The pope's colourful protection force, the Swiss Guards, got a new leader on Tuesday - policeman, army captain and former law lecturer Daniel Rudolf Anrig.
Anrig, 36, replaces Elmar Theodor Maeder who has headed the world's smallest army since 2002.
Pope Benedict XVI personally appointed Anrig, until now police chief in the Swiss canton of Glarus.
He will take up his command on December 1.
Anrig, who is married with four children, served in the Guards from 1992 to 1994 before going home and getting a degree in civil and church law at the University of Freiburg.
He was assistant lecturer in civil law there until 2001, before serving as head of criminal investigations in Glarus Canton from 2002 to 2006.
He was named a captain in the Swiss army that year and also became the commander-in-chief of Glarus's police corps.
According to the Italian press, Anrig's predecessor Maeder turned down a second five-year mandate because he was unhappy that some Vatican security duties would be handed to its second protection service, the Vatican Gendarmerie.
The Swiss Guards celebrated its 500th anniversary in 2006.
The elite corps is famous for its distinctive yellow-and-blue uniform which, as the first official history of the Guards recently stressed, was not designed by Michelangelo, as widely believed.
The Guards get their recruits from a group of Swiss towns and villages which for centuries have provided the pope's personal corps.
During the Middle Ages and in Renaissance times, the Swiss had the reputation of being Europe's most reliable mercenaries - tough fighters who hardly ever changed sides.
They famously proved their worth during the Sack of Rome in 1527, when 147 Guards laid down their lives to protect Pope Clement VII from the rampaging army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
The 110-strong Swiss Guards have strict recruitment terms.
Candidates have to be single males over the age of 18, at least 1.74m tall, and practising Catholics ''of stainless character''.
They also have to have completed their compulsory military service in Switzerland.
