Ernesto Civardi

Ernesto Civardi (21 October 1906 – 28 November 1989) was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops from 1967 to 1979, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1979.

Civardi was born in Fossarmato, Pavia, and studied at the seminary in Pavia before being ordained to the priesthood on 29 June 1930. He then entered the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, from where he obtained his doctorate in canon law. He became a lawyer of the legal section of the Roman Rota as well. His elder brother Luigi (1886–1971) became a bishop in 1962.

Civardi served as Vice-Rector of the Pontifical Lombard Seminary in Rome from 1932 to 1934, when he began pastoral work in Rome and became an official of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation. He was raised to the rank of Domestic Prelate of His Holiness on 15 July 1950, and was Substitute (1953–1965) and Undersecretary (1965–1967) of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation. Civardi was also named Commissary of the Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments and Promoter of Justice on the Vatican City Tribunal in 1953. He later became a referendary (18 November 1958) and voting prelate (10 October 1962) of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature, and served as a peritus, or theological expert, at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). From 1965 to 1967, he was Counselor of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.