Bonaventura Cerretti

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cardinal name=Bonaventura Cardinal Cerretti| dipstyle=His Eminence
offstyle=Your Eminence
See=Velletri (suburbicarian see)|"His Most Reverend Eminence" Bonaventura Cardinal Cerretti (17 June 1872 - 8 May 1933) was a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and was former Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

Bonaventura Cerretti was born in Comune de Bardono, Italy as the son of Faustino Cerretti and Maria Custodi. Cerretti was educated at the Seminary of Spoleto and later at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome as well as the Royal University, Rome.

Priesthood

He was ordained on 31 March 1895 in Rome. From 1895 until 1899 he did pastoral work in the diocese of Orvieto. He was then invited to become a staff member in the Vatican Secretariat of State where he worked from 1899 until 1904. He was created Privy chamberlain of His Holiness on 13 January 1904. He then served as secretary to apostolic delegate in Mexico from 1904-1906 then as Auditor in the apostolic delegation to the United States of America from 1906 to 1914.

Episcopate

He was appointed as titular archbishop of "Philippopolis in Thracia" on 15 April 1914 by Pope Pius X. He was transferred to the titular see of "Corinth" on 10 May 1914. He was consecrated on 19 July 1914 by Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, Cardinal Secretary of State. He was appointed as the first Apostolic delegate in Australia and New Zealand in 1914. He represented the Holy See and thus tried to the Great Powers to accept the Peace Note of Pope Benedict XV at the Paris Peace Conference in Paris from May to June, 1919. He was appointed to serve as Nuncio in France in 1921.

Cardinalate

He was created Cardinal-Priest of "Santa Cecilia" by Pope Pius XI in the consistory of 14 December 1925. He was appointed as Archpriest of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major on 16 July 1930. Pope Pius appointed him as Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura on 12 October 1931. He opted for the order of cardinal bishops, taking the suburbicarian see of Velletri on 13 March 1933. Camerlengo of the Sacred College of Cardinals, 1933; he died shortly after.

In the summer of 1930 in Rome he was painted by his friend the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862-1947). The picture is believed to hang in the Palazzo Municipale di Orvieto. See: E. Cerretti, Il Cardinale Bonaventura Cerretti, Rome, 1939, p. 157, and Plate XIII, (opposite p. 368).

Death. May 8, 1933, Rome. Buried, basilica of S. Maria in Trastevere, Rome. The chapel at St Patrick's College, Manly in Sydney Australia is named after him. See picture at http://enc.slq.qld.gov.au/slq/neg/research/193000/193473r.jpg