Antonio Innocenti

Who was Antonio Innocenti?

Antonio Innocenti was a cardinal who was a mainstay of the Roman Curia and the Vatican diplomatic service for many years. He was born in Poppi, Italy.

Ordained in 1938 in Florence, Innocenti worked as a pastor in northern Italy for the following decade. His work helping Jews led to him narrowly escaping death from a firing squad; he was released at the last minute. He was then called by Pope Pius XII to Rome and settled down to a career in the Curia. He served for most of the 1950s and 1960s in the papal nunciature in Switzerland, where, as he saw it, the major problems were "an opulent society, religious assistance to immigrants and relations with Christian of other denominations".

On 15 December 1967, Innocenti was elevated by Pope Paul VI to the role of titular archbishop of Eclano and at exactly the same time appointed nuncio to Paraguay. He served as nuncio to Paraguay whilst holding a number of titular sees until 1973, when he was elevated further to the role of secretary of the Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments until 1980, when Innocenti became nuncio to Spain.

In 1985, Pope John Paul II rewarded the experienced prelate with elevation to cardinal and one year later Innocenti became prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, a post he was to hold until he passed the mandatory retirement age of seventy-five in 1991. During Innocenti's time as prefect, the Curia was extremely busy dealing with what was perceived as dangerous dissent from papal teaching, and Innocenti was heavily involved with many lay movements designed to restore orthodoxy among the Church's members.