Luigi Maglione

Early career and education

Born in Casoria, Maglione was educated at the Almo Collegio Capranica and Pontifical Gregorian University, from where he obtained doctorates in philosophy and theology, in Rome. He was ordained a priest on 25July 1901, and then did pastoral work in the Archdiocese of Naples until 1903.

Maglione studied at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy from 1905 to 1907; he later taught there from 1915 to 1918. He served an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State from 1908 to 1918, rising to become a Privy Chamberlain (17June 1910) and a Domestic Prelate (22February 1918). He was also a provisional papal representative to the League of Nations and a special papal envoy to Switzerland.

Nunciatures

On 1 September 1920, Maglione was appointed Nuncio to Switzerland and Titular Archbishop of Cesarea di Palestina by Pope Benedict XV. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 26September from Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, with Archbishops Bonaventura Cerretti and Lorenzo Schioppa serving as co-consecrators, in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Maglione was named Apostolic Nuncio to France on 23June 1926. In France he was initially considered pro-German, but became so trusted by the French Government that he was reported to have had a hand in the Hoare-Laval Pact during the Italo-Ethiopian War. During his nunciature in France, on 25 July 1930, Maglione ordained Yves Congar to the priesthood.

Cardinal Secretary of State

Pope Pius XI created him Cardinal-Priest of Santa Pudenziana in the consistory of 16December 1935, and then Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Council on 22July 1938. Cardinal Maglione was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1939 papal conclave, which selected Pope Pius XII. Pius XII, who was a former schoolmate of Maglione's, tapped Maglione to succeed him as Vatican Secretary of State on 10 March 1939.

His tenure as Secretary of State included most of World War II and the Holocaust, much of his work being documented in the eleven volumes of the Holy See's wartime documents, Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. After falling under Nazi occupation, Lithuania appealed to the Vatican to reintegrate its dioceses into the country and replace its bishops, to which Maglione responded, "The government of Kaunas should appreciate, that the Holy See cannot run behind armies and change bishops as combatant troops occupy new territories belonging to countries other than their own."

Cardinal Maglione died a year before the war's end in Casoria from neuritis and circulatory ailments. Upon his death, Pius XII assumed the duties of the office himself, with assistance from Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Battista Montini (who later became Pope Paul VI).

He vigorously defended Pius XII's wartime diplomacy, once declaring, "If you ask why the documents sent by the Pontiff to the Polish bishops have not been made public, know that it seems better in the Vatican to follow the same norms, the Polish bishops themselves follow...Isn’t this what has to be done? Should the father of Christianity increase the misfortunes of Poles in their own country?" The relationship between Maglione and the Pontiff was so close that Italians were known to joke that whenever Pius XII went out without his maglione (Italian for "sweater"), he caught cold.

References

References

1. TIME Magazine. [https://web.archive.org/web/20121026071051/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789536,00.html?iid=chix-sphere The Triple Tiara] 20 March 1939
2. Blet 73
3. Blet 84
4. TIME Magazine. [https://web.archive.org/web/20081214221945/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885713,00.html Milestones] 4 September 1944