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Giuseppe Siri

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Template:Infobox cardinalbiog

Styles of
Giuseppe Cardinal Siri
Reference styleHis Eminence
Spoken styleYour Eminence
Informal styleCardinal
SeeGenoa (emeritus)

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 by Pope Pius XII.

Biography

The authoritative biography of Siri was written by Raimondo Spiazzi [1] 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, Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani and Thomas Cardinal Cooray he was part of the association of traditional Council fathers named Coetus Internationalis Patrum. He was also opposed to collegiality[2] and innovation[3].

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[4]. Media reports[5] [6] 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[7].

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" (words of Buonasorte) in 1988, appealing to him ("on his knees", the Cardinal wrote) not to take that step of unlawfully consecrating bishops. In the end, Siri - again, according to Buonasorte - admitted that there was no alternative to excommunicating the dissident French bishop. Buonasorte however fails to deal with the question that the excommunication pronounced after the episcopal consecrations at Ecône was said to have been latae sententiae, not ferendae sententiae, and that the problems surrounding the decree Ecclesia Dei are not addressed by Siri.

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. Cardinal Siri during the war had supported Christian-Democrat Italian resistance financially and morally. He also aided and sheltered some of his priests who tried to help rescue threatened Jews to safe and neutral Spain.

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.

Conclave speculation

Main article: Siri Thesis

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 occurred 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 1000 years. Additionally, the 1978 conclaves produced one of the shortest and one of the longest papacies (John Paul I served only 34 days, 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)[8], 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[9] 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 remark that, "If the Church were not divine, this Council would have buried it"[10]. 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[11]. This method of silencing prelates has been suggested by other literature.

References

  1. ^ Raimondo Spiazzi, Il Cardinale Guiseppe Siri, Edizioni Studio Dominicani, Bologna, 1990
  2. ^ Time Magazine. A "Foreign" Pope October 30, 1978
  3. ^ Time Magazine. The Princes of the Church March 30, 1962
  4. ^ Ibid.
  5. ^ National Catholic Reporter. How a Pope is Elected 2005
  6. ^ Time Magazine. How Pope John Paul I Won September 11, 1978
  7. ^ Time Magazine. A "Foreign" Pope October 30, 1978
  8. ^ The Pope in Red. The Siri Thesis
  9. ^ Inside the Vatican. The "Siri Thesis" Unravels
  10. ^ Statement, apud Lucio Brunelli, 30 Days. Sep. 1993: p. 50
  11. ^ Eclipse Cardinal Siri Asks God For Forgiveness

Bibliography

  • Raimondo Spiazzi, Il Cardinale Giuseppe Siri, Edizioni Studio Dominicani, Bologna, 1990
  • 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.

See also

Preceded by Archbishop of Genoa
1946—1987 		Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the Italian Episcopal Conference
1959—1965 		Succeeded by
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