PETRICCA, ANGELO. — Controversialist, of the Friars Minor Conventual, born at Sonnino (Lazio), died in Rome on 10 December 1673.
Doctor of theology (1631), he was sent by the Holy See on a special mission to the Shah of Persia for the protection of the Christian communities of the East; but, having been unable to reach Persia in time, Propaganda sent him to the missions of Moldavia and Wallachia, where in 1632 he served as vice-prefect and apostolic commissary in Moldavia. Provincial minister of Hungary (1633), in 1636 he presided over the provincial Chapter of Pettau in Styria and returned to Italy. He was then provincial minister of the Orient, patriarchal vicar of Constantinople, and apostolic prefect of Moldavia and Wallachia from 30 January 1638. He obtained the conversion of the city of Campalung; he decisively opposed the union between the Greeks and the Calvinists promoted by the schismatic patriarch Cyril Lucaris, and succeeded in bringing the latter’s successor, Cyril Veria, into union with Rome (1638). Returning to Rome after the election of Innocent X, he became professor of moral theology at SS. Apostoli, consultor of Propaganda (with the special task of revising the Euchologion, or Ritual, of the Greek Church), provincial minister of the Roman province from 1661, and procurator general of the Order (1665–68).
Principal writings: Turris David seu de militante ac triumphante Ecclesia (Roma 1647); De appellationibus omnium ecclesiarum ad S. Petri Cathedram (there 1649); Disputationes adversus haereses et aliquorum Graecorum errores (there 1650); De potestate Apostolorum (there 1656); De Regno Christi (there 1671); De triplici philosophia Aristotelis, rationali, naturali et divina ad mentem Doctoris Scoti (there 1672).
Parigi 1894, pp. 351–52; B. Morariu, Series praefectorum Moldaviae et Valachiae, in Commentarium O.F.M. Conv., 37 (1940), p. 185. Giovanni Odoardi