Luigi Galimberti

Luigi Galimberti (26 April 1836 – 7 May 1896) was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who had a varied career as an academic and theologian, journalist, diplomat, and Vatican official. He became an archbishop in 1887 and a cardinal in 1893. He was considered a candidate for the papacy when he died at the age of 60. He became a canon of the Lateran Basilica in 1868. He was named a canon of St. Peter's Basilica in 1883 and an Apostolic Protonotary.

On 28 June 1886, Pope Leo XIII appointed him secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 1887 he took part in the difficult negotiations in Berlin to end the Kulturkampf. and Apostolic Nuncio to Austria-Hungary. He received his episcopal consecration from Cardinal Cölestin Josef Ganglbauer, Archbishop of Vienna, on 5 June. He was credited with the appointment of a candidate the Holy See favoured as Primate of Hungary and of a Pole rather than a German as archbishop of Gniezno-Posen. Galimberti's name figures in the many investigations of the case, usually in a minor role, though one early account said that Galimberti had received Rudolf's annulment request and rather than forward it to Rome had it delivered to the Emperor, provoking a family quarrel and the deaths that followed.

On 16 January 1893, Pope Leo made him a cardinal and on 15 June gave him the title cardinal priest of Santi Nereo e Achilleo. On 25 June 1894, Galimberti was named head of the Vatican Secret Archives. He was considered a possible future pope. He was interred in the chapel of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome's Campo Verano cemetery.

Writings Apologia pro Marcellino Romano pontefice (1876) Introductio philosophica ad historiam universam (1877) Lutero e il socialismo (1879) Leone XIII e la storia. Risposta a R. Bonghi d'un prelato romano (1883)