Federico Tedeschini was an Italian cardinal of the Holy Roman Church who served as papal datary in the Roman Curia from 1938 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1933 in pectore by Pope Pius XI.

The Secretariat of State is the oldest dicastery in the Roman Curia, the central papal governing bureaucracy of the Catholic Church. It is headed by the Cardinal Secretary of State and performs all the political and diplomatic functions of the Holy See. The Secretariat is divided into three sections: the Section for General Affairs, the Section for Relations with States, and, since 2017, the Section for Diplomatic Staff.