Luigi Poggi

infobox cardinalstyles
cardinal name=Luigi Cardinal Poggi
dipstyle=His Eminence
offstyle=Your Eminence
See=Forontoniana (titular see) |

Luigi Cardinal Poggi (born November 25, 1917) is an Italian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

Early life

Born in Piacenza, Poggi did all his studies prior to priestly ordination in that city and was sent to Rome in 1944 primarily to study diplomacy at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. While doing this, Poggi joined the Secretariat of State, fo which he was to work for the next twenty years. In the process he rose to become the doestic prelate of Pope John XXIII in 1960. Poggi was in charge of the mission to investigate the legal status of titular churches in Tunisia during 1963 and 1964.

Papal nuncio

In 1965 he became papal nuncio to Central Africa (which comprises the modern states of Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, and the Central African Republic).

Poggi became a titular Archbishop that year and became secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in 1966. He continued serving as a nuncio in Africa during the later part of the 1960s, but was then given a critical role by Pope Paul VI in his "Ostpolitik", which aimed to improve Vatican relations with the Stalinist nations of the Warsaw Pact. this role reached its greatest importance early in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, when Poggi, owing to his knowledge of Polish politics of the time, was sent first to Warsaw and then to the Kremlin to negotiate with Moscow. He later visited Prague. Critics of John Paul saw his sending of Poggi to the Eastern bloc as an effort on the Pope's part to control and dictate the policies of Lech Wałęsa's resistance to Wojciech Jaruzelski's military government.

Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church

After his work in the Eastern bloc, Poggi became the papal nuncio to Italy and in this role was able to remain close to the centre of Church operations under Pope John Paul. In 1992, Poggi became Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives and simultaneously of the Vatican Library, positions which he still held on being elevated to the cardinalate on November 26, 1994 - one day after his seventy-seventh birthday. Upon reaching the maximum age limit for voting in a conclave, Poggi resigned from his position in the Vatican Archives but returned to work in relations with the former Stalinist nations of Eastern Europe. Cardinal Poggi was cardinal protodeacon from February 26, 2002, until he opted for the order of cardinal priests on February 24, 2005 but played no role in the subsequent conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.

External links

* [http://www.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios-p.htm#Poggi Biography]
* [http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_poggi_l_en.htm Official Vatican biography]