DESPUIG Y DAMETO, ANTONIO. - Cardinal, born of a noble family in Palma de Mallorca on 31 March 1745, died in Lucca on 2 May 1813. An exemplary priest and of vast erudition, he was a promoter of studies in his homeland and rector of that University (1783-85). In 1785 he came to Rome as auditor of the Rota, and 179 Decisiones of his remain published. Having returned to his homeland, he was bishop of Orihuela (1791), archbishop of Valencia (1795) and of Seville (1796), which he had to renounce two years later for reasons of health and more so because of political intrigues, receiving in exchange the title of patriarch of Antioch and from the king many public offices.
In April 1797 he was sent again to Rome, a member of a special commission appointed by the king to assist Pope Pius VI in the critical circumstances he was passing through, on account of the French invasion. And indeed he generously subsidized the pontifical court during the Pope's exile from March 1798 and, the latter having died (22 Aug. 1799), he bore the expenses of the funeral and subsidized the Conclave of Venice from which Pius VII emerged elected. Most dear to the new Pope, on 11 July 1803 he was created cardinal of the title of St. Callistus. After a journey to his homeland, where he organized a library and a museum with the objects from excavations that he had recovered from a piece of land of his at Ariccia (Rome), he returned to Rome in May 1807, became archpriest of St. Mary Major and pro-vicar of the Pope, to whom he always remained close and whom he also reached in the exile of Paris. For reasons of health he obtained permission to return to Italy, and shortly afterwards he died. He published a short work about the earthquake that in February 1783 devastated Calabria and at which he had been present (Naples 1783, Palma de Mallorca n.d.) and the life of Catherine Thomés, his fellow citizen (Palma de Mallorca 1816 and 1864), whose beatification he had obtained (and who was canonized in 1930). Many manuscripts and letters are in Palma in the archive of his family.
Bibliography6 works
Sede, in Analecta sacra Tarraconensia, 15 (1942), pp. 403-18; 16 (1943), pp. 201-22; M. Batlori, Cartas del p. Pou al card. D., Maiorca 1946; id., El card. D. y su tiempo, ivi 1948.
Renata Orazi Ausenda