Giuseppe Siri

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Giuseppe Cardinal Siri †
Church positions
See   Genoa (Emeritus)
Title   Archbishop Emeritus of Genoa
Period in office   May 14, 1946—July 6, 1987
Raised to cardinalate   January 12, 1953
Predecessor   Pietro Cardinal Boetto, SJ †
Successor   Giovanni Cardinal Canestri
Previous post  Auxiliary Bishop of Genoa
Personal
Date of birth   May 20, 1906
Place of birth   Genoa, Italy
Date of death   May 2, 1989
Place of death   Albaro, Italy
Styles of
Giuseppe Siri
Reference style His Eminence
Spoken style Your Eminence
Informal style Cardinal
See Genoa

His Eminence Giuseppe Cardinal Siri (May 20, 1906—May 2, 1989) was an Italian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Genoa from 1946 to 1987, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1953.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Giuseppe Siri was born in Genoa to Nicolò and Giulia (née Bellavista) Siri. He entered the Minor Seminary of Genoa on October 16, 1917, Genoa's Major Seminary in 1917, and then the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1926. He was ordained to the priesthood by Carlo Cardinal Minoretti on September 22, 1928. Siri furthered his studies at the Gregorian, from where he received a doctorate summa cum laude in theology, and did pastoral work at Rome from 1928 until the autumn of 1929. In his native Genoa, he originally served as a chaplain until he became Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Major Seminary in 1930, also teaching fundamental theology for a year, and went on to hold a number of pastoral, curial, and educational posts.

On March 14, 1944, he was appointed Titular Bishop of Liviade and Auxiliary Bishop of Genoa. Siri received his episcopal consecration on the following May 7 from Pietro Cardinal Boetto, SJ, at the cathedral of S. Lorenzo. He was promoted to Archbishop on May 14, 1946, and created Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria della Vittoria by Pope Pius XII in the consistory of January 12, 1953; he thereby became the youngest member of the College of Cardinals at that time.

Siri was noted for his staunchly conservative views. At the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), he sat on its Board of Presidency and, alongside Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, he was part of the association of traditional Council fathers named Coetus Internationalis Patrum. He was also opposed to collegiality[1] and innovation[2].

Pope John XXIII named Siri the first President of the Italian Episcopal Conference on October 12, 1959, and remained in that post until 1965. Siri, who had voted in the conclaves of 1958 and 1963, was also one of the cardinal electors in the August and October 1978 conclaves. He was a strong candidate for the papacy, or papabile, in all four conclaves, in which his support lay mostly with Curialists and other conservative cardinals[3]. Media reports[4] [5] suggested that Siri in fact topped the first count of votes in the August 1978 conclave but ultimately was beaten by Albino Cardinal Luciani, who became Pope John Paul I. Following John Paul I's death, Siri was the leading conservative candidate in opposition to Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, the Archbishop of Florence and leading liberal candidate. Vaticanologists suggested that the eventual winner, Karol Cardinal Wojtyła, who became Pope John Paul II, was chosen as a compromise candidate between the two. Shortly afterwards, Siri implied that he disapproved of Wojtyła's election[6].

In a biography of the Cardinal, Nicola Buonasorte reports that, while Siri was a friend of Archbishop Lefebvre, he disapproved of the latter's "schism from Rome" in 1988, appealing to him ("on his knees", the Cardinal wrote) not to take that step of unlawfully consecrating bishops. In the end, Siri admitted that there was no alternative to excommunicating the dissident French bishop. The biographer comments: "In all probability, it is due to Siri that Lefebvre had no significant following in Italy" (Siri, il cardinale dell'Ostpolitik segreta in Corriere della Sera, 13 December 2006).

The same book recalls how Siri seems to have turned a blind eye to the assistance given by one or two of his clergy to members of the German National Socialist Party, including Adolf Eichmann, fleeing to South America after the Second World War. It stresses, however, that this was out of compassion for people in difficulties, and quite unconnected with his well-known conservative views, in spite of which he conducted a personal "Ostpolitik" of contacts with the Soviet embassy in favour of the Church in Eastern Europe, without informing Pius XII of these contacts.

Siri resigned from his post in Genoa on July 6, 1987, after 41 years of service. He died in Villa Campostano, Genoa, at age 83, and was buried at San Lorenzo metropolitan cathedral in Genoa.

[edit] Conclave speculation

It has been claimed[citation needed] that Siri received the majority vote in a papal conclave twice: in 1958 and 1963 (even announcing after his acception that he wished to be known as Pope Gregory XVII) but that on both occasions, when faced with warnings that Catholics in the Eastern Bloc would face persecution on account of his fiercely anti-Soviet Union opinions in the event of his assuming the papacy, he then declined the office. Given that the conduct of conclaves is strictly confidential and that any cardinal revealing such details would face automatic excommunication, no documentary evidence has ever substantiated or disproved the widely claimed rumour. Cardinal Siri himself denied these rumours repeatedly. However, irregularities were claimed to have occured at the 1958 conclave by Eugène Cardinal Tisserant, secretary of the conclave.[citation needed] Other rumours maintain that Grégoire-Pierre Agagianian, a prominent Armenian rite cardinal, was also elected to pope in 1958. Rumors and speculation about the 1958 and 1963 conclaves may receive added attention because it was during this time that the Vatican II reforms were articulated, and these were the most sweeping changes to the liturgy in nearly 500 years. Additionally, the 1978 conclaves produced one of the shortest and one of the longest papacies (John Paul served less than a month yet John Paul II nearly 27 years).

Although claimed by one sedevacantist group that he had actually been elected to the papacy in 1958 and 1963, only to be displaced by Angelo Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) and then Giovanni Battista Montini (Pope Paul VI)[7], Siri entirely submitted to the authority of the official popes and remained in full communion with the Church, refusing to support any sedevacantist organization. One small sedevacantist group, centered in Houston, Texas still claims him to have been the actual pope, despite Siri's own silence as to this claim. This small group, known as "Sirianists", have yet to offer any reasonable explanation[8] for the fact that Siri failed to support the Traditionalist Catholic movement, that he recognized John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II as legitimate popes and made public acts of obedience to all of them at the Vatican,[citation needed] that despite his conservatism used the Mass according to the reformed 1970 Roman Missal and the other revised sacraments, and that he signed all of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. The Cardinal even somewhat defended the Council, as long as it was interpreted in the light of Tradition, though he did admit that, "If the Church were not divine, this Council would have buried it"[9]. To explain Siri's silence as to what happened in the conclaves, supporters of the Siri Thesis have suggested that Siri was silenced by the conspirators' use of the Seal of the Confessional[10]. This method of silencing prelates has been suggested by other literature.

[edit] Trivia

  • Siri was deeply involved with the Italian resistance movement and Azione Cattolica[11].
  • He was once known as the "Minestrone Cardinal" for his soup-kitchen relief work on Genoa's Communist-infested docks[12].
  • A cardinal elector in four different conclaves, Siri once said, "One does not feel very comfortable in a conclave. In a certain sense, one is buried alive"[13].
  • In the movie Godfather III, during the election of the Pope John Paul I, 11 votes are cast for a "Siri".
  • Before he turned age 80 on May 20, 1986, Siri was the last cardinal created by Pius XII who remained eligible to vote in a conclave.

[edit] References

[edit] Literature

  • Buonasorte, Nicola. Siri. Tradizione e Novecento. Il Mulino, 2006
  • Siri, Giuseppe. Getsemani: Riflessioni sul movimento teologico contemporaneo. Rome: Rostampa, 1980.
  • Lai, Benny. Il Papa non eletto: Giuseppe Siri, cardinale di Santa Romana Chiesa. Rome: Laterza, 1993.

[edit] Online

  1. ^ Time Magazine. A "Foreign" Pope October 30, 1978
  2. ^ Time Magazine. The Princes of the Church March 30, 1962
  3. ^ Ibid.
  4. ^ National Catholic Reporter. How a Pope is Elected 2005
  5. ^ Time Magazine. How Pope John Paul I Won September 11, 1978
  6. ^ Time Magazine. A "Foreign" Pope October 30, 1978
  7. ^ The Pope in Red. The Siri Thesis
  8. ^ Inside the Vatican. The "Siri Thesis" Unravels
  9. ^ Statement, apud Lucio Brunelli, 30 Days. Sep. 1993: p. 50
  10. ^ Eclipse Cardinal Siri Asks God For Forgiveness
  11. ^ Time Magazine. 24 Hats December 8, 1952
  12. ^ Time Magazine. Papal Possibilities October 8, 1958
  13. ^ Time Magazine. A Swift, Stunning Choice September 4, 1978

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


Preceded by
Pietro Cardinal Boetto		 Archbishop of Genoa
1946—1987		 Succeeded by
Giovanni Cardinal Canestri
Preceded by
none		 President of the Italian Episcopal Conference
1959—1965		 Succeeded by
unknown
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