Cardinal Bertone is an Italian prelate and a Vatican diplomat. A cardinal of the Catholic Church, he has served as Archbishop of Vercelli from 1991 to 1995, as secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) was Prefect, Archbishop of Genoa from 2006 to 2013. He was ordained on July 1, 1960. On August 1, 1991 he was ordained Archbishop of Vercelli. He holds a license in theology with a dissertation on tolerance and religious freedom and a doctorate in canon law.
Cardinal Bertone has been professor of special moral theology at the Pontifical Salesian University, 1967; professor of canon law, 1976-91; and dean of the Faculty of Canon Law, 1979-85; vice-rector, 1987-89 and then rector, 1989-91. He collaborated in several Roman parishes and also worked on the final phase of the revision of the Code of Canon Law, directing the working group that translated the Code into Italian Episcopal Conference. Since the 1980’s, he has served as consultor in several dicasteries of the Roman Curia, especially in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Betone was elevated to the cardinalate by the Bl. John Paul II in the consistory of October 21, 2003, of the title of the suburbicarian church of Frascati. On May 10, 2008, he was named Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati. Cardinal Bertone served as camerlengo from 2007 to 2014. In the period between Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation on February 28, 2013 and the election of Pope Francis on March 13, 2013, he served temporarily as the administrator of the Holy See and Acting Head of State of the Vatican City State.