Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro
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| Styles of Giacomo Lercaro |
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| Reference style | His Eminence |
| Spoken style | Your Eminence |
| Informal style | Cardinal |
| See | Bologna |
Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro (born October 28, 1891, Quinto al Mare, archdiocese of Genoa, Italy; died October 18, 1976, Bologna, Italy) was one of the major architects of the Second Vatican Council and a close associate of Pope John XXIII. He was considered papabile in the 1958 and 1963 papal conclaves.
Giacomo Lercaro was the eighth of nine chidren to a devout family of very modest seamen: two of his brothers also became priests, one of whom (Attilio Lercaro) was present at his funeral. He began his seminary studies in 1902 and after being ordained studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute for a year before World War I forced him to change posts and become a military chaplain in Genoa until the war ended. Along with his brother Father Amadeo Lercaro who was rector of the seminary, Lercaro was Prefect of the Seminary of Genoa after this, but in 1927 he became a teacher of religion in secondary school and became involved in numerous student movements in the Genoa district.
His involvement in these student movements gave Giacomo Lercaro a great interest in engaging Catholic theology with modern culture, and during the war Lercaro became the most prominent anti-fascists within the Catholic Church, preaching steadfastly against Nazism and offering support in his home for those persecuted by Mussolini - most notably for Italian Jews whose persecution began as a result of Italy's collaboration with Nazi Germany. At one point during World War II Lercaro was forced to operate under the alias of "Father Lorenzo Gusmini" and live in a vacant monastery cell to avoid being killed by Nazi collaborators.
After the war, Giacomo Lercaro's reputation as an outspoken critic of Nazism and Fascism is believed to be a contributing factor in Pope Pius XII's decision to make the 55-year old parish priest Archbishop of Ravenna, then regarded as the most strongly Communist city in Italy. (In a historical irony, he was consecrated by Giuseppe Siri, who was to be on his opposite side in the two following conclaves). His skill and social concern was such that within his diocese the Communist vote halved at the next election! This success saw Giacomo Lercaro posted to the prestigious archdiocese of Bologna - then the biggest Italian city still ran by Communists - and on January 12, 1953 he was made a cardinal as was customary for Archbishops of Bologna.
During his early years as a cardinal, Giacomo Lercaro established his first contacts with Angelo Roncalli - the two quickly came to admire each other - and became well-known for the way in which he turned his episcopal palace into an orphanage. Although Giacomo Lercaro had been seen by Vatican-watchers ever since 1953 as a possible successor to Pius XII and was listed by l'Osservatore Romano editor Giuseppe dalla Torre as a papabile, his repuation as the most idiosyncratic of all the Cardinals and the desire for a transitional pontiff saw him passed over.
Even though Giacomo Lercaro felt that Pope John was moving much too quickly when he first announced the Second Vatican Council in late 1959, he later became reagrded as the main architect and author of that Coucil's liturgical reforms. Cardinal Lercaro was also the first to popularise the theory of a "church of the poor" that developed further in Latin America during the 1970s.
Although Cardinal Lercaro was generally considered the papabile in the 1963 conclave closest to the vision of John XXIII, he was considered much too liberal by most cardinals in that conclave to be elected: in the end Giovanni Battista Montini, effectively a compromise candidate, won comfortably. Although Cardinal Lercaro did much vital work in the implementation of the Council after it closed in 1965, his advancing age saw him gradually diappear from prominence within the Church as the 1960s drew to a close. In 1968 Cardinal Lercaro stepped down from his position as Archbishop of Bolgna and in 1971 he lost his right to participate in any future conclave upon reaching the age of eighty according to the then-recent motu proprio Ingravescentem aetatem. He died in Bologna ten days before his 85th birthday as was buried in the metropolitan cathedral of that city.
