27 Facts About Roberto Tucci

Roberto Tucci, SJ was an Italian priest of the Catholic Church.

Roberto Tucci was made a cardinal in 2001, and continued to prefer being addressed as "Padre Tucci".

Roberto Tucci was born in Naples, Italy, on 19 April 1921 to Mario Tucci, an Italian, and Eugenia Watt Lega, an Englishwoman and an Anglican.

Roberto Tucci received his baptism in the Anglican Church and, at the age of 13, was baptized conditionally in Catholic Church on 22 March 1934.

Roberto Tucci entered the Jesuit novitiate at the age of 15, on 1 October 1936.

Roberto Tucci earned a licentiate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of Louvain, where the issues that would be the subject of the Second Vatican Council were already being discussed.

Roberto Tucci earned a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Roberto Tucci was ordained a priest on 24 August 1950.

Roberto Tucci taught at the San Luigi Papal Theological Seminary of Southern Italy in Naples for two years.

Roberto Tucci founded the journal Digest religioso.

Roberto Tucci was a member of the preparatory commission on lay apostolate of the Second Vatican Council.

Roberto Tucci participated in the Council as a peritus and contributed to the drafting of two of the Council's key documents, Ad gentes and Gaudium et spes.

Roberto Tucci was the first Catholic priest to be invited to give a talk at the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, in Uppsala, Sweden, in July 1968.

Roberto Tucci was a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications from 1965 until 1989.

Roberto Tucci was vice-president of the Italian Catholic Union of the Press from 1961 to 1982.

Roberto Tucci served as secretary general of the Italian province of the Jesuits from 1967 to 1969 and as an advisor to the Jesuit superior general, Father Pedro Arrupe from 1970 to 1975.

Roberto Tucci joined the staff of the Jesuit periodical La Civilta Cattolica in 1956 and was its editor from 1959 to 1973, where he worked to make the content more varied and international, less polemical and more journalistic.

Roberto Tucci was the director general of Vatican Radio from 1973 to 1985 and chaired its administrative committee from 1986 to 2001.

Roberto Tucci was responsible for press relations surrounding the release of the encyclical Redemptor Hominis in 1979.

Roberto Tucci was a member of the board of directors of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, from 1977 to 1983.

From 1982 to 2001 Tucci was responsible for scheduling and participating in 77 of the 79 trips Pope John Paul II made outside Italy.

Roberto Tucci, a gregarious prelate in charge of organizing these trips, was a favorite of Vatican journalists.

Roberto Tucci had a down-to-earth style of talking and a bluntness that had occasionally gotten him in trouble with the Vatican's diplomats.

Roberto Tucci seemed to lack the discretion that made most Vatican diplomats such bad interviews.

Roberto Tucci was made cardinal deacon of Sant'Ignazio di Loyola a Campo Marzio in the consistory of 21 February 2001.

Roberto Tucci was entombed in the Jesuit chapel in Rome's Campo Verano Cemetery.

Roberto Tucci was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree by the University of Notre Dame in 1966.