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
This "explosion" that could be heard from far away may not have taken place. I was there, I was 11 years old and did not hear it. But the body of Pope Pius XII was in lamentable shape. And the smell was horrendous. At the Vatican, the body was immersed in and pumped full of formaldehyde, then dried and put in a tank full of salt. Orifices were made everywhere so the body could drain. Then the face was painted with a solution of wax and chemicals.
ReplyDeletePope Paul VI's body also deteriorated visibly after he died. A terrible thing.
Diego Visconti
What in the world possessed that embalmer? & why did no one stop him?
ReplyDeleteIt probably simply rumor, but I had read that the actual embalmer was in fact a Jew who had lost family during the war and was bitter and jumped at the chance to humiliate the body of Pius.
ReplyDeleteThat was an unfortunate rumour and definitely not true as this pope was praised by the Jewish consul at the time for saving as many as 860,000 Jews from the Nazis by hiding them in churches & monasteries.
Delete"There probably was not a single ruler of our generation who did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy during the Nazi occupation of Europe, than the late Pope."
- The Jewish Post, Nov. 6, 1958