MERRY DEL VAL, RAFAEL. - Cardinal of a Spanish family, b. in London on 10 Oct. 1865, d. in Rome on 26 Feb. 1930. He completed his early studies in England and Belgium; at the age of eighteen, having decided to embrace the ecclesiastical state, he entered the College of Ushaw (England), later transferring in 1885 to Rome to the Pontifical Scots College, but Leo XIII decided instead that he should enter the Pontifical Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, where he was ordained on 30 Dec. 1888.
Even before his ordination the Pontiff attached him to three different special missions to the courts of London, Berlin and Vienna, so that he was awarded the title of monsignor while he was still only a subdeacon. On 1 Jan. 1892 Leo XIII called him to his side as a participating private chamberlain, and then sent him - at the age of thirty-two and not yet a bishop - as extraordinary apostolic delegate to Canada. The tact with which the very young prelate carried out this difficult mission earned him, after his return, consecration as titular archbishop of Nicaea and appointment as president of the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics (1900).
As secretary of the Conclave from which Pius X emerged, the latter immediately conferred on him the duties of pro-secretary of State, and a few weeks later (9 Nov.) raised him as his "first creation" to the sacred purple and made him his direct collaborator. M. del V. was thus, for the entire duration of the pontificate of Pope Sarto, his secretary of State, linking his own name to the complex religious and political activity of the Pontiff of Riese. The eleven years during which M. del V., comforted by the most affectionate confidence of Pius X, to which he responded with filial devotion, held the most important office of the Roman Curia, are bound equally to the biography of the cardinal and to the history of the Church. A most faithful interpreter of the papal will, he conducted the harsh struggle against modernism to its victorious conclusion; he gave the greatest impetus to Catholic Action and carried out a radical reform of the dicasteries of the Apostolic See.
In the more strictly political field, he progressively softened the intransigence of Leo XIII and of Card. Rampolla toward the Italian State, going so far as the abolition, if only in fact, of the non expedit, thus opening to Catholics entry into Parliament through the so-called Gentiloni Pact. The rapprochement of the Vatican with most of the Powers was also due to his consummate diplomatic skill, and on 24 June 1914 he succeeded in stipulating a concordat with Serbia.
An open rupture came instead with France, following the visit of President Loubet to the Quirinal, carried out despite the pontifical prohibition on the coming of Catholic heads of state to Rome. There followed the denunciation of the Concordat and the complete separation between the Church and the French State, aggravated by a violent anti-Catholic persecution. M. del V. faced this most grave situation with resolute energy - even though this meant the complete abandonment of the pro-French policy of his predecessor - and obtained that on 25 Feb. 1906 Pius X should consecrate with his own hands in St. Peter's the first fourteen French bishops elected after the separation. In parallel with his duties as secretary of State, he filled with equal zeal other very important offices, among them those of administrator of the properties of the Holy See, of prefect of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces and of archpriest of the Vatican Basilica.
In the Conclave of 1914 many porporati gathered their votes on his name, but Card. Della Chiesa was elected, already his collaborator at the Secretariat of State, and the new pontiff, Benedict XV, conferred on him the dignity of secretary of the Holy Office, which, if it served (as was natural) to reduce his influence in the political field, assured him a pre-eminent function in the government of the Church. He returned to the political forefront in any case in 1926, when, as Pius XI's legate to the Franciscan centenary celebrations of Assisi, he exchanged there with the Italian minister of Public Instruction Pietro Fedele, who represented the government, significant speeches, which appeared, as they effectively were, the prelude to the imminent conciliation.
One must also remember his profound piety and the priestly ministry faithfully pursued even in the decade of his greatest authority; he concerned himself in particular with a Catholic youth association of Trastevere, to which he devoted, without any interruption, some afternoon hours for a span of more than twenty-five years. He died almost suddenly; his body rests in the Vatican Grottoes.
