Cardinal Giovanni Coppa, an expert Latinist and former nuncio, died May 16 at the age of 90.

He served as a Latinist at the Second Vatican Council and later worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State, which had taken over the duties of the Apostolic Chancery.

Late in 1979, St. John Paul II named him an archbishop and personally ordained him a bishop in early 1980. Given the task of promoting communications between the Vatican and its diplomatic missions abroad, “he visited all of the nunciatures, traveling all the way around the world five times,” said his official Vatican biography.

He served as nuncio first to Czechoslovakia and then to the Czech Republic from 1990 until 2001, when he retired.

Pope Benedict XVI had made him a cardinal in 2007.

Cardinal Coppa’s death leaves the College of Cardinals with 214 members, 114 of whom are under the age of 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave.