Cardinal Camillo Ruini is dead at 95. A giant of the Church in Italy at the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first, Ruini was, perhaps, the last truly great Italian churchman.
In a telegram expressing condolences on Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV remembered Ruini as an “experienced and wise brother, characterized by deep faith, keen intelligence, and far-sighted vision, who served the Gospel and the Church with discretion and self-sacrifice.”
Leo especially recalled Ruini’s “fruitful work for the Italian bishops’ conference” of which he was president for nearly two decades, as well as Runi’s “productive dialogue with the world of culture.”
The pontiff expressed gratitude to heaven “for the gift of this esteemed man of the Church,” and promised prayers for his repose and for the consolation of his family and loved ones.
Ruini’s passing certainly marks the end of an era.
A native of Sassuolo in Italy’s Emilia Romagna region born in 1931, Ruini’s childhood and adolescence were marked by Fascism and World War II.
He never really thought of anything except Church service and was ordained on December 8, 1954, when he was just a few months shy of his 24th birthday.
At a time in which the Church was still powerful in Italian society and ecclesiastical service a career path as much as a vocation, Ruini stood out as a fellow who genuinely loved the Church and wanted her to do well.
He was also fiercely intelligent, culturally literate, and capable of friendship across emerging ideological lines.
He was a chaplain to university students for several years between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, then a delegate to Azione Cattolica – an officially apolitical organization that nevertheless played a major role in Italian political life throughout the 20th century – and all the while held teaching and administrative positions in various houses of priestly formation.
His career may well have remained primarily academic, but Pope St. John Paul II made him an auxiliary bishop in 1983, and Ruini’s star began to rise.
He became general secretary of the powerful Italian bishops’ conference, the CEI, in 1986, and then president of the CEI in 1991, the same year John Paul II made him vicar for the Diocese of Rome and created him Cardinal Ruini.
For the better part of the next two decades, from 1991 to 2008, Ruini was a mainstay in Italian media, always ready to comment for prime-time news broadcasts and to appear on the Sunday talk shows, through which he cultivated a “happy warrior” persona.
Generally viewed as a social conservative, Ruini rather understood the cultural currents driving the broadly Western turn into secularism and sought to marshal the Church’s institutional forces in a way that was sensitive to cultural and political realities.
In 2005, he led the Italian bishops’ official opposition to a national referendum measure that would have liberalized Italian law regarding artificial reproduction and embryonic stem cell research.
Ruini urged Catholics to abstain from voting in the referendum, foreseeing that Catholic abstention would prevent the necessary quorum from being reached – 50 peecent participation of eligible voters – and thereby invalidate the referendum.
The referendum’s proponents accused Ruini and the bishops of untoward meddling in the political sphere, but voters did choose to stay home, and the referendum failed to garner the necessary 50 percent participation.
Ruini maintained a public profile for several years, even after his retirement.
The last decade or so saw him slow down and fade from the public eye, but he kept his own eye on public affairs and his finger on the pulse of Italian and European culture.
When he did speak, it was as an elder statesman, and people listened.
In February of this year, Ruini again drew international attention when he granted a sit-down with Italy’s leading Corriere della Sera newspaper, in which he discussed a broad range of issues.
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During the interview, Ruini publicly acknowledged things cardinals and curial officers had mostly only whispered to each other.
He opened up about Benedict XVI’s resignation, for example, saying – in words – that he thought it was a mistake.
Ruini also admitted to finding himself flummoxed by Pope Francis and unsure whether the late Argentinian pontiff’s reign will prove to have done more harm or good.
Ruini offered his sentiments candidly – with great force of clarity but carefully. His remarks were measured, even circumspect, but left no ambiguity regarding what he thought or where he stood.
It was, in a very important sense, his last act of ecclesiastical service: To show how it is possible to practice parrhesia – frank talk – without engaging in polemics.
Ruini, in other words, may not be merely a relic of a bygone era in which the Church had cultural cache and political clout.
He could be a model for churchmen in the increasingly polarized twenty-first century.
Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri