Eugenio
Pacelli, for extended Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was elected pope
on March 2, 1939. Pius XII, so Eugenio decided to call himself, was born in
Rome, March 2, 1876, then he was elected pope exactly the day of the completion
of his 63 years of age.
On May
13, 1917 he became bishop thanks to Pope Benedict XV, and, at the same time,
Archbishop of Sardis in partibus and Apostolic Nuncio allocated to Bavaria. On
16 December 1929 he was made a cardinal by Pope Pius XI and on February 7, 1930
he was invested with the office of secretary of state that he held until his
election to the papacy.
As
told by Antonio Spinosa in his book Pius
XII. A pope in the darkness, the 260 ° pope of the Catholic Church, died at
Castel Gandolfo on Thursday, October 9, 1958 at 3:52 a.m.
A
first sign of failure occurred on the morning of Sunday, October 5th and
ischemia of the vertebrobasilar arterial system hit him the next day.
Arrived
so the morning of October, 9, Pius XII died at the age of eighty-two.
The
chief physician Galeazzi Lisi subjected the body to an innovative system of
embalming as Spinosa tells us but the latter began to unravel since it was
placed in the funeral home. Then
the corpse was placed in a coffin and then conducted by means of a funeral van
owned to the municipality of Rome from Castel Gandolfo to the Vatican through
the Lateran. But
when the hearse was found near the arches of Porta San Giovanni a powerful
burst was felt all around the body.
The
latter exploded in the coffin due to the reckless embalming!
The body came to St. Peter and its damages were the least worst "adjusted" during the night. Because of the miasms it emitted some guards even lost consciousness. For nine days, the rough and greenish body was kept on a catafalque in front of the Bernini’s canopy.
Dott. Luca Lepori