Luigi Lambruschini

Luigi Lambruschini

Luigi Lambruschini (6 March 1776 – 12 May 1854) was an Italian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in the mid nineteenth century.

Biography

He was born at Sestri Levante, then part of the independent Republic of Genoa. He joined a religious order called the Order of the Barnabites in his youth. He attended the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as secretary to Cardinal Ercole Consalvi.

Lambruschini was appointed Archbishop of Genoa in 1819. He was later named as Apostolic Nuncio to the Kingdom of France in 1827 by Pope Pius VII, but was forced to flee following the 1830 revolution that toppled the Bourbon monarchy and brought House of Orleans pretender Louis-Phillippe to the French throne.

He was made a cardinal in 1831, given the titular church of San Callisto on 24 February 1832.^[1] He served as Secretary of State under Pope Gregory XVI. He was the leading conservative candidate in the 1846 papal conclave. Though he received a majority of the votes initially, it was clear that he could not achieve the required two-thirds majority. He was eventually defeated by the liberal candidate, Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, the Archbishop (personal title) of Imola, who became Pope Pius IX.

Lambruschini was a particularly hated figure among the masonic republicans during the 1848 Revolutions that temporarily deposed Pope Pius IX. His house was ransacked and he was forced to flee for his life, disguised as a stablehand. He returned following the Pope's restoration. He died in Rome in 1854.

He was also the uncle of the Portuguese poet and philosopher, Raul Lambruschini de Sousa Leal.

See also

• Our Lady of La Salette

References