18 Facts About Alfredo Ottaviani

Alfredo Ottaviani was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church.

Alfredo Ottaviani served as secretary of the Holy Office in the Roman Curia from 1959 to 1966 when that dicastery was reorganised as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which he was pro-prefect until 1968.

Alfredo Ottaviani was born in Rome, where his father was a baker.

Alfredo Ottaviani studied with the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Trastevere, then at the Pontifical Roman Seminary and the Pontifical Roman Athenaeum S Apollinare, from where he received his doctorates in philosophy, theology, and canon law.

Alfredo Ottaviani was ordained to the priesthood on 18 March 1916.

Alfredo Ottaviani participated as a cardinal-elector in the 1958 conclave which elected Pope John XXIII.

Alfredo Ottaviani was appointed Titular Archbishop of Berrhoea on 5 April 1962, receiving his episcopal consecration on the following 19 April from Pope John XXIII in person, with Cardinals Giuseppe Pizzardo and Benedetto Aloisi Masella serving as co-consecrators.

Alfredo Ottaviani, while opposed to the separation of Church and State and granting equal rights to all religions, supported religious tolerance if public manifestations of non-Catholic religions were suppressed when possible.

Alfredo Ottaviani argued during the debates on the liturgy and on the sources of divine revelation, which are understood as scripture and tradition in Catholic theology.

The acrimony felt by such liberal members of the council against Alfredo Ottaviani spilled out into international news in a dramatic incident on 8 November 1963, in which Protestant observer Robert McAfee Brown described as having "blown the dome off St Peter's"; in a working session of the council, Frings declared Alfredo Ottaviani's dicastery a "source of scandal" to the whole world.

Alfredo Ottaviani was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1963 papal conclave, which elected Giovanni Battista Montini as Pope Paul VI.

Alfredo Ottaviani was raised to the rank of cardinal-priest on 26 June 1967.

On 8 January 1968 Alfredo Ottaviani resigned from the Church's central administration.

In 1970, when Paul VI restricted voting in papal conclaves to cardinals under the age of 80, Alfredo Ottaviani, already 80, said the Pope's action was "an act committed in contempt of tradition that is centuries old" and that he was "throwing overboard the bulk of his expert and gifted counsellors".

At the beginning of 1962, Alfredo Ottaviani notified the Jesuit superiors of theologian Karl Rahner that Rahner had been placed under Roman pre-censorship.

Since Rahner accompanied the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Franz Konig, as a theological consultant, Alfredo Ottaviani did not throw Rahner out of the council in spite of the earlier silencing.

In 1962, as head, under the Pope, of the Holy Office, Alfredo Ottaviani signed its document known by its incipit Crimen sollicitationis, which had as subtitle On the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of the Crime of Sollicitation.

Alfredo Ottaviani was critical of the writings of the bed-ridden Maria Valtorta, who reported visions of Jesus and Mary.