Angelo Cardinal Scola: Encyclopedia - Angelo Cardinal Scola

Angelo Cardinal Scola

Angelo Cardinal Scola (born November 7, 1941) is the Patriarch of Venice and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, with the titular church of the Twelve Apostles.

Scola is a noted academic, the author of numerous theological and pedagogical works on topics such as bio-medical ethics, theological anthropology, human sexuality and marriage and the family, which have been translated into several different languages. In addition, he is the author of more than 120 articles published in scholarly journals of philosophy and theology. He inaugurated the Studium Generale Marcianum, an academic institute, and the journal Oasis, published in Italian, English and Arabic as an outreach to Christians in the Muslim world.

In his pastoral capacity as bishop Scola has paid particular attention to the issues of education, youth, clergy formation, renewal of parish life, pastoral care of workers, culture and the family.

Scola's episcopal motto is Sufficit gratia tua ("Your grace is sufficient", 2 Cor 12:9).

Angelo Cardinal Scola - Biography

Scola was born in Malgrate, Italy to Carlo Scola, a truck driver, and Regina Colombo. He was the younger of two sons; Pietro, his elder brother, died in 1983. He attended high school at the Manzoni lyceum in Lecco, Italy, where he participated in the youth movement Gioventù Studentesca (Student Youth).

He studied philosophy at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan from 1964 to 1967, obtaining his doctorate with a dissertation on Christian philosophy. During this time served as Vice-President and thereafter President of the Milanese diocesan chapter of FUCI (Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana, the university student wing of Catholic Action.

Following study at the Saronno and Venegono seminaries in Milan, Scola was ordained to the priesthood on July 18, 1970 in Teramo, Italy, by Abele Conigli, bishop of Teramo-Atri and Giovanni Cardinal Colombo, archbishop of Milan. He subsequently attained a second doctorate in Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He wrote his dissertation on St. Thomas Aquinas. An active collaborator in the Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation) movement from the early 1970s until he became a bishop, Scola collaborated in the founding of the journal Communio with Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar (and conducted book-length interviews with them both).

After periods of study in Munich and Paris and time spent in pastoral work Scola returned to Fribourg to work as research assistant to the chair of political philosophy at Friburg from 1979 and thereafter Assistant Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology, a position he held until 1982 when he was appointed Professor of Theological Anthropology at the Pontificial John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Rome and Professor of Contemporary Christology at the Pontifical Lateran University. From 1986 to 1991 Scola served the Roman Curia as consultor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. At the various institutes where he taught he promoted the establishment of bursaries to enable foreign students, particularly those from poorer countries, to study in Italy.

He was named bishop of Grosseto, Italy in 1991 by Pope John Paul II and consecrated by Bernardin Cardinal Gantin the same year. As bishop of Grosseto he promoted a renewal of catechesis in the diocese. Among Scola's chief pastoral concerns in Grosseto were the education of children and youths, vocations and clergy formation (he re-opened the diocesan seminary), new approaches to parish life, the pastoral care of labourers (particularly during the difficult period of the dismantling of mines in Grosseto), culture and the family, and the opening of a diocesan mission in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. During this period he wrote and published a book aimed at young people on the subject of the educative mission of the Church.

He subsequently resigned as bishop of Grosseto to serve as rector of the Lateran Pontifical University in Rome and President of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Rome, with a term spent as visiting professor at the counterpart Institute in Washington, D.C., during which time he wrote a monograph on the theology of von Balthasar. From 1995 until the death of John Paul II in 2005 he was a member of the Congregation for the Clergy. He also served as member of the Episcopal Commission for Catholic Education of the Italian Bishops' Conference and, from 1996, as president of the Committee for Institutes of Religious Studies which addresses questions of the theological formation of the laity in Italy.

From 1996 to 2001 Scola was a member of the Pontifical Council for Health Workers and wrote several texts on issues around health care. In 1996 he was named a consultant to the Pontifical Institute of the Family.

He was appointed Patriarch of Venice on January 5, 2002, elected President of the Bishops’ Conference of the Triveneta region on April 9, 2002 and created Cardinal on October 21, 2003. After the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, Scola was considered to be among the papabili in the 2005 papal conclave conclave that ultimately elected Pope Benedict XVI and at which he was a cardinal elector.

Angelo Cardinal Scola - Works

Angelo Cardinal Scola - Books by Scola translated into English

• Hans Urs Von Balthasar: A Theological Style Eerdmans Publishing Company (September 1, 1995) ISBN 0802808948
• The Nuptial Mystery Eerdmans Publishing Company (February 15, 2005) ISBN 0802828310

Angelo Cardinal Scola - Online texts

• Which Foundation?
• The Nuptial Mystery: A Perspective for Systematic Theology? (PDF file)
• Christian Experience and Theology
• Satanic Rites in the Church's Judgement

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