Soglia Ceroni, Giovanni

SOGLIA CERONI, GIOVANNI. - Cardinal, b. at Casola Valsenio on 11 Oct. 1779, d. at Osimo on 12 Aug. 1856.

While still young, he was secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Studies. He then belonged to the papal Household under Pius VII and for this reason suffered a long imprisonment at Fenestrelle when the Pope was dispossessed by Napoleon. He followed Pius VII to Savona during the brief Muratian occupation of the Patrimony, and by Leo XII he was appointed his secret almoner and titular archbishop of Ephesus. Gregory XVI promoted him patriarch of Constantinople of the Latins, with the office of secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars; on 12 Feb. 1838 he created him a cardinal in pectore and published him on 18 Feb. 1839. At the same time he received the diocese of Osimo and Cingoli, which he governed with great wisdom, devoting himself especially to establishing a seminary there, which was reputed the most modern educational institution in the Papal State, also for its sanitary and gymnastic installations, then entirely unusual. A stranger to the political events of the hour, he received with surprise the summons to Rome from Pius IX in June 1848 to assume there the offices of Secretary of State and president of the Council of Ministers in place of the resigning Cardinal Orioli. The second office was little more than nominal, because although the Statute required that the direction of the ministry be held by a prince of the Church, in effect the one who actually governed was a layman, in this case Mamiani.

For this reason, the governmental work of the cardinal president could not assume particular importance. It should be remembered that S., obedient to the wishes of the Pontiff, pursued a policy often independent of that of the ministries he presided over (in order, Mamiani, Fabbri and Rossi), finding himself therefore at odds with the secular minister of Foreign Affairs, especially when Count Marchetti was in office. Hence frequent frictions and conflicts of competence, particularly serious when Mazzini was able to publish in the Italia del popolo certain confidential documents that S. had addressed to the nuncio in Vienna, in contrast with the policy of the Mamiani ministry. On 18 July 1848 he signed a protest to the powers over the Austrian occupation of Ferrara and renewed it in the early days of Aug., after the bloody clashes in Bologna. On the 12th of the same month he obtained the suppression of the secular Department of Foreign Affairs, resuming full control of the foreign policy of the Holy See and of the Roman State. Confirmed in the presidential office even after the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi, when the new government was formed by Muzzarelli, he separated his own responsibilities from those of the ministers at the Pope's departure for Gaeta and returned to his diocese, which he governed until his death.

Renzo U. Montini