Word: gasparri
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...service of the Church, learned in its laws, astute in its temporal business of diplomacy, is his eminence Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, 77, for 15 years papal Secretary of State. Last week, as often before, he submitted his resignation to his master and onetime protégé, Pope Pius XI. Thought he: I have finished my last and greatest work, the concordat between the Papacy and the Italian State; I will spend my remaining years in the villa the Pope has given me overlooking the Coliseum; there I will codify the canon law of the Oriental churches. This time Pius...
Scion of well-to-do sheep-owners in the Umbrian hills, Pietro Gasparri (not to be confused with his nephew, Enrico Cardinal Gasparri) studied for the priesthood at Nepi, then at the Pontifical Seminary in Rome. There he attracted the favorable attention of potent Cardinal Mertel, Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, became his secretary. Soon he was professor of Canon Law at the famed Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (TIME, Nov. 18). In 1898 he was elected archbishop, went to Lima as apostolic delegate for Peru, Bolivia & Ecuador. In 1901 he was called to be secretary of the Congregation...
Learned indeed is Cardinal Gasparri. Greatest living authority on canon law, in 13 years he codified its chaos. Once he might have been Pope. When Benedict XV died (1922), it was said that Gasparri received 28 votes on the first ballot, withdrew in favor of Achille Cardinal Ratti who had become through Gasparri's influence first papal librarian, then cardinal. Climax of the Gasparrian career was the Lateran Treaty with the Italian State, restoring in part the temporal sovereignty and possessions of the Pope, ending the 59-year-long papal "imprisonment." His resignation will probably not take effect before...