MAZIO, RAFFAELE. — Born in Rome on 24 October 1765, he died there on 4 February 1832. From his earliest studies he displayed outstanding intellectual gifts and exceptional proficiency in the Latin language. In 1785 he held a public theological disputation in the church of S. Ignazio, which was printed. Pius VI appointed him master of pontifical ceremonies and canon of S. Maria in Trastevere, and Pius VII, in 1801, called him to the office of secretary of the Congregation of Ceremonies. A member of the Commission presided over by Cardinal Caprara for the implementation of the Concordat in France (1801), he displayed exceptional skill in handling affairs and dauntless fortitude in defending the rights of the Church.
Exiled in 1809, first to Piacenza, then to Bologna, and later to the Castle of Cento, at the Restoration he became one of Cardinal Consalvi’s most valuable collaborators and accompanied him to the courts of Paris and London. During this period he played a prominent part in negotiating ecclesiastical affairs concerning Bavaria, Prussia, Piedmont, Savoy, Hannover, and the Duchy of Lucca, and accompanied Cardinal Spina to the Congresses of Ljubljana (1821) and Verona (1822). At the same time he was secretary of the Latin Letters (1816) and of the Concistorial Congregation (1818), and a Vatican canon. Secretary of the Conclave from which Leo XII emerged as pontiff, he was appointed in 1824 assessor of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.
Pius VIII, in the Consistory of 15 March 1830, created him a cardinal, publishing his appointment at the subsequent Consistory of 5 July of the same year, with the title of S. Maria in Trastevere. M.’s funeral oration for Queen Maria of Portugal was published (Rome 1817). An unfinished history of the Pontifical Roman Theological Academy, which he had written, instead remained unpublished and was lost.