Lev Skrbenský z Hříště

Lev Skrbenský z Hříště (, also spelt Skrebensky; 12 June 1863 – 24 December 1938) was a Cardinal in the Catholic Church.

Life Lev Skrbenský z Hříště was born on 12 June 1863 in Hukovice, Moravia, Austrian Empire (now a part of Bartošovice, Czech Republic). Born into a wealthy family, he was educated at the seminary of Olomouc and during the 1880s worked on a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University. During his stay in Rome he lived in the priest college Santa Maria dell'Anima and served there as a chaplain from 1890 to 1892, as did many other priests from Bohemia and Moravia. After being ordained in 1889, he went into the army of the Austrian Empire and spent the following decade serving as an army chaplain.

He left his military duties in 1899, and Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria selected him as Archbishop of Prague. Two years later, he was made a cardinal on 15 April 1901, at the age of thirty-seven. He received the red hat on 9 June 1902. Later that year, Lev (together with other Bohemian and Moravian bishops) was addressed in pope Leo's encyclical Quae Ad Nos. He participated in the 1903 and 1914 conclaves, and in 1916 was transferred to the see of Olomouc, to which he was elected by its cathedral chapter at the request of the Habsburg government.

The new Czechoslovak government demanded that the majority of incumbent bishops be replaced and systematically implemented a persecutory anti-church policy. Due to this imposition, at least other six bishops, including Pavel Huyn, his successor as Archbishop of Prague, had been replaced or forced out to resign. After 1921 only two pre-war bishops were allowed to remain.

He resigned this see in 1920, after request of Nuncio Clemente Micara, officially due to poor health, and did not participate in the 1922 conclave. He remained the only cardinal in Czechoslovakia for another 15 years after his resignation, until the elevation of Archbishop of Prague Karel Kašpar to the cardinalate in 1935.

Although his health remained very poor, Skrbenský z Hříště lived until 1938 and was the last cardinal created by Pope Leo XIII to die, outliving Vincenzo Vannutelli by more than eight years.