GENNARI, CASIMIRO. — Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, canonist and moral theologian. Born at Maratea (Potenza), in the diocese of Cassano, on 27 December 1839, he died at Rome on 31 January 1914. He was ordained a priest at Cosenza during Lent of 1869. In 1876 he founded the journal Il monitore ecclesiastico, in order to bring the acts of the Holy See to the knowledge of the clergy, with appropriate explanations and additions of a liturgical, theological, moral, and juridical nature. Created bishop of Conversano in 1881 (his peacemaking intervention in the rebellion of 20 May 1886 was famous), he continued to direct his journal, which he did not abandon even when, summoned to Rome, he was appointed assessor of the Holy Office (1895) and archbishop of Lepanto (1897), and when, upon his elevation to the cardinalate on 15 April 1901, he donned the purple with the title of S. Marcello al Corso.
Later, in the new organization of the Curia (1908), he was entrusted with the prefecture of the Sacred Congregation of the Council, while as a member he belonged to various other congregations and commissions, including that for the Codification of Canon Law. Indeed, a controversy has recently arisen which would claim for Card. G., rather than for Card. Gasparri, the merit of having been the promoter of the codification itself; he is said to have suggested it first to Leo XIII and then to Pius X, from whom he would have received the task of compiling the motu proprio Arduum sane (1904). His most highly regarded work is Consultazioni morali-canoniche-liturgiche (1st ed., Naples 1893; 2nd ed., Rome 1902; 3rd ed., there 1913–15; French translation by A. Boudhinon, Paris 1907). To this should be added various monographs of a predominantly juridical nature: Della nuova disciplina sulla proibizione e censura dei libri ovvero la Costituzione Officiorum commentata (3rd ed., Rome 1903); Questioni liturgiche (there 1907); Questioni teologiche morali (there 1907); Questioni canoniche (there 1908); and various other pamphlets, two of which are particularly noteworthy: Sull'età della prima Comunione dei fanciulli, breve commento del decreto « Quam singulari » (4th ed., Rome 1911; he was one of the promoters of the decree); Sui doveri dei cattolici nelle rappresentanze politiche ed amministrative (2nd ed., Rome n.d., a pamphlet that caused a stir because of the author’s views on the participation of Italian Catholics in the country’s administrative and political life). He also wrote catechetical and devotional works.
Elogio funèbre, Putignano 1914; E. Perniciari, In memoria del card. C. G., Naples 1914; N. Hölling, Von wem ist der Plan der Abfassung des Codex iuris canonici zuerst ausgegangen, in Archiv f. hatl. Kirchenrecht, 116 (1936), pp. 88–91; id., Kard. G. als Anreger der Kodifikation des Rechts, ibid., 120 (1940), pp. 227–28; anon., Il card. C. G., in Il monitore ecclesiastico, 52 (1940), pp. 3–40.