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The Foreign Ministry is responsible for the State’s functions, tasks and duties in matters concerning Italy’s political, economic, social and cultural relations with other countries.
Its duty, therefore, is to ensure that the international and European activities of Italy’s other ministries and government offices are consistent with the country’s international policy objectives.
About the Ministry's history : http://www.esteri.it/mae/en/ministero/il_mae

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ottoman Turkish: Hariciye Nezâreti) was the department of the Imperial Government responsible for the foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire, from its establishment in 1836 to its abolition in 1922. Before 1836, foreign relations were managed by the Reis ül-Küttab, who was replaced by a Western-style ministry as part of the Tanzimat modernization reforms. The successor of the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Turkish Republic.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs included three departments. The Asian Department was the only one created on a geographical basis. It focused on the Oriental Russian policy, on the Russian subjects business in the East, and on the training of translators and dragomans for Russian missions in the area. The Asian Department (renamed after the First Department in 1897) consisted in two sections: the Far East and the Middle East. In the Middle Eastern section, an office called the Political Table was in charge of enciphering and deciphering telegrams, and also the Slavic, Greek, and Turkish Tables (later, the Persian, and other tables were formed. At each table worked two or three persons.
The ministry supervised the activity of Russian presence in the world, among them the Russian Embassy in Constantinople and the Russian Consulate in Jerusalem (founded in 1858).
Until the Crimean War, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was taking care of the Russian pilgrims in accordance with Russian authorities. In exchange, the Russian Embassy in Constantinople provided diplomatic and political support for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. In fact, since 1820, the only Russian diplomatic mission in Palestine had been the vice-consulate in Jaffa. From 1838, Jerusalem was under the jurisdiction of the Russian Consulate General in Beirut, which was responsible for the entire Palestine. In 1847, Saint Petersburg sent to the Holy City the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission (REM) to control Russian pilgrims, and to become a direct channel of ecclesiastic communication between the Russian Synod and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. The REM suspended its activities during the Crimean war; and, in 1857, it revived under the guidance of Bishop Cyril Naumov (1857-1863) who replaced Archimandrite Porphyry Ouspensky (1847-1854).
The objective of the REM under Bishop Cyril, according to a project of the minister of foreign affairs Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov (1856-1882), was to serve Russia’s ecclesiastic and diplomatic interests in Palestine, which, in practice, meant that the mission had a political role to play. Since there was still no consulate in Jerusalem, Bishop Cyril was receiving instructions and tasks from three different sources: a) the Minister of Foreign Affairs, b) the Director of the Asian Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and c) the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople. The head of the REM was sending his reports to these three different structures, whereas the Consul General in Beirut was instructed to provide him regular support and assistance. The mission, as an ecclesiastic institution, was subordinate to the Synod of the Russian Church, but, from 1857 till 1862, it was under the control of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During the nineteenth century, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held three different archives: the St Petersburg Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the State Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg, and also the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MGAMID). In the oldest Moscow Archive (it was founded on the base of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs in 1724) the main documents on the Russian history till the early-nineteenth century were kept; later, the collections passed to the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA). In the Saint Petersburg State archive (also called the State Archive of the Russian Empire, founded from documents of non-diplomatic character on the base of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1834), they kept materials on the tsar family, notorious criminal trials, industry, culture, and history of peoples of Russia. In 1864, the State Archive of the Russian Empire was united with the Saint Petersburg Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; later, its collections passed to the RGADA.
But the main documents on the current activity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including those on the activity of the Consulate in Jerusalem, were kept in the Saint Petersburg Main Archive, materials of which passed to the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire. Its collections were shaped according the principle of the provenance of documents, and their topics.

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Ms. Rebecca Gertrude Affachiner was born in New York City in 1884. In 1934 she settled in Palestine, where she lived – except for extended trips abroad – until her death in 1966. She was an active figure in Jewish public service in the United States until 1934 and in Israel from the time of her aliya to the mid 1950’s.
Affachiner attended the School of Philanthropy and Art School in New York. She was the first teacher to graduate from the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York City; she took special courses at Columbia and Yale Universities and Hartford College of Law, etc. She began her career in social work as an investigator for the United Hebrew Charities, New York City, later serving as Assistant Superintendent at Beth Israel Hospital, Y.W.H.A. Superintendent Columbia Religious and Industrial School for Jewish Girls; leader of girl's clubs at the Educational Alliance, Recreation Rooms and Settlements, etc. She was the first woman to act as chaplain in a State Institution, serving in that capacity at the New York State Training School, Hudson, N.Y., under the auspices of the New York Section, Council of Jewish Women.
During World War I, Affachiner was Assistant Regional Director of the American Embarkation Center, Le Man, leaving for France with the first women's unit of the Jewish Welfare Board. Upon her return from service overseas, she conducted a survey for Child Welfare for the United Jewish Aid Society of Brooklyn, N.Y., later making a study of the problem of the Jewish blind, in the same city. For six years, she served as Superintendent of the United Jewish Charities in Hartford and was actively interested in the Connecticut State School for the Blind. Being a pioneer in work among juvenile delinquents, she was responsible for the earliest developments of the Jewish Big Sisters Movement in New York City, and founded the Jewish Big Sister and Big Brother Organizations in Hartford shortly after coming there in 1920.
In May 1923 Affachiner was appointed a Juvenile Commissioner of the City of Hartford, and in 1924 Governor Templeton chose her to represent the State of Connecticut at the International Conference of Social Workers, meeting in Toronto, Canada. She also served as Vice President of the New England Social Workers, Secretary of the Advisory Board, Y.M. and Y.M.H.A. of Hartford Director of the Travelers Aid Society in that city. In 1926 she made a tour of Palestine, Egypt, Italy, and the Near East; upon her return to America she was appointed the first National Field Secretary of Hadassah, of which she was a charter member. From 1929 to 1934 Affachiner was Director of Jewish Social Service for Greater Norfolk Va. Under the Auspices of the Norfolk Section National Council of Jewish Women, she also founded and directed Council House, the first Jewish Community Center in that city.
In 1929 she was elected to represent Norfolk at the World Zionist Congress held in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1934 after resigning her post in Norfolk, Ms. Affachiner returned to Palestine. Shortly after her arrival in Jerusalem she organized the Palestine Society for Crippled Children (later ALYN), acting as its Director of Social Service and in whose interest she made a trip around the world. In 1937 she helped organize the Rumanian Settlers’ Association (Hitahdut Olei Rumania) of which she became the Director, and in whose interest she had visited Rumania and the USA 1937-38.
1939 she was the only woman asked to serve on the Executive Vaad of the Child Placement Bureau Jerusalem – Miklat Dati. She was one of the Jewish Charter Members of the American Association of Social Workers, International Conference of Social Work. She is listed in "Who's Who among American Jews" American Hebrew, 1923, and "Women of 1924" – International.
Affachiner traveled extensively throughout the world. In 1924 she went to Mexico to study the conditions under which the Jews lived there, and the possibilities for settling the Polish Jewish refugees flocking, not only there and to Cuba, but to other Central American countries as well. In 1925 she went to Spain and Portugal, being interested in the problem of the modern Marranos. In 1930 she visited South America, in 1931 she went to Poland and in 1932 to Soviet Russia, being primarily interested in the Jewish problem in these countries.