Before heading to the Paul VI audience Hall for his weekly General Audience this Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a homily at the end of a funeral Mass for the former president of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, Cardinal Antonio Innocenti.Ordained in 1938 in Florence, the man who would become Cardinal Innocenti served as a parish priest during World War II, and was arrested for his work to save deportees.
After the war, Pope Pius XII called him to Rome and a career in the Curia.
He served for most of the 1950s and 1960s in the papal Nunciature in Switzerland.
Paul VI appointed him nuncio to Paraguay in late 1967.
In 1973, became the secretary of the Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments, and in 1980, he became nuncio to Spain.
Pope John Paul II made Innocenti a cardinal in 1985, and appointed him 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.
In his homily Wednesday morning in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI recalled how, during World War II, the young Fr. Innocenti’s work helping Jews led to his arrest and sentence to death, though the sentence was commuted while he was before the firing squad.
The Holy Father said those who knew cardinal Innocenti give thanks to God for his presence in their life, and for all the blessings that the Lord bestowed on the Church through him.
Cardinal Innocenti died on September 6th.
He was 93 years old.
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(Source: VR)