It was reported in The Tablet of September 28 that Archbishop Beniamino Stella, the current 72-year-old head of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Acadamy, alias the Vatican diplomatic service, has been chosen as the new prefect of the very important Congregation of the Clergy, replacing Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, “considered as one of the most prominent conservatives in the Vatican and a key ally of Benedict XVI”.

Robert Mickens, the weekly’s Rome correspondent, adds, “the move is the most dramatic in a number of Curia changes – too slowly for some, too quickly for others – that are beginning to establish the complexion of this papacy”.

Mgr Stella started his career in the Vatican’s diplomatic service as a junior attaché, or minutante, if I am not mistaken, at our Attard Nunciature, way back in the 1970s. He joins Archbishop Pietro Parolin, who replaced the rather colourless Cardinal Tarcisdio Bertone as the new Secretary of State, in the much needed reform of the Rome Curia. Prefects of such weighty congregations are usually earmarked for the purple.

Ad multos annos to both.