Rafael Merry del Val

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Giuseppe Felici : Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, 1914
Rafael Merry del Val as Apostolic Delegate in Canada in 1897
Cardinal coat of arms

Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val y Zulueta (born October 10, 1865 in London , England , † February 26, 1930 in the Vatican ) was Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church . Under the pontificate of Pius X. Merry del Val was cardinal state secretary and right-hand man of the Pope from 1903 to 1914 , since then he has been one of the most influential men in the Vatican .

Life

Rafael Merry del Val y Zulueta came from a Spanish noble family , some of whose ancestors came from Ireland . His father Rafael Merry del Val Gayte (1831-1917) was the Spanish envoy in London and lived in England until 1875 after the September Revolution in 1868 and the fall of Queen Isabella II . His mother Sofía Josefa de Zulueta Willcox (1839–1925) was an Englishwoman with Basque - Scottish roots. Rafael, who had four siblings, also born in London, went to school in Slough , Namur and Brussels . In 1883 he began to study philosophy and theology at St. Cuthbert's College in Ushaw near Durham , where he received minor orders , and two years later he entered the papal diplomatic academy. In 1886 he received his doctorate in philosophy from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome .

His father was the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See at that time and introduced him to Leo XIII. which marked the beginning of his diplomatic career. At the age of 21 he was appointed surplus papal secret chamberlain . In 1887 he was a member of the papal delegation sent to Great Britain on the occasion of Queen Victoria's golden jubilee . He was incardinated in the clergy of the diocese of Rome , where he was ordained deacon on May 27, 1888, and ordained a priest on December 30, 1888 . He then worked for two years as the personal secretary of Archbishop Luigi Galimberti , the Apostolic Nuncio in Munich and Vienna . He then continued his studies in Rome, obtained a licentiate in canon law and also received a doctorate in theology in 1891. In December 1891 he was appointed the real papal secret chamberlain and as such was a member of the papal family until 1898 .

In 1893 he returned to the Vienna nunciature for some time. He then became secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Review of the Validity of Anglican Orders, chaired by Cardinal Mazzellas, and drafted the draft of the Papal Bull Apostolicae Curae , issued in 1896 , which invalidated the orders of the Anglicans. In 1897 and 1898 he was sent to Canada as an Apostolic Delegate . In 1897 Pope Leo XIII appointed him. the House prelates , 1898 he was appointed a consultor of the Congregation of the Index appointed, and a year later gave him the Pope with 31 years head of the Pontifical Academy for church nobility , the Diplomatic School of the Vatican.

Grave in the grottoes of St. Peter in Rome

On April 19, 1900, Rafael Merry del Val y Zulueta was made titular archbishop of Nicaea . He received his episcopal ordination on May 6, 1900 in the Roman church of S. Maria in Via Monserrato, the then Cardinal Secretary of State Mariano Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro ; Co-consecrators were the English archbishop Edmond Stonor (1831-1912) and the papal sacristan Guglielmo Pifferi  OESA (1819-1910), titular bishop of Porphyreon .

Merry del Val directed several papal embassies in the following years. In the conclave of 1903 after the death of Leo XIII. he acted as conclave secretary and earned the trust of the newly elected Pope Pius X , who, to everyone's surprise, appointed the 38-year-old pro-state secretary because of his multilingualism and diplomatic experience . Only three months later, on November 9, 1903, he was accepted into the College of Cardinals as a cardinal priest with the titular church of Santa Prassede . At the same time, the Pope made him head of the prefecture of the Papal Palace .

Rafael Merry del Val, together with the church historian Umberto Benigni, was one of the most resolute advocates of Roman anti-modernism , which shaped the pontificate of Pope Pius X, who was later canonized and over whom he had great influence. In 1904 he became President of the Pontifical Commission for the Coordination of Welfare Issues of the Church, the Asset Management of the Holy See. From 1911 to 1912 he was Camerlengo of the College of Cardinals, from 1912 he also headed the administration of the Dombauhütte of St. Peter's Basilica . On January 12, 1914, he was awarded the title of Archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. On June 24, 1914, a few days before the outbreak of the July crisis , Merry del Val signed the Concordat between the Holy See and Serbia, which was largely prepared by Eugenio Pacelli , who was then secretary of the Merry del Val Congregation for Extraordinary Tasks of the Church . With the death of Pius X in August 1914 , the office of papal secretary of state ended in accordance with the provisions of canon law. Merry del Val took part in the 1914 conclave , which took place in the shadow of the war that had just broken out and from which the new Pope Benedict XV. emerged. Its agenda ran counter to the political and ecclesiastical goals of the curia faction that had previously ruled the Vatican under the leadership of Merry del Vall. The new Pope appointed Merry del Val to the barely influential offices of secretary of the Holy Office and president of the Academy for the Catholic Religion in Rome. As a papal legate , he also headed several embassies in Italy and abroad.

At the conclave in February 1922 , in which he participated as Camerlengo of the College of Cardinals, Merry del Val was one of the leaders of the "pious zealots" ( zelanti ) who opposed the more diplomatic party of "politicians" ( politicanti ) under Pietro Gasparri , a close confidante of the surprisingly deceased Benedict XV. As the new Pope, the compromise candidate Achille Ratti emerged from the election, which was named Pius XI. assumed.

During his pontificate, Rafael Merry del Val maintained his position as secretary of the Holy Office and participated in some of the Pope's decisions, in particular relating to relations with non-believers, ecumenism , dealing with dissenting opinions on doctrinal issues and religious art . In a decision subsequently confirmed by the Pope, he forbade the personifying representation of the Holy Spirit in the visual arts , both alone and in groups of three men who are supposed to embody the Trinity . Shortly before his death, he was one of the mainspring of the harsh rejection of a request for reform of the Good Friday prayers for the Jews by members of the Amici Israel association , which he enforced.

Due to an anesthetic failure, Rafael Merry del Val suffocated on February 26, 1930 during an appendectomy . The celebrations for his funeral in St.Peter's Basilica were led by the newly appointed Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli, who later became Pius XII. Became Pope. In his pontificate on February 26, 1953, a beatification process for Rafael Merry del Val was opened, but later suspended, and he was awarded the honorary title of Venerable Servant of God . His foreign language skills became famous: he spoke a total of 63 foreign languages ​​(including dialects), most of them fluently.

Otto Hierl-Deronco portrayed him several times in the Vatican, life-size, at his desk and as a bust with the cardinal's hat , which the Pope put on every cardinal at the time of his appointment. The double portrait of Pope Pius X with his Secretary of State became famous, because no artist had been allowed to portray the Pope with cardinals since the middle of the 16th century.

A well-founded scientific biography of Rafael Merry del Val, which covers all aspects of his life and work, has so far been lacking and remains a research desideratum.

Works

  • Pius X. Memories and impressions of his State Secretary. 4th edition Basel 1954.

literature

  • Giuseppe dalla Torre: The Cardinal of charity. Memorial discourse on the work and virtues of the late Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val. New York 1932.
  • Pio Cenci: Il Cardinale Raffaele Merry del Val. Rome 1933.
  • Vigilio Dalpiaz: Attraverso una porpora. Il cardinale Merry del Val. Turin 1935.
  • Rafael Figueroa Ortega: Una gloria de la iglesia. El Cardenal Rafael Merry del Val. Mexico 1937.
  • Girolamo dal Gal: Il cardinale Merry del Val.Segretario di Stato del Beato Pio X. Rome 1953.
  • Mary Bernetta Quinn: Give me souls. A life of Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val. Westminster 1958.
  • Girolamo dal Gal: The spiritual life of Cardinal Merry del Val. New York 1959.
  • Marie-Cecilia Buehrle: Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val. London 1957.
  • Johannes Grohe:  Rafael Merry del Val. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 1331-1333.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Jean LeBlanc: Dictionnaire biographique des évêques catholiques du Canada. Les diocèses catholiques canadiens des Églises latine et orientales et leurs évêques; repères chronologiques et biographiques, 1658-2002. Ottawa 2002, pp. 242-245.
  • Martin Bräuer: Handbook of the Cardinals. 1846-2012. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11037077-5 , p. 200 f.
  • Philippe Roy-Lysencourt: Le cardinal Rafaël Merry del Val (1865-1930). Aperçu biographique. Institut d'Étude du christianisme, Strasbourg 2016, ISBN 979-10-94867-02-0 ( review by François Bœspflug ).

Web links

Commons : Rafael Merry del Val  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernardo Rodríguez Caparrini: Alumnos españoles en el internado jesuita de Beaumont (Old Windsor, Inglaterra), 1874–1880. In: Miscelánea Comillas 70 (2012), No. 136, pp. 241–264 (here: p. 244).
  2. ↑ List of the Saints and the Blessed (Italian).
  3. ↑ François Böspflug: Review of: Philippe Roy Lysencourt, Le cardinal Rafael Merry del Val (1865-1930). Aperçu biographique. Strasbourg, Institut d'Étude du Christianisme, coll. «Études», 2016, 94 p. In: Archives de sciences sociales des religions , No. 184 (4/2018), pp. 358–359 (French, online ).
predecessor Office successor
Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro Cardinal Secretary of State
1903–1914 		Domenico Cardinal Ferrata
Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro Archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica
1914–1930 		Federico Cardinal Tedeschini
Domenico Cardinal Ferrata Secretary of the Holy Office
1914–1930 		Donato Raffaele Cardinal Sbarretti Tazza
personal data
SURNAME Merry del Val, Rafael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Merry del Val y Zulueta, Rafael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish clergyman, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1930
Place of death Vatican