GENOCCHI, GIOVANNI. — Missionary of the Sacred Heart, b. at Ravenna on 30 July 1860, d. at Rome on 6 January 1926.
In the new movement of religious studies in Italy, he made Sacred Scripture the focus of his intellectual activity; and, greatly aided by his command of the Oriental languages—Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic—by his experience of the Holy Places, by his knowledge of the principal languages of Europe, and by his relations with scholars from every country, he became in this field a universally acknowledged authority, widely consulted by all.
Within modernism he exercised a moderating influence and, although denounced to Pius X as virtually conniving with the rebels, he found defense and protection in the Pope; he also maintained a correspondence with him that bears witness to his faith, his evangelical integrity, and his devotion to the Church. His scholarship was always placed at the service of the apostolate, and this opened up for him a broad field of priestly ministry, first at Ravenna, where, while still very young, he served in the Seminary as spiritual director and teacher of Sacred Scripture; then for a longer period in Syria and at Constantinople, where, at the behest of Leo XIII, he was attached to those apostolic delegations, devoting himself to intense missionary activity; and finally for thirty years at Rome. In the strictest sense of the word, Fr. G. was a missionary for three years in the deadly regions of New Guinea, and after the First World War among the indigenous peoples of Putumayo, having been commissioned by Pius X to report on the brutalities inflicted by the white masters upon the Indian blacks.
He concluded his missionary career with the apostolic visitation to Ukraine, where he was sent by Benedict XV and subsequently by Pius XI to report on a broad movement for the union of the “Orthodox” with Rome, as it was taking shape in the regions of Russia restored to Poland by the war and in the areas bordering Russia itself. Death prevented Benedict XV from making him a cardinal.