Giovanni Lajolo  Giovanni Lajolo (born 3 January 1935 in Novara, Italy) is a Cardinal and former President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State and President of the Governatorate of Vatican City State. He studied at the Seminary of Novara, the Pontifical Roman Seminary, and the Pontifical Gregorian University where he earned a licentiate in philosophy in 1955 and a licentiate in theology in 1959. He was ordained a priest on 29 April 1960. He entered the University of Munich where he studied for a doctorate in canon law which he was awarded in 1965. Then in 1965 he entered the elite Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy to study diplomacy, leaving in 1968. He entered the service of the Secretariat of State in 1970. He worked in the nunciature in Germany collaborating with Corrado Bafile, future cardinal, from 1970 to November 1974. He was a staff member of the Council for Public Affairs of the Church from November 1974. He was named counselor of nunciature on 1 January 1983. He closely followed the negotiations that led to the signing, in 1984, of the revision of the concordat between Italy and Holy See. On 3 October 1988, Lajolo was appointed Secretary of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See and Titular Archbishop of "Caesariana" by Pope John Paul II. He received his episcopal consecration on 6 January 1989 from John Paul himself, with archbishops Edward Idris Cassidy and José Tomás Sánchez serving as co-consecrators, in St. Peter's Basilica. Lajolo was later named Nuncio to Germany on 7 December 1995, and Secretary for Relations with States on 7 October 2003. As Secretary, he served as the foreign minister of the Vatican. He served as the Secretary for Relations with States in the Secretariat of State, or foreign minister of the Holy See, from 2003 until his appointment as president in 2006. He speaks Italian, German, English and French. At a 2004 conference Archbishop Lajolo said that perfect religious freedom does not exist in any country in the world. ""Even in states in which the right to religious freedom is taken very seriously,"" he said, perfection is missing, often because a concern for church-state separation leads to penalising religious activity in the public sphere. He went on to say he said, government and taxation policies may limit the rights of parents to choose a religious education for their children or may penalise the charitable work of the church by not recognising its nonprofit status.