INGOLI, FRANCESCO. - Priest, born in Ravenna on 21 Nov. 1578 to a distinguished family, died in Rome on 29 Apr. 1649. He studied at Padua, where he graduated on 27 May 1601. He was skilled in civil and canon law and a member of the College of Doctors of Ravenna. He taught law to the youth of Ravenna. As auditor of 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 a reply from Galileo, and against Kepler. He was favored by Gregory XV, who appointed him tutor to his nephew Cardinal Lodovico Ludovisi, who took him along to Bologna when he was appointed archbishop there. From the same Pope he received the task of preparing the ceremonial of the conclave together with certain cardinals. He was, therefore, elected secretary of the Ceremonial Congregation.
When Gregory XV founded the new Congregation of Propaganda Fide, he appointed I., a man of profound doctrine and vast knowledge of languages, as its first secretary, an office he held 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 appellation of "most respectable prelate." To him are owed the principal initiatives of the Congregation. As early as 17 Jan. 1622 he had written to the generals of the missionary Orders to oblige their subjects to report periodically on the state of the individual missions, thus succeeding in obtaining the first means on which to base the work. Of tenacious character he fought against opponents: the religious, over privileges, and Spain and Portugal, over the rights of patronage, granted and several times 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 invited the generals of the Orders to have the patents of the S. Congregation requested for their subjects. Later he proposed and implemented the institutes of apostolic delegates and apostolic vicars, directly dependent on Rome. Economic difficulties cut short other initiatives.
He worked for the abolition of the privileges of the religious by developing the missionaries of the secular clergy and favoring, appealing to apostolic principles, the indigenous clergy. He cared in particular for the Christianity of Japan, which had become the "darling" of the S. Congregation, sending there two bishops, who, however, never reached their destination. With equal attention he concerned himself with the remaining missionary world. In evangelization he advocated respect for the civilization and customs of peoples against Europeanization and the plurality of religious Orders in the same mission country for mutual control. He was the founder of the polyglot printing press, currently the Vatican one, for the printing of catechisms and indigenous vocabularies. Despite certain shortcomings due to information difficult to verify and to his combative character, he became the undisputed oracle of Propaganda. From the beginning, in fact, the most important papers and those presented for discussion by the cardinals bear personal annotations and considerations by I., who summarizes their content, proposes remedies and directives, almost always accepted by the commission of cardinals.
General summaries and comparisons with the relative considerations or remedies became so many directives for the S. Congregation, which, at I.'s death, had definitively secured its existence, had attracted the trust and dependence of the missionary Orders, had partly neutralized the deficit side of the patronages, had set the most important problems on the path to solution. Averse to grandeur, he never wore prelatical dress and was affectionate toward the poor. He was buried at S. Andrea della Valle.
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Lino Pedot