Fr. Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P.
Distinguished Professor,
I have attentively read your work “The Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility,” which you were so kind to send to me.
I deem felicitous your idea of giving wide diffusion to those documents of Pius XII, which at first glance might seem devoid of relevance to the present day. In fact, however, your lucid and documented commentaries show the foresightedness of the theme discussed by that Pontiff. Furthermore, you opportunely recall the beautiful words of Paul VI: “We would like to say many things to you. Your presence provokes much reflection. So it was also with Our venerable Predecessors, especially Pope Pius XII of happy memory…. We want to believe that the echo of those words, like a gust of wind swelling a sail,…still vibrates in your thoughts, filling them with the austere and magnanimous appeals that nourish the vocation preordained for you by Providence and sustain the role still required of you today by contemporary society.”
Your long experience as professor, congressman, and public figure makes your commentaries all the more intelligent and instructive, pleasantly facilitating the reading of the Pontifical documents, which are of such lofty and estimable value.
I did not find in your pages any error of a theological or other nature regarding the teachings of the Church. I can only hope that your excellent work will be given a warm and full reception by the public for whom it is intended.
Fr. Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P.
(Translation from the Italian original below)
Biographical data of the Rev. Fr. Piazzi
Fr. Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P., was born in Moneglia, in the province of Liguria, Italy, in 1918. He was ordained a priest in 1944 and obtained a doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Angelicum three years later.
He began his long career as a university professor teaching Fundamental Theology, Moral Philosophy, and Sociology at the Studio Domenicano of Turin and Dogmatic Theology at the Centro Cattolico di Cultura of the same city.
In 1949 he returned to Rome, where he lectured, first at the University Pro Deo and then at the Angelicum, whose School of Social Sciences he founded. In 1954 he was appointed dean of the Institute of Religious Sciences at the Angelicum. In 1957 he began to teach Pastoral Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University, and, in 1967, Dogmatic Theology at the Center of Theology for the Laity of the Vicariat of Rome, becoming its dean in 1987.
Father Spiazzi served as Apostolic Visitor to the seminaries in Lombardy and Milan and as Provincial of the Dominican Order for Piedmont and Liguria. Paul VI personally nominated him a peritus of the Second Vatican Council.
He is now consultant to the Congregation for Catholic Education and member of several study commissions of the Vatican congregations and the Vicariat of Rome. He also belongs to the Pontifical Academy of Our Lady Immaculate, the Pontifical Roman Theological Academy, and the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is rector of the Basilica of San Sisto Vecchio on the Appian Way.
Father Spiazzi has published numerous hooks and over 2,000 articles. Many of the latter have appeared in Italian and foreign magazines.
15-III-1993
