Achille Silvestrini

Achille Silvestrini (25 October 1923 – 29 August 2019) was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served in the Vatican diplomatic corps, either in Rome or abroad, from 1953 to 1990, and later as Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches from 1991 to 2000.

Early life and ordination Born in Brisighella, Italy, and educated in Rome, Silvestrini was ordained a priest on 13 July 1946 in the cathedral of Faenza by Giuseppe Battaglia, Bishop of Faenza. He earned a doctorate at the University of Bologna in 1948 and a doctorate in canon and civil law at the Pontifical Lateran University.

He began studying at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in 1952 and joined the Vatican diplomatic service, section of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Secretariat of State, in 1953. He was chargé d'affaires in the Holy See's diplomatic offices in Vietnam, China, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia. In 1955, he worked in the section of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, directed by Domenico Tardini.

He worked for the next five years on the revision of the Lateran Treaty on its fiftieth anniversary, and signed a revised treaty that reflected the rapid secularisation of Italy since the 1960s.

In May 2001, when a consistory of cardinals discussed the role and performance of the Synod of Bishops, Silvestrini was among the critics. He called them "monologues without debate or response".

He was present at the death of Pope John Paul II. In the days before the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, he said the next pope needed to address the relationship between the pope and the world's bishops. He said: "More than divisions, there is a feeling of distance. The bishops feel a little far from what is happening in Rome." He proposed the creation of an elected consultative council of bishops to promote "collegiality" between them and the pope and the Roman Curia.

In 2010, he provided his assessment of the actions during World War II of Pope Pius XII, with whom he worked for many years beginning just after the war. He said:

Following the election of Pope Francis in 2013, he said the Catholic Church needs to "start from the Second Vatican Council, from all that has not yet been implemented and must still be accomplished". He called the work of the council and the plans of Pope John XXIII "an unfinished task" and said the church needs "a new language to talk to humanity today, and in particular to the new generations, and to give adequate answers to modernity".

He was chair of the , which was founded in 1946 to support war orphans.

Papal elections In the 1990s, Silvestrini was mentioned as a successor to Pope John Paul II in the secular press, though Vatican observers, such as Thomas J. Reese, noted that his advanced age made his election unlikely.

Silvestrini was one of about a dozen like-minded cardinals and bishops who met annually from 1995 to 2006 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, to discuss reforms with respect to the appointment of bishops, collegiality, bishops' conferences, the primacy of the papacy and sexual morality; they differed among themselves, but shared the view that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was not the sort of candidate they hoped to see elected at the next conclave.

After turning 80 in October 2003, Silvestrini was a principal critic of the rule that only cardinals under the age of 80 can vote in a conclave. He called it "one of the unhappy reforms of Paul VI". Too old to participate in the 2005 conclave to choose the successor of John Paul II, he was nevertheless a vigorous opponent of Ratzinger's election. He told reporters to watch Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster.

Death Silvestrini died at his home in Vatican City on 29 August 2019, at the age of 95.