decision declaring a "relative nullity" affecting certain acts of the investigation: four decrees issued by Pope Francis during the inquiry, modifying procedural rules without public promulgation, were judged to have weakened the right of certain defendants to a fair defence^[66]. This decision does not quash the first-instance judgment or its guilty verdicts: it only imposes a partial re-examination of certain elements of the case, and orders the office of the promoter of justice to file the complete unredacted record of the investigation^[67]. The affair remains, to this day, the most sensational judicial episode in the recent history of the Secretariat of State — and the most visible demonstration of the limits that the internal control of its financial assets could reach before 2020.

Elected pope on 8 May 2025, Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost) made known, the day after his election, that all the heads of the Roman Curia, including Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, were confirmed in their functions until further notice — a customary transition practice that avoids any abrupt vacancy of curial government at a change of pontificate. Parolin thus remains in office and continues to represent the Holy See in the great international forums, notably during an address to the United Nations Organization on 19 May 2025.

On 5 June 2025, the new pope received in audience all the superiors and officials of the Secretariat of State in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace. There he defined the two demands he places on the institution:

"[Our work presupposes] incarnation and catholicity [as] two essential dimensions [...] Together, we share the questions, the difficulties, the challenges and the hopes of the People of God." — Pope Leo XIV, address to the superiors and officials of the Secretariat of State, 5 June 2025^[68]

Taking up an exhortation of Saint Paul VI dating from 1963, Leo XIV asks that "this place not be polluted by ambitions or antagonisms"^[69] — a reminder that the immediate proximity to the pope, which has been the institutional strength of the Secretariat of State since 1487, also structurally exposes its members to the temptation of power rivalries, as shown by the financial crisis of 2019-2023.

On 30 March 2026, Leo XIV made a first significant organizational change: Archbishop Paolo Rudelli, until then Apostolic Nuncio to Colombia, was appointed the new Substitute for General Affairs, succeeding Edgar Peña Parra, who had held this office since 2018^[70]. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, for his part, remains Secretary of State, while Mgr Paul Richard Gallagher — the first native English speaker in the post, in office since 8 November 2014 — continues to head the Section for Relations with States and International Organizations^[71].

• The Holy See — the juridical definition of the subject of international law served by the Secretariat of State, and the full history of pontifical diplomacy.
• The Roman Curia — all sixteen dicasteries and organisms whose action the Secretariat of State coordinates.
• The Creation of the State of Vatican City (11 February 1929) — the sovereign territory, distinct from the Secretariat of State, administered by the Governorate.
• The Lateran Agreements (11 February 1929) — the diplomatic agreement negotiated by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, then Secretary of State.
• The Vatican — general panorama of the territory, its institutions and its history.