Tarcisio Bertone, Italian cardinal
Tarcisio Pietro Evasio Bertone (born 2 December 1934) is an Italian prelate and a Vatican diplomat. A cardinal of the Catholic Church, he served as Archbishop of Vercelli from 1991 to 1995, as Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) was Prefect, Archbishop of Genoa from 2002 to 2006, and as Cardinal Secretary of State from 2006 to 2013. Bertone was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2003. On 10 May 2008, he was named Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati.
Bertone served as Camerlengo from 2007 to 2014. In the period between Pope Benedict XVI's resignation on 28 February 2013 and the election of Pope Francis on 13 March 2013, he served temporarily as the administrator of the Holy See and acting head of state of the Vatican City State. He was considered a contender to succeed Benedict XVI.Besides his native Italian, Bertone speaks fluent French, Spanish, German and Portuguese. He has some knowledge of English, although he is not fluent, and he can read Polish, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.