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ITALIAN CHURCH
from issue no. 06/07 - 2008

The biography of Cardinal Agostino Vallini

Jurist and pastor



by Gianni Cardinale


Benedict XVI with Cardinal Vallini at the meeting with the officials of the Vicariate of Rome during which the appointment of the new Vicar for the diocese of Rome was announced, 
Sala Clementina, 2 7 June 2008

Benedict XVI with Cardinal Vallini at the meeting with the officials of the Vicariate of Rome during which the appointment of the new Vicar for the diocese of Rome was announced, Sala Clementina, 2 7 June 2008

If the ninety year old Fiorenzo Angelini remains the only cardinal who is “Roman of Rome”, the 68 year-old Agostino Vallini is the only one of the cardinal electors in the Sacred College to be born in Lazio. He was born in fact in Poli, a small town in the province of Rome, in the diocese of Tivoli, where his father, a Carabinieri sergeant of Tuscan origin was stationed. When war broke out his father was arrested by the Germans and was deported to Germany. His mother, together with her two children, little Agostino and a sister older than him, returned to her village, Corchiano (Viterbo), where the future cardinal attended elementary schools and set out on the road of Christian initiation under the guidance of the parish priest, Father Domenico Anselmi – still alive – who chose him as an altarboy. After the war, the family reunited and, in 1949, he was taken first to Caserta then, in 1951, to Naples. In 1952, he lost his mother and entered the seminary where he spent twelve years going through all the training stages for the priesthood.
After being ordained priest in 1964, Vallini was sent to Rome to specialize in Canon Law, in view of future teaching in the Neapolitan theological faculty. After finishing his studies in Rome in 1969, he went back to Naples to teach Canon Law. After two years, on the invitation of the Rector of the Lateran, Monsignor Pietro Pavan, later cardinal, he was called to fill the post of Professor of Ecclesiatical Public Law. While engaged in his study and research, something that interested him passionately, he also taught in Naples and also worked part-time in a parish ministry in the Barra neighborhood (Naples), with the Federation of Italian University Students, and as ecclesiastical assistant to the Neapolitan USMI. In 1978 Vallini left his teaching at the Lateran to go back to Naples, called by Cardinal Corrado Ursi, who named him rector of the upper seminary, a post he held until 1987, when he was appointed Dean of the of St. Thomas section in the Theological Faculty of Southern Italy .
In 1989 John Paul II appointed Vallini auxiliary to Cardinal Michele Giordano. Then also Vicar General, he looked after the preparations for the pastoral visit of John Paul II to Naples on 9-11 November 1990. In November 1999 he was appointed bishop of Albano. During this period Vallini, within the Italian Bishops’ Conference, was for many years a member of the Committee for Legal Problems and, more recently, chairman of the Committee for Ecclesiastical Institutions and Property.
In May 2004 John Paul II named him Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, and in March 2006, at his first consistory, Benedict XVI created him cardinal.
On 27 June last, Benedict XVI named him his Vicar General for the diocese of Rome, as well as Archpriest of the Lateran Papal Archbasilica and Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Lateran University.
Cardinal Vallini is a member of several congregations: for the Causes of Saints, for Bishops, for the Evangelization of Peoples, for Religious; of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts; of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.


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