Paolo Marella

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Styles of Paolo Cardinal Marella


Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Porto e Santa Rufina (suburbicarian)

Paolo Cardinal Marella (January 25, 1895—October 15, 1984) was an Italian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served in the Roman Curia following a career as a delegate of the Holy See, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1959.

[edit] Biography

Paolo Marella was born in Rome to Luigi and Vincenza (née Baldoni) Marella, and studied at the Pontifical Roman Seminary and the Royal University. He was ordained to the priesthood by Basilio Cardinal Pompilj on February 23, 1918, and then furthered his studies whilst doing pastoral work in Rome until 1922.

From 1922 to 1924, Marella was an official of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in the Roman Curia. He was raised to the rank of Privy Chamberlain of His Holiness on January 9, 1923, and later Domestic Prelate of His Holiness on April 5, 1933. He then served as auditor (1924-1933) and charge d'affaires (February to September 1933) of the Apostolic Delegation to the United States.

On September 15, 1933, Marella was appointed Titular Archbishop of Doclea by Pope Pius XI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following October 29 from Pietro Cardinal Fumasoni Biondi, with Archbishops Carlo Salotti and Domenico Spolverini serving as co-consecrators, at the chapel of Collegio de Propaganda Fide in Rome. Marella was named Apostolic Delegate to Japan the next day, on October 30. In 1942, when the Vatican accepted de facto diplomatic relations with Japan, Marella was given "full diplomatic privileges"^[1]. He was made Apostolic Delegate to Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania on October 27, 1948.

Also in the 1940s, Marella was sent to France as an agent of Pope Pius XII when he was aiming to stamp out the Worker-Priest movement that the Pope believed Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard had been supporting despite his protests otherwise. Although Suhard's death in 1949 greatly eased Pius's task, it was not until Marella succeeded Archbishop Angelo Roncalli as Nuncio to France on April 15, 1953 that the suppression was completed.

Pope John XXIII created Cardinal Priest of S. Andrea delle Fratte in the consistory of December 14, 1959. Appointed Archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica and Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Fabric of St. Peter's Basilica on August 14, 1961, Marella attended the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, and was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1963 papal conclave, which selected Pope Paul VI.

He acted as papal legate to the inauguration of the Vatican pavilion at the New York World's Fair on February 20, 1964, presiding over the unveiling of the Pietà and presenting Francis Cardinal Spellman with a topaz brooch once worn by Pius XII as a gift from Pope Paul^[2]. Marella returned home with four honorary doctorates, including one from the Catholic University of America, which had prohibited four liberal theologians from delivering lectures there the previous year, for which the conservative Cardinal Marella commended the university.

He became President of the Secretariat for Non-Christians on May 19, 1964, and again served as a papal legate, to the eighth centennial celebration of the erection of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris (May 27, 1964), to the centennial celebration for the arrival of the first Catholic missionaries in Japan in Tokyo (January 12, 1965), and to the National Congress of the Confederation of the Christian Doctrine in Pittsburgh (August 28, 1966).

In 1970, Marella served as the papal representative to Expo '70 in Osaka. His career then wound down during the 1970s, and he resigned his presidency of the Secretariat at the end of February 1973, whilst two years later he lost the right to vote in a papal conclave on reaching eighty. From December 12, 1977 until his death Marella was vice-dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals.