He became a specialist in the history of contemporary atheism and subsequently earned a doctorate in canon and civil law at the Pontifical Lateran University.
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Born to a wealthy family in Boltiere, in the province of Bergamo, Testa attended the Pontifical Lateran University, Pontifical Roman Athenaeum S. Apollinare, and Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.
He was ordained honorary archbishop of Tikrit in 1986 and later spent several years in Europe where he received his doctorate from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome for his thesis on Christian communities under Islamic rule.
He graduated from the Pontifical Lateran University and the University of Naples, and then entered the Roman Curia in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 1969.