FRANZELIN, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. – Theologian and cardinal, born on 15 April 1816 at Altino (South Tyrol), died in Rome on 11 February 1886. Having completed his secondary studies at Bolzano with the Friars Minor, he entered the Society of Jesus at Graz and, after teaching at Tarnopol and Lviv, was sent in 1845 to Rome to the Gregorian University, where, under the guidance of Giovanni Perrone and Carlo Passaglia, he excelled among his fellow students.
In 1848, because of the anti-Jesuit disturbances that broke out in Italy, F. was sent to continue his studies in England, at Lord Clifford’s castle at Ugbrook, in Devonshire. After a few months he went to Louvain. In 1849 he was entrusted with teaching Sacred Scripture at the scholasticate of Vals in France. At Le Puy, toward the end of the same year, he received sacred orders. In 1850 he was recalled to the Roman College as an assistant to Fr. Perrone, while also teaching Oriental languages, which he mastered perfectly, along with Greek, German, Italian, English, French, and Polish. From 1853 to 1857 he held the positions of prefect of studies and confessor of the students at the German College. From 1857 to 1876 he occupied the chair of dogmatic theology, succeeding Passaglia. The fruit of his learned lectures was a number of theological treatises, which earned him worldwide renown. He was papal theologian at the First Vatican Council (1870), consultor to Propaganda, to the Council, and to Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, and qualifier of the Holy Office. Pius IX created him cardinal in the consistory of 3 April 1876, appointing him a member of several Sacred Congregations and subsequently prefect of the Congregation of Indulgences.
His most celebrated treatises are: De Eucharistiae sacramentis et sacrificio (Rome 1868); De Sacramentis in genere (ibid. 1868); De Deo trino secundum personat (ibid. 1869); De divina Traditione et Scriptura (ibid. 1870); De Deo uno secundum naturam (ibid. 1870); De Verbo incarnato (ibid. 1870); Examen doctrinae Macaris Bulgakov episcopi schismatici et Iosephi Langen neoprotestantis Bonnenstii (ibid. 1876). These works went through several editions.