Background
Fernando Vérgez Alzaga (born 1 March 1945) is a Spanish Roman Catholic bishop, Secretary General of the Governorate of Vatican City State since 2013 and previously director of the Vatican City State Telecommunications Directorate.
He is also titular bishop of Villamagna in Proconsulari, in Tunisia.
Vérgez was born in Salamanca on 1 March 1945. Although Spanish by birth, since the 1960s Vérgez has lived and worked in Rome, for most of that time as a servant of the Roman Curia.
On December 25, 1965, he made a profession of faith with the clerical congregation of the Legion of Christ, and on 26 November 1969 was ordained as a priest by Cardinal Ildebrando Antoniutti.
Vérgez attended the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, gaining degrees in philosophy and theology, and then a diploma as an archivist from the Vatican Secret Archives.
In 1972 he entered the service of the Roman Curia as an assistant in the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and then in April 1984 was moved to the Pontifical Council for the Laity. After that, he was appointed to head the ordinary section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, then in June 2004 became head of the Internet Office of the Holy See. On 1 February 2008, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Vérgez as Telecommunications Director of the Vatican City, with the Poste Vaticane, and in August 2013 Pope Francis promoted him to be Secretary General of the Governorate of Vatican City State, succeeding Bishop Giuseppe Sciacca.
On 15 October 2013 Pope Francis made Vérgez titular bishop of Villamagna in Proconsulari, and on 15 November, in St Peter’s Basilica, he was consecrated as a bishop by the Pope, assisted by Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello and Bishop Brian Farrell, a fellow member of the Legion of Christ.
