1. Bruno Bernard Heim was a Swiss prelate and Latin Titular Archbishop of Xanthus, a long-serving diplomat of the Holy See who among other appointments was Apostolic Delegate to Great Britain, and later Apostolic Pro-Nuncio, and eventually Apostolic Nuncio, serving until his retirement as a diplomat in 1985.
Bruno Heim published five books on heraldry and was responsible for designing the coats of arms of four popes.
Bruno Heim was Grand Prior of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George.
Bruno Bernard Heim was born in Olten, Switzerland, the son of a stationmaster, Bernard, and his wife, Elisabeth Heim-Studer.
Bruno Heim was introduced to heraldry at the age of 16 when a college professor persuaded him to illustrate a book the professor was writing.
In 1934 Bruno Heim was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at the Pontifico Collegio Internazionale Angelicum in Rome, and went on to study theology in Rome, at Freiburg University and at Solothurn, Switzerland.
Bruno Heim was ordained a priest in 1938 and worked as a curate in two Swiss parishes.
Bruno Heim stayed in Paris for four years, during which time the two of them laid the foundations for a renaissance of heraldry in the Roman Catholic Church.
Bruno Heim was next sent to the Vienna Nunciature in 1951.
Bruno Heim was known as a personal friend of the Queen Mother, and he liked to gossip with journalists.
When Pope John Paul II visited Great Britain in 1982, the United Kingdom and the Vatican had established full diplomatic relations, and Bruno Heim became the Apostolic Pro-Nuncio, the Vatican's first fully-fledged ambassador to the Court of St James's since the Reformation.
When Bruno Heim was sent to Vienna in 1951 he maintained close contact with Archbishop Roncalli, who commissioned him to design his new coat of arms as Patriarch of Venice.
The new Pope asked Bruno Heim to be the head of a new heraldic secretary in the Vatican but Bruno Heim not only declined, but advised against such an authority.
Archbishop Bruno Heim served as patron of Cambridge University Heraldic and Genealogical Society from 1980 until his death in 2003 at the age of 92 in Olten.