AQUINO, LADISLAO D'

AQUINO, LADISLAO d'. - Cardinal, born in Napoli around 1546, of the family of s. Tommaso, died in Roma in 1621. Pio V opened the way to a prelatic career for him, summoning him to Roma; Gregorio XIII elected him bishop of Venafro (1588); Paolo V made him nuncio, first attempting to send him to Torino, where Carlo Emanuele I, at that moment of anti-Spanish reaction, did not want him, since he knew, not without reason, that he was devoted to Spain, and then sending him to Switzerland, where he had to

to observe that what the Protestants had withdrawn from obedience to the Catholic Church was to be considered irretrievably lost. He became cardinal in 1616, and when the conclave of Gregorio XV opened, he entered it, according to popular report, under excellent auspices. Death overtook him in that same conclave. The information and report he left concerning the nunciature at Lucerna show in him neither excessive perspicacity nor an awareness of the missionary nature of that most delicate office.