SOGLIA CERONI, GIOVANNI. — Cardinal, born at Casola Valsenio on 11 October 1779, died at Osimo on 12 August 1856.
While still young, he became secretary of the S. Congr. of Studies. He subsequently belonged to the Papal Household under Pius VII and for this reason endured 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 Leo XII appointed him his secret almoner and titular archbishop of Ephesus. Gregory XVI promoted him to Latin patriarch of Constantinople, with the office of secretary of the S. Congr. of Bishops and Regulars; on 12 February 1838 he created him a cardinal reserved in pectore and published his name on 18 February 1839. At the same time he was given the diocese of Osimo and Cingoli, which he governed with great wisdom, devoting particular attention to establishing a seminary there. This was considered the most modern educational institution in the Papal States, also on account of its sanitary and gymnastic facilities, then entirely unusual. Uninvolved in the political events of the time, he was surprised when Pius IX summoned him to Rome in June 1848 to assume 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 entrusted to a prelate, in fact the government was headed by a layman, in this case Mamiani.
For this reason, the governing activity 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 over which he presided (in succession, Mamiani, Fabbri, and Rossi), and consequently found himself at odds with the secular minister of Foreign Affairs, especially when Count Marchetti was in office. This led to frequent frictions and conflicts of jurisdiction, particularly serious when Mazzini was able to publish in Italia del popolo certain confidential documents that S. had addressed to the nuncio in Vienna, in opposition to the policy of the Marmiani ministry. On 18 July 1848 he signed a protest to the powers against the Austrian occupation of Ferrara and renewed it at the beginning of August, after the bloody clashes in Bologna. On the 12th of the same month he obtained the suppression of the secular Dicastery of Foreign Affairs, thereby resuming full control of the foreign policy of the Holy See and 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 responsibilities from those of the ministers upon the Pope’s departure for Gaeta and returned to his diocese, which he governed until his death.