degree awarded on the basis of a short dissertation and an oral examination in Latin. Church career Priest and monsignor While all other candidates from the Rome diocese were ordained in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, Pacelli was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, 2 April 1899 alone in the private chapel of a family friend the Vicegerent of Rome, Francesco di Paola Cassetta. Shortly after ordination he began postgraduate studies in canon law at Sant'Apollinaire. He received his first assignment as a curate at Chiesa Nuova. In 1901, he entered the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a sub-office of the Vatican Secretariat of State. Pietro Gasparri, the recently appointed undersecretary at the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, had underscored his proposal to Pacelli to work in the "Vatican's equivalent of the Foreign office" by highlighting the "necessity of defending the Church from the onslaughts of secularism and liberalism throughout Europe". Pacelli became an apprendista, an apprentice, in Gasparri's department. In January 1901 he was also chosen, by Pope Leo XIII himself, according to an official account, to deliver condolences on behalf of the Vatican to King Edward VII of the UK after the death of Queen Victoria. By 1904 Pacelli received his doctorate. The theme of his thesis was the nature of concordats and the function of canon law when a concordat falls into abeyance. Promoted to the position of minutante, he prepared digests of reports that had been sent to the Secretariat from all over the world and in the same year became a papal chamberlain. In 1905 he received the title domestic prelate. From 1904 until 1916, he assisted Cardinal Pietro Gasparri in his codification of canon law with the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. According to John Cornwell "the text, together with the Anti-Modernist Oath, became the means by which the Holy See was to establish and sustain the new, unequal, and unprecedented power relationship that had arisen between the papacy and the Church". In 1908, Pacelli served as a Vatican representative on the International Eucharistic Congress, accompanying Rafael Merry del Val to London, where he met Winston Churchill. In 1911, he represented the Holy See at the coronation of King George V. Pacelli became the under-secretary in 1911, adjunct-secretary in 1912 (a position he received under Pope Pius X and retained under Pope Benedict XV), and secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in