Dario Edoardo Viganò (born 27 June 1962) is an Italian Catholic priest, writer and university teacher. He was named Director of Vatican Television Center in 2013. He served as the first Prefect of the newly established Secretariat for Communications from 27 June 2015 to 21 March 2018, resigning "a week after his mishandling of a letter from retired Pope Benedict XVI provoked a global outcry". Career Viganò was born 27 June 1962 in Rio de Janeiro to Italian parents. Following studies in philosophy and theology at the University of Milan, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on 13 June 1987 by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Archbishop of Milan. In 1997, he completed his doctorate at ISCOS, the communication institute of the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome (now the Faculty of the Sciences of Social Communication) on the theme: Chiesa e cinema. L'emblematico caso della diocesi di Milano (1894-1979). During and after his doctoral studies, he worked at the Office for Social Communications of the Milan archdiocese. He was involved primarily in the cinema and community cinema halls. In 1998, he became a member of the Italian Episcopal Conference. In the second half of the 1990s he taught Ethics and the Deontology of the Media at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. In 1998 he began teaching Semiology of Cinema and Audio-visual Technology in Rome and Semiotics and Business Communications at the faculty of Communication Studies at LUMSA University. From 2000 on, he taught at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome where he was made professor of Communication Theory and dean of the Redemptor hominis Institute. He is also Director of the Centro Interdisciplinare Lateranense, and professor at the Institute of Religious Sciences "Ecclesia Mater". Since 2005 he has been a lecturer in Semiology of Cinema and Audiovisual Technology and Cinema Theory and Techniques at the faculty of Political Science and Communication Studies at the LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. He was made a member of the Pontifical Academy of Theology and of the scientific board of the Centre for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) "Massimo Baldini". He is also a member of the scientific board of the CMCS-LUISS Working Papers Series. On 22 January 2013 he was named director of the Vatican Television Center and secretary of its board of administration. On 29 September 2016, Pope Francis named him a member of the Congregation for the