INGOLI, FRANCESCO. — A priest, born at Ravenna on 21 November 1578 into a distinguished family, died at Rome on 29 April 1649. He studied at Padua, where he received his degree on 27 May 1601. He was accomplished in civil and canon law and a member of the College of Doctors of Ravenna. He taught law to the young people of Ravenna. Auditor to the legate Cardinal Bonifacio Gaetano, he was brought by him to Rome, where, upon Gaetano’s death, he entered the service of Cardinal Lancellotti. I. devoted himself to astronomical studies and in 1616 wrote a discourse against the Copernican system, which had the honor of receiving a reply from Galileo, as well as one against Kepler. He was favored by Gregory XV, who appointed him tutor to his nephew, Cardinal Lodovico Ludovisi; the latter took him with him to Bologna when he was appointed archbishop there. From the same Pope he received the task of preparing the ceremonial for the conclave together with several cardinals. He was subsequently elected secretary of the Ceremonial Congregation.
When Gregory XV founded the new Congregation of Propaganda Fide, he appointed I., a man of profound learning and extensive knowledge of languages, as its first secretary; he held this office uninterruptedly for 27 years, until his death. I. soon became the soul of the new Congregation, and it was in this office that he earned the semi-official title of «most respected prelate». The Congregation’s principal initiatives are due to him. As early as 17 January 1622, he had letters sent to the superiors general of the missionary Orders, requiring them to oblige their subjects to report periodically on the condition of the individual missions; thus he succeeded in obtaining the first materials on which to base its work. A tenacious man, he fought against his opponents: the religious, over privileges, and Spain and Portugal, over the rights of patronage granted and repeatedly confirmed, even after the foundation
of Propaganda, by the Holy See. The patronages became the greatest difficulty, which I. sought to circumvent. Thus, on 24 June 1623, he urged the superiors general of the Orders to have their subjects request patents from the Sacred Congregation. Later he proposed and implemented the institutions of apostolic delegates and apostolic vicars, directly dependent on Rome. Economic difficulties brought other initiatives to an end.
He worked for the abolition of the privileges of the religious by developing the missions of the secular clergy and by promoting, in accordance with apostolic principles, the indigenous clergy. He took particular care of the Christian community in Japan, which had become the Sacred Congregation’s «favorite», sending it two bishops who, however, never reached their destination. With equal attention he concerned himself with the rest of the missionary world. In evangelization he advocated respect for the civilization and customs of peoples, in opposition to Europeanization, and the presence of several religious Orders in the same mission country, for mutual supervision. He was the founder of the polyglot printing press, now the Vatican Press, for printing indigenous catechisms and vocabularies. Despite certain shortcomings resulting from information that was difficult to verify and from his combative character, he became Propaganda’s undisputed authority. From the beginning, in fact, the papers of greatest importance and those submitted for discussion by the cardinals bear I.’s personal annotations and observations; in them he summarizes their content and proposes remedies and directives, which were almost always accepted by the cardinals’ commission.
General summaries and comparisons, together with the corresponding observations or remedies, became successive directives for the Sacred Congregation, which, at I.’s death, had definitively secured its existence, attracted the confidence and dependence of the missionary Orders, partly neutralized the deficient aspect of the patronages, and set the most important problems on the path to resolution. Unconcerned with grandeur, he never wore prelatical dress and was affectionate toward the poor. He was buried at S. Andrea della Valle.