He was the nephew of Cardinal Giovanni Evangelista Pallotta who left him a considerable inheritance[1] which allowed him to be educated and take up an ecclesiastic career in Rome.

[1] Pallotta had decreed that no person should be masked on the Via del Corso during carnivale and ascribed punishments of imprisonment and public flagellation should anyone fail to comply.

Upon hearing this, Cardinal Antonio Barberini (the Pope's nephew, who Bargrave suggested was a client of Buffona) demanded she be released.

Pallotta complied but not before ordering that Buffona be publicly whipped before Barberini could reach the prison to oversee her release.

There, in an effort to uphold ecclesiastic jurisdiction over the Portuguese court, he attempted to excommunicate every member of the King's Council.