Cardinal Casaroli dead The Vatican Secretary of State strengthened links with the Eastern bloc Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican Secretary of State who worked to restore ties between the Catholic Church and eastern Europe, died on Tuesday at a Rome clinic at the age of 84. Casaroli had suffered poor health since his retirement from the Vatican in 1991. Casaroli was ordained in 1937 and joined the Vatican's state secretariat in 1940. Following an academic career in the 1950s, teaching "diplomatic style" in the Vatican, he was appointed ecclesiastical envoy by Pope John XXIII in 1961. Two years later, he began a series of important visits to eastern Europe, and in 1964 signed an accord with Hungary, the Vatican's first with a Communist country. Two years later he inked a protocol with the Yugoslav government. In 1967 Pope Paul VI named Casaroli secretary of the congregation for extraordinary ecclesiastical affairs; shortly thereafter he became an archbishop. He was later appointed head of the Vatican commission for Russia and a member of commissions on Latin America, the revision of canon law, and supervision of the Vatican bank IOR, among others. On an historic visit to Moscow in 1971 he was the first Vatican official to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty; in 1975 he was in Helsinki for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe; in 1978 he conveyed Paul VI's message on disarmament to the United Nations. Casaroli was named Secre-tary of State, the highest Va-tican position, by Pope John Paul II on April 30, 1979; he was made a cardinal two months later. Returning to Moscow in 1988 for celebrations marking the millennium of Christianity, he met with President Michail Gorbachev and laid the groundwork for Gorbachev's subsequent visit to the Vatican and the restoration of diplomatic ties between the Vatican and the former Soviet Union. He retired in 1989 at the age of 75 but was kept on by the Pope for another two years, until June 29, 1991, when he was replaced by Cardinal Angelo Sodano. "Cardinal Casaroli was certainly a great Churchman and a quintessential diplomat," a statement issued this week by the Archdiocese of Toronto read. "He was a profoundly prayerful and spiritual man. The Universal Church, so well served by this faithful son, will miss his profound pastoral insight and wisdom."