Meet the conclave: Cardinal Dominique Mamberti

Even at the apex of Vatican diplomacy, he treasured his roots in a Corsican village.

The village of Vico, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, has fewer than a thousand inhabitants. But it has a reputation as a hotbed of priestly vocations. In recent decades, it has also given the Church three bishops: Bishop Jean-François Arrighi, who served as vice president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Bishop Jean-Pierre-Dominique Zévaco, who led a diocese in Madagascar, and Vatican Cardinal Dominique Mamberti.

Caption: Cardinal Dominique Mamberti. Screenshot from @fondazionecardinalebartolucci YouTube channel.

Unlike Arrighi and Zévaco, Mamberti was not born in Vico, but rather in the Moroccan city of Marrakech in 1952. His father, a civil servant from Vico, and his mother, from the Territoire de Belfort, in northeastern France, returned to the French Republic shortly after Dominique’s birth, settling in the city of Belfort. The boy went to catechism classes at Notre-Dame-des-Anges church, which was demolished in 2015. He served as an altar boy and sang in a parish choir.

His parents would later retire to the Corsican capital, Ajaccio, sealing a lasting bond between Mamberti and the French territory known as the île de beauté (“island of beauty”) because of its wondrous landscapes.

After studying public law and political science, Mamberti was admitted to Rome’s Pontifical French Seminary. He was ordained a priest for Corsica’s Ajaccio diocese in 1981.

After earning a canon law degree, he trained at Rome’s Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, entering the Vatican’s diplomatic service in 1986. His first posting was to Algeria, followed by Chile, the UN in New York, and Lebanon. In 1999, he began working at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State’s Section for Relations with States.

Pope John Paul II named Mamberti in 2002 as the apostolic nuncio in Sudan and titular Archbishop of Sagona, a seaside resort near Vico. Mamberti felt the pope was giving him a way to “maintain a spiritual connection with Corsica” as he embarked on a high-level diplomatic career. Mamberti’s principal consecrator was the then-Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, assisted by the then-Archbishop Robert Sarah.

After two years in Sudan, then gripped by civil war, Mamberti was transferred to Eritrea, a smaller and younger country in the Horn of Africa region. In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI called him back to Rome, to serve as the Secretary for Relations with States, the Vatican’s equivalent of a foreign minister.

Mamberti helped to arrange a landmark 2007 meeting between Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir and Benedict XVI. And in a notable intervention in 2013, Mamberti defended the Church’s autonomy in response to European Court of Human Rights cases that impinged on religious freedom.

Mamberti’s tenure was not entirely easy. He worked closely alongside Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whose approach to the Holy See’s international relations was heavily criticized by the Vatican’s diplomatic old guard, who deplored Bertone’s lack of diplomatic experience.

Pope Francis initially confirmed Mamberti — often described as discreet, trustworthy, and self-effacing — as Secretary for Relations with States after his election in 2013. But a year later, Pope Francis named him prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican body overseeing the administration of justice in the Church. He also gave Mamberti the red hat, making him the first Corsican cardinal in more than a century. A 140-person delegation from the island attended the ceremony.

Mamberti holds the title of cardinal protodeacon (the longest-serving cardinal deacon), following the death of Cardinal Renato Martino in October 2024. In that role, he is expected to announce the name of Pope Francis’ successor from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square — unless, of course, he is elected himself.