Faithful interpreterof the Pope’s will

Such was the desire of Pietro Gasparri, the distinguished Canon lawyer who headed the Secretariat of State under Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI. From the tragedy of the Great War to the solution of the long-lasting Roman Question

by Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, Auditor of the Rota

A few days before his death, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri gave a speech to the International Juridical Congress held in Rome in November 1934, a true and proper swansong, on the genesis and on the role he had played in the codification of Canon Law. It was an admirable speech, doubly eloquent, revealing. Those who, «even without having ever heard of him, had gone to listen to him» – wrote Filippo Crispolti in the effective portrait of Gasparri included in his fortunate Corone e porpore [Crowns and cardinals] of 1937 – «would have been able not only to gain full light on the topic discussed, but also get an idea of the man discussing it. Even in the strictly historico-legal field the cardinal had left the mark of his own distinctive temperament, in which abhorrence of all conventionality had such a great part. When he said that despite the large merits of Leo XIII, under the latter the great enterprise could not have been conducted, it was clear that he didn’t want either the purple or the brief time since the death of that Pope to act as the usual restraints on his frank judgment. When he mentioned that a distinguished Canon lawyer, the renowned Gennari, in suggesting to Pius X that he entrust the very serious task of supervision to Gasparri himself, had added that in that way the great work would be in excellent hands, it was clear that modesty, in its stereotyped and discredited forms, was not made for him».