Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi

Sant'Egidio

Created by:

Francis

Voting Status:

Voting

Nation:

Italy

Age:

Key Data
Summary
Where He Stands
Full Profile
Service to the Church

Cardinal

Matteo Maria

Zuppi

Sant'Egidio

Archbishop of Bologna, Italy

Italy

Gaudium Domini Fortitudo Vestra

Let the joy of the Lord be your strength

Key Data

Birthdate:

Oct 11, 1955 (69 years old)

Birthplace:

Rome, Italy

Nation:

Italy

Consistory:

October 5, 2019

Francis

Voting Status:

Voting

Position:

Diocesan

Type:

Cardinal-Priest

Titular Church:

Sant'Egidio

Summary

Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi has been a rapidly rising star in the Italian episcopate, an Italian prelate very much on the leftist political wing of the Church who would likely continue Pope Francis’ legacy, albeit with plenty of control from the Sant’Egidio lay community to which he has close ties.

Born and raised in Rome, he has close family connections to the Vatican. His father, Enrico, was a journalist and a photographer whom the then–deputy secretary of state, Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI), appointed editor of L’Osservatore della Domenica, a weekly illustrated edition of L’Osservatore Romano. Matteo’s mother, Carla Fumagalli, was the niece of Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, who served as secretary to Pope Pius XI, then as prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and as dean of the College of Cardinals at the funerals of Popes Paul VI and John Paul I.¹

The fifth of six children, young Matteo went to secondary school in Rome’s historic center and there met Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant’Egidio movement.² He soon became involved with the nascent community, which he regarded as “another Gospel and another Church.” In 1977, aged twenty-two, he completed a degree in literature and philosophy at La Sapienza University in Rome, with a thesis on the life of Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster.³ He then entered a seminary in the suburban-Rome Diocese of Palestrina and studied for the priesthood at the Pontifical Lateran University, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in theology. Ordained a priest for the Diocese of Palestrina in 1981, he was first assigned as an assistant parish priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere under Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia. While there, he held a number of additional positions, including rector of a nearby church and head of a diocesan priestly council. In 1992, Fr. Zuppi played a key role in the Sant’Egidio-brokered peace accords with Mozambique, leading him to be made an honorary citizen of the country.

In 2000, when Vincenzo Paglia was made bishop of Terni, Zuppi replaced him as parish priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere and as ecclesiastical assistant to Sant’Egidio. In 2006, Benedict XVI granted him the honorary title of Chaplain to His Holiness.⁴ In 2010, he was transferred to serve in one of Rome’s largest parishes on the city’s periphery, and in 2012, Benedict XVI appointed him auxiliary bishop of Rome. Archbishop Paglia was one of his co-consecrators. Pope Francis appointed Zuppi archbishop of Bologna in 2015, succeeding Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, and elevated him to cardinal in 2019.

Apart from his native Italian, Cardinal Zuppi has some knowledge of English but is not listed as being proficient in speaking any other languages.

Matteo Zuppi is a personable prelate with friends across the political spectrum in his native Rome. As someone with a lifelong concern for the poor and marginalized, forged through his close connections with the Sant’Egidio community, the Italian prelate reveals himself to be a true son of the spirit of Vatican II, someone who seeks to engage constantly with the modern world and implement the “profound change” that he believes the Council wanted for the Church.

That means helping the Church to “listen again to the many questions of the world,” beginning with a concept of mercy, which, he says, “represents the attitude of the post-conciliar Church.” His approach is about “rejecting hate,” engendering “authentic solidarity,” embracing religious pluralism and “fraternity,” and going out to the peripheries to help the poor and the marginalized — whether they be destitute drug addicts, impoverished gypsy children, or elderly persons who have been abandoned — earning him the moniker “street priest.” He also strives to include same-sex-attracted people and the divorced and civilly “remarried,” and engage Muslims, Jews, and the concerns of migrants.

Appointed archbishop and created cardinal by Pope Francis, Matteo Zuppi shows himself to be fully committed to adhering to the vision of this pontificate and seeing it to fruition, beginning with Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium and including the pontificate’s seminal and controversial interreligious document on human fraternity, signed in Abu Dhabi in 2019. He has taken part in several Vatican synods; he sees synodality as fundamental for renewing the Church and helping ecclesial communities overcome entrenched isolation.

For Zuppi, individualism is anathema and community, activism, and mission must come first. He has a devotion to Our Lady and values prayer, on which he places considerable importance, but his emphasis on social justice and equality has inevitably brought him into alliances with Italian leftist politics. So much so, that when Francis announced that he was elevating Zuppi to the College of Cardinals, the Italian media joked that the “chaplain” of Italy’s leading socialist party was to become a cardinal. Zuppi has also had connections with a movement opposed to Matteo Salvini, the populist leader of Italy’s Lega Party; eulogized two far-left, pro-abortion Italian radicals at their funerals; and even incardinated into the Bologna Archdiocese a communist priest who ran for a seat in the European Parliament.

He has been especially fervent in welcoming homosexuals and homosexual “love,” usually without any injunctions to amendment of life.

But despite his distinctly “progressive” leanings, he also tries to dialogue with those on the right and keep channels open with those who favor Church tradition. He has celebrated the old Mass on at least two occasions and in 2022 celebrated solemn Vespers in the Pantheon.

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Evidence

Cardinal Zuppi on Promoting a “Synodal Church”

In Favor

Cardinal Zuppi sees synodality as a fundamental process for renewing the Church, making it more open, inclusive and capable of responding to contemporary challenges while always maintaining fidelity to the evangelical message.

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Full Profile

SANCTIFYING OFFICE

Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi is known as a “street priest” and missionary to the peripheries and the marginalized.

Since his promotion to the Archdiocese of Bologna, the sanctifying office of Cardinal Zuppi could perhaps best be summed up as a commitment to implementing Pope Francis’ call to “missionary conversion” in his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (no. 30).

Eucharistic Congress

Archbishop Zuppi began to implement the Pope’s programmatic document within the first year of arriving in Bologna. In 2016, he announced that the forthcoming diocesan Eucharistic Congress would be themed “The Eucharist and the City of Men” and would be based on a reflection of Evangelii Gaudium. The archbishop said the preparatory year for the diocesan congress would be “a year of adoration to understand [Christ’s] presence in the Eucharist and in the sacrament of our brother and the poor; a year of contemplation of the city of men, to look upon it with the eyes of the Lord, those of mercy; a year of a synodal search to respond to the crowd that surrounds us and which Jesus asks us, today, to give something to eat.” The four steps in the year of preparation for the 2017 diocesan Eucharistic Congress invited clergy and the faithful to reflect on several key passages from Evangelii Gaudium. (This will be discussed in greater detail later on.)

Liturgical Guidelines

In November 2019, new archdiocesan liturgical guidelines were issued that underlined a “synodal” approach to the liturgy and greater participation of the laity, drawing on Sacrosanctum Concilium interpreted in light of Evangelii Gaudium.¹

Cardinal Zuppi has expressed his views on the nature of the Mass, and the role the laity have in the liturgy, on other occasions. During the coronavirus pandemic, the cardinal likened the absence of the faithful to a kind of Lenten fast. “In reality,” he said, “it is not right because the Mass is for the people. It is a fast because the community is fundamental in the Eucharistic celebration.”

Critics said the cardinal’s view was at odds with that of Paul VI in his encyclical on the Eucharist, Mysterium Fidei, in which the Pope said there was “no reason to criticize” when a priest celebrates a Mass privately, without lay participants.²

Liturgy and Sacraments during the Covid Crisis

Each evening from March 8 to 16 during the pandemic, via livestreaming, the cardinal led a special novena in the cathedral. On March 17, he concluded the novena with a pilgrimage to the local Shrine of Our Lady of St. Luke. He told the faithful that the novena was meant to implore the Blessed Virgin to protect Bologna from evil.³

He also stressed the importance of attending to the vulnerable, particularly the elderly. On the feast of the Annunciation, he sent a letter to the elderly of the diocese, saying: “I would like to tell you that we love you, that no one is forgotten and that we are praying for you.”

Following the recommendations of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Zuppi also suspended funerals during the pandemic. Speaking to the Italian press, he recalled the suffering of those who die alone. He also issued particular restrictions for Holy Week but encouraged confession to continue⁴

Vocations

From 2015 until 2022, the number of priests in the archdiocese of Bologna declined from 577 to 511 in 2022. The number of male religious slightly increased from 263 to 265, while female religious fell from 787 to 514. The figures are marginally better than those of his predecessor, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, when vocations declined across the board.

Popular Devotions

In an interview in 2018, then-Archbishop Zuppi, reflecting on an initial encounter with the Community of Sant’Egidio, said that “Sant’Egidio made me discover another Gospel and another Church, the Church of my friends and not of the priests, of spontaneous prayer instead of the Rosary.”

In the same interview, reflecting back on his early days as a new priest in the early ’80s, assigned to the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Archbishop Zuppi said he initially found the “popular devotions” of the locals “not easy” to take, as he regarded them as “leftovers of the past.” But he said he discovered their “spiritual depth” in their ability to respond to the laity’s need for an “affective bond with the Church.” By the time he arrived in Bologna, he appeared to have warmed to popular devotions, as his response to the coronavirus pandemic showed.

Traditional Latin Mass

Cardinal Zuppi daily celebrates the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite in the Bologna cathedral but in 2014, he won the appreciation of traditionalists for being the first auxiliary bishop of Rome to celebrate the vetus ordo since the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum. It was also the first time that an auxiliary of Rome, while in office, had celebrated the old Mass in a Roman parish since the post-conciliar liturgical reforms began. In October 2015, the new archbishop of Bologna said he would celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass in the archdiocese if he were asked. Recalling past requests in Rome, he called it a “gesture of communion” and said he is “in favor of leaving behind every form of being closed.” There is no record of Cardinal Zuppi’s ever having celebrated the old Mass after these remarks. He has, however, visited the headquarters of the traditional Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest outside Florence where he expressed admiration for their number of priests and vocations.

Post-Traditionis Custodes, in October 2022 Cardinal Zuppi celebrated Solemn Vespers in the old rite in the Pantheon in Rome. He told the National Catholic Register afterward that he had decided to preside at the liturgy because the organizers had asked him. “They invited me before I became president of the Italian bishops’ conference, and I thought it was all right,” he said. Asked if he thought Traditionis Custodes posed a problem, Cardinal Zuppi said: “No, I think it was a directive that the Pope thought was useful, and it is to be applied with great awareness and with great responsibility.” His decision was well received by traditional Catholics; less so by radical liturgists such as Andrea Grillo, thought to be one of the chief lay architects of Traditionis Custodes.

Interreligious Prayer

Zuppi has also led interreligious prayer services with the Muslim community in Bologna. On February 2, 2020 — the Catholic feast of Candlemas and the close of the Christmas Season — the youth branch of the archdiocesan Catholic Action organized a day of prayer for peace. In the morning, the children and young adults were invited to attend Mass. In the afternoon, the group traveled to the Islamic Center to spend time with the Muslim community. The afternoon ended with an interreligious prayer service for Catholic and Muslim children, young adults, and their parents, led by Cardinal Zuppi and the president of the Islamic Center of Bologna.

In August 2024, Cardinal Zuppi gave his blessing to a House of Dialogue and Meeting in Bologna, a project begun in 2021 to educate and inform about interreligious dialogue and which is set to open in 2025. Critics warned it is part of the UN’s Agenda 2030, that it would serve to promote syncretism and a watering down of religions, and instill guilt about borders. Zuppi, however, was undeterred: “Dialogue is not a loss of identity,” he said. “Anyone who thinks so is adolescent or decrepit; dialogue strengthens identities.” (For more on Cardinal Zuppi’s teaching through interreligious dialogue, see the “Teaching Office” section below).

GOVERNING OFFICE

President of Italy’s Bishops

As expected given his meteoric rise through the ranks of the Italian episcopacy, in May 2022 Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi was elected president of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

His leadership has been one of intense engagement, marked by controversy and a progressive stance on social issues such as poverty, migration, rights for same-sex attracted people, peace issues, and interreligious dialogue.

Taking his lead from Pope Francis, he has aimed to promote a more open and inclusive approach. This has included greater lay involvement and a focus on the peripheries. He has become seen as an authoritative voice in the public debate, speaking on issues of national and international importance, and occasionally a voice of constructive opposition to the current government.

Running One of the World’s Wealthiest Dioceses

Cardinal Zuppi may be known as a “street priest,” but he governs one of the wealthiest dioceses in the world.

In 2012, Michelangelo Manini, the owner of FAAC, a leading international automatic-gate manufacturer, died, having bequeathed his estate, worth an estimated 1.7 billion euro ($1.85 billion), including the majority of FAAC shares (66 percent), to the Archdiocese of Bologna.

After two years of legal proceedings and negotiations, the archdiocese acquired complete ownership of the company. Zuppi’s predecessor, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, established a trust and appointed three professionals to manage the company, directing a percentage of its annual earnings to the archdiocese. In 2014, the company had a thousand employees and 284 million euro ($309 million) in sales.

One of Cardinal Caffarra’s final acts as archbishop of Bologna, in late 2015, was to allocate 5 million euro ($5.4 million) to the local Caritas for families who were in difficulty or unemployed.⁵

When Matteo Zuppi took possession of the Archdiocese of Bologna in 2015, he confirmed the trust’s administrators in their position. He also credited Cardinal Caffarra with the decision to reserve the profits for the poor. “This has made it possible to distribute millions in charity, not for worship, culture and as a means of support [for the diocese],” he said.

By 2017, FAAC had grown to 2,500 employees on five continents and in twenty-four countries, and closed 2017 with 428 million euro ($465 million) in sales, zero debt, and a net profit of 43 million euro ($47 million). In 2015, 5 million euro ($6 million) was given to the Archdiocese of Bologna. By 2019, that figure doubled to 10 million euro ($11 million). From the latter amount, 6.5 million euro was allocated to several entities: approximately 1.5 million euro went to the diocesan Caritas to help families with rent, bills, and health care; 1.3 million euro was allocated for schooling and educational grants; 1 million euro went to “Together for Work,” a collaborative project launched by the Archdiocese of Bologna and the local government; and a commission chaired by Archbishop Zuppi distributed the remaining 2.7 million to a variety of causes, including projects to help migrants, the homeless, and the reintegration of released prisoners. The remaining millions were placed in an emergency fund.

In April 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic and following Cardinal Carlo Caffarra’s example during the 2008 economic crisis, Cardinal Zuppi donated one million euro in FAAC dividends to establish the San Petronio Fund to provide financial assistance to families and individuals who were out of work due to the pandemic.

In 2022, the FAAC continued to make profits (71.3 million euros) assuring that the poor of Bologna would not have food shortages. Cardinal Zuppi recently warned FAAC’s board of directors to “beware of firing people” and to “try to do everything possible” to avoid it.

Influence of Sant’Egidio

“If I am here today,” then-Archbishop Zuppi said on the Community of Sant’Egidio’s fiftieth anniversary in 2018, “I owe it to Sant’Egidio.”

To understand better Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s priorities in governing, it is important to assess the influence of Sant’Egidio in his life.

A worldwide Catholic lay movement founded in Rome in 1968 by Andrea Riccardi, Sant’Egidio is a fruit of the Second Vatican Council and focuses on care of the needy and on mediating conflicts.⁶ It is respected for its work for the poor and the elderly as well as its pioneering DREAM program for treating HIV and AIDS sufferers, especially in Africa. It cares for gypsies, runs soup kitchens for the homeless, and has for many years opened up the nave of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere to serve Christmas lunch to the dispossessed. It has led long-running campaigns to end the death penalty and more recently to push for a debt moratorium for Africa. The community was also responsible for the famous Assisi meeting of interreligious leaders in 1986 and regularly organizes a “Spirit of Assisi” conference in different parts of the world. Its emphasis on social justice has given it a distinctly political rather than spiritual focus, and it has become closely allied with Italy’s political left while maintaining great adaptability to the papacy.⁷

Shortly before taking possession of the Archdiocese of Bologna, Matteo Zuppi explained that his vocation was “born inside the Community of Sant’Egidio, to which I have belonged from the age of 15.” Three years later, in an interview commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Sant’Egidio, he said he came from a “very religious family that my father had wanted to build around the Gospel, but those were the years after the Council and, as happened to many, this [was] overwhelmed by all the aspirations, naïveté and even the contradictions that ran through the student world.” He said the education he had received “seemed to me obsolete and moralistic,” whereas Sant’Egidio made him “discover another Gospel and another Church” that attracted him “much more than a faith, however deep, like that of my parents.”

Due to Sant’Egidio’s influence, he said his vocation “was born as a service to the Church and the Community.”⁸ Growing in a lay community, Zuppi said, “helped me greatly to live out a priestly role that isn’t too clerical and, as the Pope says, clericalism is a sickness of the Church.” He said he “learned to live [his] ministry together with lay brothers and sisters, discovering the enormous richness of the Church and the different charisms” that are all necessary in communion. “That said,” he added, “it’s clear that I will not be the Bishop of Sant’Egidio but the Bishop of Bologna.”⁹

In 1992, Father Zuppi, who was responsible for Sant’Egidio’s peace efforts in Africa, worked with Andrea Riccardi on conflict-resolution talks that would lead to the Rome General Peace Accords, ending a fifteen-year civil war in Mozambique. The community’s role in brokering the accord, signed at the Sant’Egidio headquarters in Rome, earned the community the name “the UN of Trastevere.”¹⁰

Yet as Sant’Egidio gained a worldwide reputation as peacemakers in warzones and as bridge builders between religions, by 1998, when Vincenzo Paglia was the community’s ecclesiastical assistant, reports of serious moral, liturgical, and sacramental problems within the community began to emerge.¹¹ In 2003, an important member of Sant’Egidio, who had been with the community for twenty-five years, reportedly lifted the veil on aspects of its inner life, testifying that leaders had used coercion to arrange marriages between lay members and were wielding their authority to dictate if and when married couples in the community could have children.

In 2011, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago warned the Vatican about the community’s willingness to compromise on the nonnegotiable values of life and marriage.¹²

One year later, the Community of Sant’Egidio came under fire from Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who accused the community of taking a submissive stance toward Communist China — a position that does not appear to have changed.¹³

Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick also had a long relationship with the Community of Sant’Egidio and was a featured speaker at their conferences, particularly from 2008 to 2010. Criticism has also been leveled against the community for their involvement in politics in Italy and abroad, and they have entertained controversial figures at their “Spirit of Assisi” annual meetings, including speakers such as population-control advocate Jeffrey Sachs.¹⁴

Peace Missions

Largely due to his peace-making history with Sant’Egidio, Pope Francis chose Cardinal Zuppi rather than his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to be his special envoy to Russia and Ukraine. His mission has included visits to Kyiv, Moscow, Washington, D.C., the West Bank and Beijing to engage in dialogue with political and ecclesial leaders, emphasizing humanitarian efforts and the reunification of children with their families.

Zuppi’s shuttle diplomacy received a mixed response, sparking debates and discussions on its effectiveness and the role of the Catholic Church in geopolitical issues. By the end of 2024, the warring sides in each of the conflicts were no closer to a peace agreement, and were arguably further away from reaching one. His contacts with Beijing are likely to be leading to a further renewal of the controversial Vatican-Sino peace agreement on the appointment of bishops.

In October 2024, Cardinal Zuppi returned to Russia, within the framework of the mission entrusted to him by the Pope in 2023. The Vatican said the trip aimed to evaluate further efforts to promote reuniting Ukrainian children with their families and the exchange of prisoners, in view of achieving a long-awaited peace.

Ties to the Political Left

Archbishop Zuppi is the first non-Northern Italian to be appointed to the Metropolitan See of Bologna since 1894. Italy’s political left enthusiastically welcomed his elevation to the cardinalate in 2019, with socialist politicians lauding the choice on social media and headlines reading “The Chaplain of the Pd Has Become a Cardinal” — the Pd (Partito democratico) being Italy’s largest center-left social-democratic party.

In view of these allegiances, Cardinal Zuppi inevitably clashed with Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing Lega Party and Italy’s deputy prime minister (2018-2019), particularly on immigration.

Speaking at a book launch in Rome in February 2019, Zuppi argued that “populism and sovereignty are intolerant toward [certain] groups that are, instead, the guarantee against totalitarianism: saying us first and then them, first our own and then the others, sends everyone backward, while if you say the others first, then everyone comes.” For him, the Church is tasked with proposing as an antidote to populism “humanism and humanitarianism, which is not synonymous with do-goodery or naïveté” but “is behaving like the Good Samaritan in the parable, i.e., looking at politics as a response to suffering.”

Cardinal Zuppi has spoken at numerous Pd conferences and events, and he wrote the foreword to a book by the former communist, ex–Rome mayor, and founding leader of the Pd, Walter Veltroni.¹⁵

In December 2019, at a dinner held in the nave of one of the archdiocesan churches (a tradition pioneered by the Sant’Egidio community as a service to the poor), Archbishop Zuppi was photographed warmly greeting Mattia Santori, the thirty-two-year-old Bologna native and founder of the Sardines movement, a grassroots anti-Salvini group. Santori has become a symbol of the left’s anti-populist movement.

A proponent of dialogue, Zuppi is known also to attend right-leaning meetings if invited.

At the death of politician and activist Giacinto (Marco) Pannella, founder of Italy’s Radical Party, who fought for legalized divorce and abortion and who, together with Emma Bonino, pushed for the 2016 law legalizing same-sex civil unions, Archbishop Zuppi called him “an honest and generous man, even if he wasn’t always right.” Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, whom Zuppi has known almost all his life through Sant’Egidio, praised Panella as a friend.

Archbishop Zuppi said that he and Pannella shared some common battles, such as the abolition of the death penalty — a key Sant’Egidio cause — and prisoners’ rights. Asked by a reporter which of Pannella’s battles he found unacceptable, the archbishop responded: “All those that led to the paradox that freedom can surpass the rights of the human person.” Puzzled, the reporter said he expected a bishop to name abortion or divorce. Archbishop Zuppi replied: “Taking the life of a person who has yet to be born is part of this paradox. I would add that my knowledge of Pannella leads me to say that he would not have asked his companion to have an abortion; he was interested in the fact that she could do so, because he considered it an inalienable right.”

In September 2019, Cardinal Zuppi, with the permission of the Congregation for the Clergy, incardinated into the Archdiocese of Bologna Eugenio Melandri, the “red priest” whom John Paul II suspended a divinis (a suspension that lasted twenty-eight years) after he ran in the 1989 European elections as a member of the Proletarian Democracy Party, a far-left Italian political party.

In 1992, Melandri was elected to the Italian Parliament for the Communist Reform Party. He was also the cofounder of Senza Confini (Without Borders), an association that works to promote the rights of immigrants and refugees and integrate them into Italian society. On October 20, 2019, Melandri celebrated Mass for the first time since his suspension, but he died one week later, at the age of seventy-one, after a long illness. One year earlier, he was received in Casa Santa Marta by Pope Francis, who had him serve his Mass. There are no reports of his renouncing his communist affiliations before he died.

In 2014, as auxiliary bishop of Rome, Zuppi was a featured speaker at a launch of the autobiography of another dissident Catholic priest, Dom Giovanni Frazoni. In 1964, as a young Benedictine abbot, Frazoni took part in Vatican II. In 1976, he was reduced to the lay state for his support of divorce legislation, and openly supporting the Italian Communist Party (Pdi). Frazoni, who died in 2017 at the age of eighty-eight, was in favor of abortion and euthanasia, saw artificial birth control as consistent with the Gospel, and supported the abolition of both the priesthood and the papal Magisterium.

Pro-Europeanism

Tied to his political leanings are his views on the European Union which is something of a sacred cow for Zuppi, and part of his desire to see a world without borders fully open to migrants. He shared such views ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections, writing a joint letter with Bishop Mariano Crociata. Addressed to “the European Union,” they called for a renewed sense of participation in shaping the EU’s future, emphasizing the importance of unity and shared ideals amidst challenges such as nationalism and populism. Like many European prelates, Zuppi views the European Union as synonymous with Europe and crucial to the continent’s identity. Despite the EU’s distinctly secular approach to many issues, especially reproductive rights and gender issues, they urged the EU to adopt a more assertive foreign policy and to address issues like migration and economic disparities.

Bologna’s Eucharistic Congress

Cardinal Zuppi’s exercise of his governing office in the Archdiocese of Bologna is also closely connected to Evangelii Gaudium.

Within a year of taking possession of the Archdiocese of Bologna, Archbishop Zuppi was tasked with organizing Bologna’s tenth diocesan Eucharistic Congress.¹⁶ The congress, held every ten years, with a year of preparation culminating in a weeklong conference, took place from November 2016 to October 2017. Its theme was “Give them something to eat (Mt 14:16): The Eucharist and the City of Men.” The Scripture passage is taken up in paragraph 49 of Evangelii Gaudium.

Cardinal Carlo Caffarra had always given the congress an emphasis on the poor but kept the main focus on the Blessed Sacrament. In his letter to the diocese on the congress, Archbishop Zuppi placed far more emphasis on poverty and social justice.¹⁷

To this end, he announced that the 2016-2017 year of preparation would comprise four steps centered on a “synodal” reflection on Evangelii Gaudium that would set in motion a plan of diocesan and “even structural” renewal.

The first step was to be a time for lectio divina on Matthew 14:13-21 and reflection on paragraph 49 of Evangelii Gaudium, which speaks against being confined to structures and rules that “make us harsh judges.”¹⁸ It featured two meetings: the formal announcement of the Eucharistic Congress and the closing of the Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis, with which it coincided.

The second step, from Advent to Lent, was dedicated to “analyzing the local situation” and reflection on paragraph 27 of Evangelii Gaudium — Francis’ dream of a missionary option suited to today’s world.¹⁹ The faithful were invited to ask themselves: “If I put myself in the perspective of those on the ‘peripheries’ of the Christian community, what must we change and what missionary choices can we think about to initiate renewal?” That stage included participation in two meetings: a “national march for peace” in December, and the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in the Fifth Centenary of the Lutheran Reformation.”

The third step, during Lent, was centered on “rediscovering the center of everything: the quality of our Eucharistic celebrations” and focused on paragraph 24 of Evangelii Gaudium — the joy of evangelization and the importance of the beauty of the liturgy.²⁰ The faithful were invited to ask themselves: “In the perspective of a missionary conversion, what are the elements of joy and fatigue at our Sunday Masses?”

The fourth step, from Easter to Corpus Christi, focused on the “missionary subject.”²¹ The faithful were invited to consider: “Who are the disciples to whom Jesus says, ‘You give them something to eat’? How do we involve everyone and the whole Christian community?” Common meetings included a May celebration in honor of Our Lady of San Luca, patroness of Bologna; Pentecost; and Corpus Christi.

A month before the congress, on September 6, 2017, Cardinal Carlo Maria Caffarra died. Archbishop Zuppi celebrated his funeral Mass in Bologna’s Cathedral of St. Peter.

Closing celebrations for the 2017 diocesan Eucharistic Congress included a visit from Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, head of Caritas Internationalis, and a one-day pastoral visit from Pope Francis.

Papal Visit

On October 1, 2017, at the culmination of preparations for the Eucharistic Congress, Archbishop Zuppi welcomed Pope Francis to Bologna for an apostolic visit. The Pope’s first scheduled meeting was with migrants and care workers at the “Regional Hub” migrant reception center. He next met with representatives of the world of work, the unemployed, and members of trade unions. Archbishop Zuppi then invited the Holy Father to join a Sant’Egidio-style “solidarity lunch with poor people, refugees and prisoners” in the nave of Bologna’s patronal basilica. An estimated one thousand people were in attendance. After lunch, the pope made a customary visit to priests, religious, and seminarians, then met with students and representatives of the academic world, and concluded the day with Holy Mass.

First Pastoral Letter

At the close of the Eucharistic Congress, and following Pope Francis’ pastoral visit to Bologna, Archbishop Zuppi issued his first pastoral letter, titled Were Not Our Hearts Burning within Us? The seventy-nine-page missive, based on the Gospel account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, focused on the importance of traveling along a “synodal path” in communion and mission.²² It also stressed the importance of the Eucharist, Word, and charity — hearkening to Pope Francis’ exhortation to the faithful of Bologna to remember the “three Ps”: in Italian, Pane, Parola, Poveri.

Reorganizing the Archdiocese

Pope Francis’ “dream of a missionary option” also inspired Cardinal Zuppi’s restructuring of the Archdiocese of Bologna. In July 2018, the cardinal issued a pastoral note, reorganizing the diocese into fifty “pastoral regions” consisting not only of parishes but also of monasteries, convents, religious houses, and headquarters of ecclesial associations and movements. The reorganization was based on the work and counsel of Cardinal Zuppi’s “vicar for synodality” and input from archdiocesan priests. A moderator was appointed to each pastoral zone for a three-year term and was tasked with convening a “regional assembly.” Cardinal Zuppi said these regional assemblies were “inspired” by Pope Francis’ “dream” in Evangelii Gaudium, paragraph 27.

In his pastoral note to the archdiocese, Cardinal Zuppi urged the faithful of Bologna to move away from “self-sufficient” parishes that make the faithful feel at home to “a communion of parishes.” “We become saints in community because sanctification is a community journey, to be undertaken two by two,” he wrote. He also said the year would be dedicated to “continuing the synodal journey” indicated in Evangelii Gaudium.

Pastoral Visit

In keeping with canon law, on the solemnity of Pentecost in 2019, Cardinal Zuppi announced his plan to visit the various regions of the diocese over a five-year period.²³ The theme of the visit — “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27) — was inspired by Pope Francis’ apostolic visit to Bologna in October 2017, particularly his stress on actively belonging to the diocese and his calls for an outgoing, missionary Church in Evangelii Gaudium. In his letter to the archdiocese, Cardinal Zuppi said “the aim of this pastoral visit will be to grow in communion and live out missionary conversion.” He added: “The Church does not want to live for herself, and her vocation is to serve man and labor in the harvest of the world, without boundaries, as the Lord Jesus asked.”²⁴

Amoris Laetitia Guidelines and the Synod of Bishops

Cardinal Zuppi served as president of the Bishops’ Conference of Emilia- Romagna, during which he took a leading role in formulating and promulgating episcopal guidelines for the controversial chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (the guidelines, issued in 2018, are discussed in the next section). The bishops’ document, under Cardinal Zuppi’s leadership, referred to sexual relations in a second, unmarried union not as adultery, as the Church has traditionally taught, but as “conjugal acts” that are sometimes needed to preserve the “new union” and therefore the “good of the children.”

Zuppi continues to be a member of the Council of the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, a position giving him some influence on the organization of synods. He was elected to the council at the conclusion of the Synod on Youth in October 2018 and has been part of the Ordinary Council that has overseen the running of the Synod on Synodality which concludes in October 2024.

Coronavirus

As mentioned above, Cardinal Zuppi never closed the churches in Bologna during the Covid crisis but suspended all public celebrations of the Mass, including funerals, following the provisions of the bishops’ conference. He did not prohibit sacramental Confession, the Anointing of the Sick, and Baptisms but ordered that priests observe precautions.²⁵

Communications

Cardinal Zuppi, who won the affection of many Romans, has become well known to Italians through his many appearances on national television and public comments to the press. Perhaps influenced by Sant’Egidio’s effective employment of public relations, Zuppi also makes maximum use of the media.

He uses the diocesan television program 12 Porte (Twelve Doors) to broadcast video messages to the faithful of Bologna or special events, such as the diocesan train ride to Rome when he was created a cardinal.

Cardinal Zuppi has also had a “docufilm” made about him, called The Gospel according to Matteo Z. Produced by Italian journalist Emilio Marrese and described as a “rock documentary,” it aims at telling the story of the bicycle-riding “street bishop” who is “changing Bologna, dialoguing with everyone and incarnating the open and reforming vision of Pope Francis.” The docufilm was released on December 17, 2019.²⁶

An effective communicator, Cardinal Zuppi also regularly appears on TV2000, the official television station of the Italian bishops, as well as on popular talk shows.²⁷

TEACHING OFFICE

Attitude toward the Second Vatican Council

Cardinal Zuppi was born on October 11, 1955, the traditional liturgical feast of the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Seven years later to the day would mark the solemn opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

Shortly before taking possession of the Archdiocese of Bologna in December 2018, Archbishop Zuppi was asked what he would be “carrying in his bag” to help him fulfill his episcopal responsibilities. He replied: “Other than the Gospel, which we must never forget there is my story, the Council, and the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, which is the program of Pope Francis.”

For Cardinal Zuppi, the Council “brought about a profound change in the Church which has begun to listen again to the many questions of the world.” Beginning again with mercy, he said, means “implementing Vatican II, because mercy represents the attitude of the post-conciliar Church” It means “putting into practice exactly what the Council wanted” and “looking sympathetically at the world and its inhabitants, and then answering the many questions that the world itself poses to the Church.”

Zuppi has another natural connection to Vatican II — namely, through his father, who knew and worked for Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI).

Cardinal Zuppi often cites Paul VI. In a TedxYouth talk titled “What Unites Heaven and Earth,” delivered in Bologna in 2018, he said that what unites them is “the horizon.” He said he believes that “for each of us, looking at the horizon also means understanding what unites us, what unites earth and heaven (sky), and we can’t understand what we are doing here on earth without measuring ourselves against the greatness of heaven (the sky) itself.”

“We are born in one place but have to learn to be anywhere,” he said, adding that Paul VI had a beautiful expression: La stanza del mondo (the room of the world). “It’s one room,” the cardinal told young people, and “many times we believe more in division and can’t see the room anymore, and it’s terrible because we don’t understand anymore who we are.” He noted that Pope Francis “uses a similar expression, ‘common home,’ and invites us all to remember that the house is one and that we are all called to be citizens of the world, an expression that was very fashionable in the 1960s, when people saw the terrible effects of nationalism” We need to learn to live with others, to see others, or else we become enclosed in our own little world, he said. Addressing the inequality of resources in the world, Zuppi told young people that “we need to adjust the room” and said this begins with each of us, through solidarity.

In his TedxYouth talk, Cardinal Zuppi mentioned neither God nor Jesus, nor heaven in any supernatural sense.²⁸

On Hell

During an in-studio appearance on an Italian television program in October 2019, Cardinal Zuppi was asked by the presenter: “Do you believe in hell, or does the mercy of God exclude it?” Cardinal Zuppi answered: “Hell is something we have to contend with seriously.” He added: “I believe that hell is, for example, when you are so distrustful that you no longer believe in love, or you construct a completely autonomous world where mercy can no longer enter in, because you do everything alone. Individualism leads to this. You also think you can judge everything yourself, and so you remain alone with your judgment, surrounded by mirrors but you’re alone. I think this is what hell is” Cardinal Zuppi said with a smile, adding: “And when mercy can’t enter in, then I believe mercy is able to do the impossible.”

On the Death Penalty

Consistent with his close association with the Community of Sant’Egidio, Cardinal Zuppi has long favored a universal ban on the death penalty. Speaking in Bologna, at the 2016 launch of the book From Cain to Caliphate: Towards a World without the Death Penalty, Cardinal Zuppi asserted that the death penalty is “born out of the feelings of revenge that underlie punitive justice.” This concept, he said, is the “the exact opposite of what justice must really be” Supporting Pope Francis’ statements on the subject, Cardinal Zuppi said that “to speak of the death penalty is actually to speak of imprisonment, because, for example, life imprisonment is in fact a kind of masked death penalty. The penalty, instead, must be a path of rehabilitation.”

The cardinal praised the United Nations for seeking (with Sant’Egidio) a moratorium on capital punishment, saying to fight for a world without the death penalty “is a duty of our generation.” It is a commitment, he believes, “to the culture of life,” whereas “the death penalty turns us from victims into executioners without realizing it.”

Euthanasia and Abortion

The cardinal’s views on both issues have been ambiguous. Interviewed by Vanity Fair in August 2022, Cardinal Zuppi, who had just two months earlier had been elected president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, declared that he would celebrate the funeral of Piergiorgio Welby, an Italian poet and assisted suicide campaigner. Welby suffered from muscular dystrophy and campaigned to have his life support removed, which eventually occurred in December 2006. This case sparked a significant debate in Italy about euthanasia and end-of-life issues. Church officials at the time rejected the family’s request for a funeral, stating that Welby had gone against Catholic teaching by expressing a desire to end his life. In the same year, Zuppi said that although the Church rejects assisted suicide, Italy’s Constitutional Court “cannot fail to be a point of reference” and that he would see where the “political discussion will lead us to.”

However, a 74-year-old woman, who had decided to travel to a clinic in Switzerland to be euthanized, credited Cardinal Zuppi with changing her mind after the cardinal spoke to the woman on the phone on the initiative of a friend who was a priest.

In comments to a chat show host on Italian television in April 2023, Cardinal Zuppi said Italy’s abortion law, no. 194, was “painful” but “guarantees an important secular interpretation” and that “no one thinks of questioning it.” His imprecise remarks led to criticisms that he appeared to be approving the law, something he denied.²⁹

He has not been reticent in praising pro-abortion figures, as shown elsewhere in this profile. In 2023, he sent a message to be read at the funeral of Michela Murgia, an author and pro-abortion figure whose last work was entitled God Save the Queer: A Feminist Catechism. Zuppi, who was described as a “longtime friend,” said Murgia’s life is not finished, and its pages will continue to be written with letters of love, in that universal language of the spirit that reveals the greatness of every person and the eternity that’s hidden in all of us.”

Amoris Laetitia

As mentioned above, as president of the Bishops’ Conference of Emilia-Romagna, Cardinal Zuppi played a key role in developing pastoral guidelines for chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. Issued in 2018, the guidelines appear to depart from traditional Church teaching on admission of the divorced and “remarried” to Holy Communion. The document argues that chastity is not the only possible option for “remarried” divorcees, “since the new union and therefore also the good of the children could be put at risk in the absence of conjugal acts.” The document adds that it is a “delicate matter” of that discernment in the “internal forum.”

Regarding possible readmission to the sacraments, the guidelines state “it will be opportune to establish the modalities, in order to avoid, on the one hand, situations of conflict and scandal and, on the other, the feeling that readmission represents a private matter and a sort of ‘exception’ granted to some.”

Humanae Vitae

Cardinal Zuppi has expressed support for Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae but has not explicitly endorsed its teaching against the use of contraception. In October 2018, Zuppi was a featured speaker at a conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae.³⁰ During his talk, titled “What Are the Ways to Welcome Pope Francis’ Invitation to Rediscover Humanae Vitae?,” Cardinal Zuppi, who is one of six children, praised a pro–Humanae Vitae talk and stressed that the “beauty” of marriage set forth in the encyclical needs to be rediscovered today, in a world where so many people grow up in unstable families and relationships. Cardinal Zuppi, who prefers not to take sides and seeks conciliatory positions as much as possible, cautioned against polemics in the Church. He said he believed Pope Francis had sought to relaunch the teaching of Humanae Vitae in Amoris Laetitia.

In 2023, Zuppi indicated he supported a renewal of perspectives regarding the Church’s teaching on contraception, and encouraged theologians to “go further” with “creative fidelity.” He also warned against “proceeding in small and homogeneous circles” so that all sides could be heard and avoid becoming entrenched in their positions, even if — as one critic pointed out — one of those sides proposes the truth and fights error. His comments, observers said, mirrored those of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who, like Zuppi, has long and deep ties to the Sant’Egidio lay community.

Homosexuality

Shortly after Zuppi’s promotion to Bologna in 2015, Famiglia Cristiana published an article noting that, as auxiliary bishop in Rome, Cardinal Zuppi was “sensitive to the paths of welcoming ‘marginalized’ people into the community.” It added that, with his support, the Jesuits of San Saba, Rome, had organized a group called “Church: A Home for All,” whose meetings were “attended mainly by remarried divorcees and homosexuals.”³¹ In 2016, in Bologna, Cardinal Zuppi said that “the fight against homophobia will find us close.”

Cardinal Zuppi’s views on homosexuality can appear ambiguous; he has shown support for divergent stances in writing the prefaces to two books with opposing perspectives on the pastoral care of persons who experience same-sex attraction. The first was written for the Italian edition of Same-Sex Attraction: Catholic Teaching and Pastoral Practice, originally published by the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council in 2007.

Cardinal Zuppi, who has firsthand experience of the AIDS epidemic through his work in Africa with Sant’Egidio, wrote that being a pastor to homosexuals means risking going to the peripheries, to those “who feel rejected by family or society; it implies a presence in areas at risk, where — as in a ‘field hospital’ of a ‘throw-away society’ — there are deaths and injuries to be healed.” And he says that this is not meant figuratively but relates to those homosexuals who have died of HIV or AIDS.

He wrote that “no obvious pastoral solutions” exist in this area, adding that the Church “does not build walls” or create “categories of people according to sexual orientation, because, before having a particular sexual attraction, they are people.” He added that it was “pleasing” to see people with homosexual tendencies help each other to live a “full Christian life” and acquire “a deep sense of mercy, close to the sacraments,” where “God’s abundant grace will help, I am sure,” to direct “so many souls towards the happiness of love.”

But Cardinal Zuppi also wrote the preface for Building a Bridge, the controversial book by Father James Martin, S.J., praised by those pushing for greater LGBT acceptance in the Church, but criticized for its failure to stress the importance of celibacy and chastity and to acknowledge Catholics who experience same-sex attraction and seek to live in obedience to Church teaching.

Drawing on Pope Francis’ writings, he urged “a true and patient accompaniment (‘To accompany, To discern; To integrate’), one that favors the comprehension and vital engagement of the Gospel message on the part of every person, but without reducing it” He supported “a wise pedagogy of gradualism,” taking the particular circumstances of each person into account, but not taking “anything away from the integrity of faith and doctrine” He said Father Martin’s book was “useful for encouraging dialogue, as well as reciprocal knowledge and understanding, in view of a new pastoral attitude that we must seek together with our LGBT brothers and sisters.” And he supported Cardinal Kevin Farrell’s endorsement of the book: that it was “much-needed” and would be of help to Church leaders to “compassionately minister to the LGBT community” and make them “feel more at home” in the Church.³²

In May 2020, Cardinal Zuppi wrote a third preface to a book on the same topic, this one called Church and Homosexuality: An Inquiry in Light of Pope Francis’ Magisterium. Written by Luciano Moia, editor-in-chief of Avvenire’s monthly magazine, the book aims to “define better” the boundaries of a new pastoral approach to homosexuality. Zuppi’s endorsement amounted to a “new offensive for the legitimization of homosexuality in the Church” under the “guise of welcoming people,” wrote Riccardo Cascioli, editor of the Italian Catholic daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.

Regarding Fiducia Supplicans, Cardinal Zuppi firmly defended Pope Francis’ line on the document, saying Italy’s bishops accepted the new teaching on non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples. The text, Zuppi said, shows “the loving gaze of the Church for all of God’s children without undermining the teachings of the magisterium.” God wants “everyone to be saved,” he said, adding it is therefore the task of the Church to stand up for everyone and everything. “We cannot forget that all the baptised have the full dignity of children of God and as such are our brothers and sisters,” he asserted. Zuppi’s comments were criticized by an Argentine bishop who said they amounted to approval of homosexual unions.

In June 2022, before Fiducia Supplicans was published, Cardinal Zuppi allowed the “blessing” in his diocese of a same-sex couple, in a diocesan church in the presence of six priests. The ceremony was billed as a “Mass of Thanksgiving” in order not to violate a 2021 Vatican instruction forbidding same-sex blessings. However, observers said the ceremony had all the trappings of a blessings and Cardinal Zuppi was evidently made aware of the ceremony beforehand. The Italian Catholic newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana accused Zuppi and his diocese of lying by issuing a statement that denied evidence of a blessing when it had all the appearances of such a ceremony, and that it was merely a form of accompaniment when in reality it aimed, according to LNBQ, to “bring into the heart of the Church the LGBT agenda, the legitimacy of any sexual orientation, the practical application of gender ideology, including acceptance of civil unions.”

Three years later, Cardinal Zuppi again caused controversy over the issue of homosexuality. At a 2024 Italian film festival, he reportedly praised “queer” families, emphasizing the importance of love within such relationships. Echoing Pope Francis’ stance on the issue, he said “everyone must be in the Church” and described the term “queer” as representing a bond that can exist within a legal framework. La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, a frequent critic of Zuppi, suggested his comments represented a “systematic deconstruction” of traditional family relationships. It added that his comments contradicted Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate which taught that love must always be considered within the truth.

The LGBT movement rejoiced at his appointment as president of the Italian bishops, describing him as “one of the closest ever cardinals to the LGBTQ+ community.” They recalled comments he gave in 2016 in which he said that “the fight against homophobia will bring us together,” and comments he made in Father Martin’s book including that he believes sexual orientation is something “no one chooses” and is “not separable from the identity of the person.”

Response to Church Crisis

In a January 2024 speech to the permanent council of Italy’s bishops’ conference, Zuppi acknowledged “a sense of decline” in the Church, one that is spreading among priests and the faithful. Zuppi said that in response, the Church should become aware of its mission anew, to “be itself, with an open mind, a courageous heart and a far-sighted understanding,” and has a vocation from God in the face of the widespread disorientation and isolation people experience. Therefore, Zuppi continued, this is not only a time of secularisation, but also the era of the Church, a time not of decline but of calling to be the Church of God. “Let us not be intimidated by a culture for which faith is in decline,” he stressed, adding that the Church had survived many crises over the past 50 years “because its pastors were not afraid to preach the Gospel and were aware that they had a mission.” Back then, too, people wrote that Christianity was doomed, he said. “Let’s not be frightened by fragility and smallness! They are not just indicators of a problem, but the everyday reality in which the Church has always lived.”

Civil Unions

In January 2016, just months before Italy legally recognized same-sex civil unions, Archbishop Zuppi said he agreed with Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, then president of Italy’s bishops’ conference, that “there are other priorities that must be faced.” Zuppi added, “There are different sensibilities. We hope we can find solutions that bring these sensitivities together without upsetting the fundamental lines of the family that we all want.”

Speaking in August 2016, three months after the Cirinnà law passed, legalizing same-sex civil unions, Archbishop Zuppi said: “Having clarified the aspects that have most concerned the Church, that is, the confusion with marriage and the family, these are brothers and sisters whom we will love. And with them we will try to live and walk together.”

Regarding the possibility of homosexual couples’ adopting children, he said the real concern of the Italian bishops is that “there aren’t adequate defenses for the family,” and the “contradiction” that those who have more children pay more. “We are far behind on this front,” he said, adding: “I believe that the task of the Church will be more for than against something — to give the family back the indispensable role it actually has, otherwise with the economic crisis there will be further consequences of impoverishment.”

Interreligious Dialogue

As a long-serving member of the Community of Sant’Egidio — which for decades has promoted the spirit of the 1986 World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi through its own international Meetings of Prayer for Peace — Cardinal Zuppi is unsurprisingly a keen promoter of interreligious dialogue. The 1986 Assisi meeting gathered 160 religious leaders who spent the day together in prayer to God or their gods. While supporters see the meetings as vital for ensuring peace among men, critics believe the Assisi meeting and other similar initiatives relativize the uniqueness of Christ and His Church for the salvation of souls.³³

Cardinal Zuppi has been a regular participant at the annual “Spirit of Assisi” meetings, which are held in a different city each year and seek to continue the essence of the 1986 meeting. The 2018 meeting was organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio in Bologna. Speaking to representatives of the great world religions, Zuppi said Bologna’s “magnificent towers” symbolized man’s “desire for heaven” but that people cannot live “enclosed in towers” and be a “collection of isolated individuals.”³⁴

The meetings often draw controversial guests and speakers advocating a more globalist world. Among those attending that year were three Chinese bishops, two of whom were vice presidents of the communist-run Chinese church, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (underlining Sant’Egidio’s close ties with China and its state-run church), and UN adviser and population-control proponent Jeffrey Sachs, who spoke at the 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2019 gatherings.³⁵

In an interview at the 2019 meeting, held in Madrid and themed “Peace with No Borders,” Cardinal Zuppi said that more than three decades after their inception, the international meetings are still very “forward” in their vision. “It is an event that helps us to glimpse the future that awaits us.” This future, he said, “will not be the ‘supermarket of religions’; the future will not be a ‘super-religion’!”

Instead, he said “individual religions will point their faithful to the future reality of our entire planet, that is, living together and thinking of each other in this unique, extraordinary home that is earth. Each religion has the duty to teach its faithful how to live together with others”

Cardinal Zuppi acknowledged that “a kind of UN of religions might frighten some, since it would mean that then there is also a ‘super-religion’ above all others” Better, he said, is “a meeting between a friend who invites his friend, rather than a cold institution” At the international Meetings of Prayer for Peace, he said “there is a lot of friendship. Everyone knows who has invited them, who else comes . . . everyone feels at home.”

Islam

For Cardinal Zuppi, one of the good fruits of the 1986 Assisi meeting is the controversial “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” signed by Pope Francis and the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, on February 4, 2019 in Abu Dhabi.³⁶

Speaking to Catholic and Muslim university students at a summer school in early September 2019, he said we are “indebted” to the first Assisi meeting for the Abu Dhabi document.³⁷ During the weekend event, Catholic students were invited to participate in Muslim Friday prayers, and Muslim students were invited to participate in Catholic Sunday Mass. Cardinal Zuppi told the young people: “If there is no dialogue, there is division. If there is no fraternity, there is indifference. When one does not understand the other, there is prejudice. Dialogue is often seen as dangerous, in the sense that it discolors identities, but this is a contradiction. Faith helps us to understand, makes us rejoice in diversity and expresses fraternity.”³⁸. No distinction between supernatural Christian faith and natural faith appeared to have been made.

Cardinal Zuppi’s embrace of the Abu Dhabi document is consistent with his approach to the growing Islamic presence in Bologna. In March 2016, at a conference on the local Muslim community, sponsored by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, Cardinal Zuppi called for a mosque to be built in Bologna. “Rome has had a mosque since the 1970s, and I believe it is an important place. Some people think otherwise, but they are wrong,” he said. The fact that Islamic countries forbid the construction of Catholic churches, he added, should “commit us all the more to allow believers to pray.”

At the meeting, Cardinal Zuppi also expressed his hope that “some Islamic feasts will be welcomed in schools.” Citing Pope Francis, he said “we need to build bridges between different cultures.” The one-day conference, titled “For a Politics of Inclusion of Islam and Muslims in Bologna,” was based on the findings of a report by the same title, also funded by the Open Society Foundation.

One month later, in April 2016, Cardinal Zuppi visited one of the many small mosques in Bologna and reminded the media and all those present of Pope Francis’ call to “build bridges” and not “walls.” Noting the upcoming feast of the Blessed Virgin of San Luca, the cardinal invited the imam to “contemplate the profound faith of the city, which is not a faith against the others and without the others” but “helps us see in the other our brother.” Recalling the thirtieth anniversary of the 1986 Assisi meeting, Cardinal Zuppi also said he hoped a similar meeting could be organized in Bologna.

In May 2019, Cardinal Zuppi visited the Islamic Center of Bologna (established to unite the majority of smaller mosques in the city) for the first Friday of Ramadan. He told reporters that “when you don’t know one another or [when you] look at one another only from afar, you often think there is an enemy.” Getting to know one another, he said, will “help us commit to living in the reality” of Bologna and Italy. “This is what all Muslims want — to insert themselves, to live fully in the culture and rights and duties of our countries,” he said. “It’s clear that we are experiencing something new. It’s the first time that there is such a constant presence of Islamic communities in our country — in wider Europe it’s already been this way for some time — but we need to be more ourselves and dialogue so that this presence is a sign of respect and humanism that we live.”

Also in the spirit of the Abu Dhabi document, Cardinal Zuppi has attended and encouraged participation in a public celebration of iftar, the evening meal with which Muslims break their fast during Ramadan.³⁹. In May 2019, he supported the celebration of iftars in front of the Catholic church in Marzabotto (Diocese of Bologna), even though the parish priest had suggested the square in front of the town hall was a more suitable and less controversial location. A letter from the archdiocesan office of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue said the decision was in harmony with the Abu Dhabi document.⁴⁰

On February 2, 2020, the Catholic feast of Candlemas, Cardinal Zuppi together with the president of the local Islamic community, led an interreligious prayer service for peace with Catholic and Muslim children and young people at the Islamic Cultural Center of Bologna. Cardinal Zuppi told local media: “This is a right and important method for living together, without confusion and without syncretism, without yielding. This is important as we look to the future.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, Cardinal Zuppi sent a message to the Muslim community in Bologna for Ramadan, telling them: “This emergency can strengthen the bonds of solidarity between us.”

In March 2024, Zuppi wrote a wide-ranging message to his Islamic “brothers and sisters” for Ramadan, making a parallel between Islamic fasting and Lenten fasting but without mentioning Christ and the difference he makes between the two.

Immigration

Cardinal Zuppi is a staunch supporter of the need to welcome and integrate into Italian society migrants and refugees fleeing war, violence, and poverty. His positions on migration led to sharp clashes with the Salvini populist movement.

In November 2019, shortly after it was announced that Pope Francis had chosen to elevate him to the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Zuppi published a book exploring what he believed are the root causes of the opposition to the mass migration Europe has been experiencing in recent years: fear, individualism, and an unwillingness to see the “other” as one’s brother. The summary of the book, titled You Shall Hate Your Brother: Why We Have Forgotten Fraternity, says that Matteo Zuppi considers it “urgent to address the issue of hatred, a feeling that dehumanizes us and condemns us to loneliness.” He criticizes in the book “unbridled individualism” that makes people “impervious to the suffering of others, but also more fragile and incapable of thinking about themselves in relation to others.” Hate, he wrote, must be rejected, and the antidote is love and fraternity. The book says Zuppi calls for the rediscovery of “authentic solidarity,” to see religious pluralism “as an opportunity to rediscover the reasons for one’s faith” and to be open to love and so be capable of “great things.”

More recently, in his apparent eagerness for open borders, Zuppi further blurred the distinction between refugees and migrants. At a Sant’Egidio meeting in June 2023, the cardinal, now president of the Italian bishops’ conference, drew attention to the 3,170 refugees who in just a year had lost their lives in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. But he then called for a “legal system that guarantees protection and welcome for all.” Critics said those legal systems already exist, 300 million people currently live and work in foreign countries, and refugees already have international protection. The problem, they say, is that the vast majority of those arriving in Europe illegally are not refugees.

1
Diocese of Bologna Office for Liturgy, La liturgia della “Chiesa in uscita,” 18 November 2019. The guidelines, entitled The Liturgy of the “Church That Goes Forth”: Considerations on the Celebrative Style of the Church in Her “Missionary Conversion” (EG, 30), assert: “In our need to understand liturgical celebration ever better, it is necessary to keep as the horizon of our thinking the indications of Sacrosanctum Concilium, according to the understanding, revival and perspective that Evangelii Gaudium offers the Church today.” Issued by the archdiocesan Office for Liturgy, the guidelines point to four characteristics of evangelization found in Evangelii Gaudium: the kerygmatic, mystagogical, synodal, popular.

Regarding the “synodal” way of celebration, the document asserts that the “tendency” in liturgy “to delegate the carrying out of the celebration to experts, to others who have to perform the rites, is an evil that has assailed us for centuries and from which we can be healed with difficulty.” The document recalled Sacrosanctum Concilium’s reminder to the Church that all of the baptized have the “right and duty” to participate in the liturgy, not just “the clergy and some other ‘altar boy.’”

According to the guidelines, a “synodal” way of celebrating the liturgy would mean the laity’s being involved “not only in the preparation of the prayers of the faithful,” but also “in the preparation of the Sunday readings, in the choice of the various options that the rite provides, and in some services, so that it appears that the entire assembly that God has gathered is made up of the whole People of God.” The document asserts that when liturgies are prepared in such a “synodal manner” and “a large part of the People of God [feel] represented in the celebration,” the rite more truly “manifests and expresses the real nature of the true Church.”
2
”[While] active participation by many faithful is of its very nature particularly fitting when Mass is celebrated,” there is “no reason to criticize but rather only to approve a Mass that a priest celebrates privately,” Paul VI wrote. It brings “a rich and abundant treasure of special graces” to the priest, the faithful, the Church, and the whole world. “It is also only fitting for us to recall the conclusion that can be drawn from this about ‘the public and social nature of each and every Mass.’ For each and every Mass is not something private, even if a priest celebrates it privately; instead, it is an act of Christ and of the Church. In offering this sacrifice, the Church learns to offer herself as a sacrifice for all and she applies the unique and infinite redemptive power of the sacrifice of the Cross to the salvation of the whole world. For every Mass that is celebrated is being offered not just for the salvation of certain people, but also for the salvation of the whole world. The conclusion from this is that even though active participation by many faithful is of its very nature particularly fitting when Mass is celebrated, still there is no reason to criticize but rather only to approve a Mass that a priest celebrates privately for a good reason in accordance with the regulations and legitimate traditions of the Church, even when only a server to make the responses is present. For such a Mass brings a rich and abundant treasure of special graces to help the priest himself, the faithful, the whole Church and the whole world toward salvation — and this same abundance of graces is not gained through mere reception of Holy Communion.”
3
“For nine days,” he said, “I invite you to pray the Holy Rosary wherever you are, united spiritually to her and among ourselves, one in prayer like the Apostles with Mary on the day of Pentecost.” In a video message, he told the faithful of Bologna that only with “insistence more insistent than evil” is it possible to “fight evil and feel Mary’s protection, feel the strength of the Lord who loves the lives of men.” Cardinal Zuppi continued to pray (and livestream) the Rosary each evening throughout the coronavirus pandemic, from the diocesan cathedral or the archbishop’s residence or a monastery of nuns. During the coronavirus crisis, although Cardinal Zuppi suspended all public Masses, he opposed closing churches.
4
“It’s the greatest regret I have, and it’s been a cause of great suffering,” he said, adding, “Let’s not overlook the absence of funerals: the communities were unable to say goodbye to their friends who have passed. Even the absence of funerals reminds us that we cannot but be a community.” He repeated the concern in a joint video message with the mayor of Bologna, referring to the lack of last rites for many of those who died. The cardinal announced that church bells around the city would be rung “to remember all those we carry in our hearts and who have gone to heaven. It will be a moment of recollection and suffering for them, and also of consolation for those who remain.”

During Holy Week, Cardinal Zuppi issued directives indicating that “the solemn liturgical celebrations foreseen by the Roman Missal for Palm Sunday and the Easter Triduum must take place in the churches, behind closed doors, with the minimum number of people present necessary for a worthy celebration.” Churches would remain open for private prayer.

Regarding sacramental Confession, Cardinal Zuppi — who authored a pastoral work titled Confession to help people approach the sacrament — noted in his directives that “as far as possible, with the prescribed precautions (open space, distance of at least one meter, use of the mask) it will be good and commendable for those who can approach sacramental confession.”⁴Matteo Zuppi, La confessione. Il perdono per cambiare (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo Edizioni, 2016). The cardinal continued: “If the sick cannot confess their sins individually, but ask for sacramental absolution, priests may absolve them, after having invited them, as far as possible, to express repentance and the request for forgiveness.” He gave provision for limited general absolution for the sick, health-care workers, and families, but reminded them of the need “once the emergency is over, to confess serious sins that have been absolved without being able to make individual confession.” He also stipulated that “priests who have recourse to general absolution should inform the Archbishop.” Asked during the coronavirus pandemic if he could envision a “diaconate” being given to Catholic hospital workers, he replied: “Rather than the diaconate, one could confer a ministry of the Eucharist.” He cited the example of a nurse in his diocese who was given “the faculty to bring Communion” to people in the COVID wards of the hospital where she works. “In reality I believe that many patients also asked her for blessings and prayers and at that point she became almost an established minister,” Cardinal Zuppi said. “This is part of that enormous heritage of generosity, solidarity, closeness, attention to others, compassion, piety and sensitivity that these weeks of fighting the virus have shown.”
5
“I am not doing it for the money,” Cardinal Caffarra said on accepting the FAAC inheritance. “I am doing it for the 300 families of the Bologna company who represent the heart and mind of FAAC. If we let it go they will all be absorbed by the new owners who may transfer the headquarters elsewhere. I cannot allow it. I stand with the families.”
6
Today the Community of Sant’Egidio is present in more than seventy countries, in Europe (twenty-three), Africa (twenty-nine), Asia (seven), North America (eight), and South America (five).
7
Andrea Riccardi served as minister for international cooperation in the cabinet of Italian prime minister Mario Monti (2010-2013), and in 2013 Riccardi was president of Scelta Civica (Civic Choice), a centrist political party. In March 2015, Riccardi was elected president of the Dante Alighieri Society, receiving “best wishes for fruitful work” from the Grand Orient of Italy Palazzo Giustiniani Masons. Historically, the leadership of the Dante Alighieri Society is given only to Freemasons. “Società Dante Alighieri, Riccardi presidente. Con tanti auguri dalla massoneria,” Corrispondenza Romana, 26 March 2015
8
Zichitella, “Voglia una Chiesa.”
9
Zichitella, “Voglia una Chiesa.”
10
He visited the country in 2022 to mark the 30th anniversary of the peace agreement.
11
Sant’Egidio has organized the annual interreligious meetings in Assisi since the first famous interreligious meeting in 1986.
12
Cardinal George took issue with the community’s granting Illinois governor Pat Quinn an award for abolishing the death penalty, even though he had signed into law same-sex “marriage” and supported legalized abortion. The cardinal’s concerns were raised in an encrypted cable from the apostolic nunciature in Washington, D.C., to the Vatican, later revealed in Vatileaks.
13
Cardinal Zen criticized the community for inviting to their 2011 interreligious meeting in Munich a Chinese bishop in grave disobedience to the pope for his participation in the ordination of a bishop imposed by the Chinese authorities. In September 2019, Andrea Riccardi and Marco Impagliazzo, president of the Community of Sant’Egidio, together with former Italian MP from Emilia-Romagna, Romano Prodi, along with Cardinal Claudio Maria Celli and Fr. Federico Lombardi, were featured speakers at the launch of a new book lauding the Holy See’s secret agreement with the Chinese communist government. The foreword to the book was written by Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
14
Jeffrey Sachs has had an increasingly influential role at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo. In his talk to Sant’Egidio in 2019, Sachs spoke of Jesus Christ as a historical figure on a par with Immanuel Kant, saying: “We are the heirs of Plato and Aristotle, who championed the gift of reason; of Jesus, who proclaimed that peacemakers are the children of God; of Immanuel Kant, who envisioned a union of republics to secure perpetual peace; of Franklin Roosevelt, who launched the United Nations after World War II to put Kant’s vision into effect; of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, who signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at the height of the Cold War, and thereby showed the path to peace; and of Martin Luther King, Jr., who reminded us that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’” “‘Pace senza confini’: Comunità di Sant’Egidio, da domenica a Madrid l’incontro internazionale nello ‘spirito di Assisi,’” SIR, 11 September 2019,
15
Veltroni, the former mayor of Rome, is perhaps more famous for having married George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin in a civil ceremony in Venice.
16
The Archdiocese of Bologna has held a Eucharistic Congress every ten years since 1947. The previous Eucharistic Congress was held in 2007 and was organized by Cardinal Carlo Maria Caffarra.
17
He wrote: “Jesus (Mt 14:13-21) involves us in his emotion for the crowd and teaches everyone to respond to the hunger of so many. To do this, we must not look for particular abilities or extraordinary possibilities, which we will never have, but only offer the little we have and share it, offer it to his love so that all may be satisfied, we and our neighbor.” The archbishop continued: “We ourselves can give to eat if, like Jesus, we do not remain distant from the condition of others. This is the goal that we want to achieve in the year of the Eucharistic Congress, through a synodal journey that involves all the Christian communities that are gathered around the Lord, always looking toward the horizon of the crowd that Jesus wants to feed.”
18
“More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: ‘Give them something to eat’ (Mark 6:37).”
19
“I dream of a ‘missionary option,’ that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented.”
20
“Finally an evangelizing community is filled with joy; it knows how to rejoice always. It celebrates every small victory, every step forward in the work of evangelization. Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving.”
21
“Evangelization is the task of the Church. The Church, as the agent of evangelization, is more than an organic and hierarchical institution; she is first and foremost a people advancing on its pilgrim way towards God. She is certainly a mystery rooted in the Trinity, yet she exists concretely in history as a people of pilgrims and evangelizers, transcending any institutional expression, however necessary. I would like to dwell briefly on this way of understanding the Church, whose ultimate foundation is in the free and gracious initiative of God.”
22
In March 2020, Pope Francis chose as the theme of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, “Towards a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission.”
23
CIC/83 can. 396 § 1.
24
By “making us all feel part of a body, all important and full of the same Spirit of love,” the cardinal said the pastoral visit would be the “exact opposite” of the archdiocese’s worst enemy, “what Pope Francis calls ‘postmodern and globalized individualism (EG 67).’” Each visit, beginning on Thursday and ending on Sunday, would include the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, a moment of prayer and fraternity with the priests, group lectio divina, a vocational-missionary prayer vigil, initiatives specific to each region, and the Sunday Eucharistic liturgy.
25
In an interview with La Repubblica in early April, the cardinal intimated that he would have liked to have celebrated the Holy Week and Easter liturgies but that the risks were too “dangerous” and the “rules must be respected.” He continued to livestream liturgies during Holy Week and Easter. The cardinal said that when, at the beginning of the crisis, he saw restaurants open but Masses banned, he initially found it “very hard to understand the government’s decision and asked [himself] many questions.” “We need God as well as scientists and doctors,” he said, adding that even under lockdown it is important to “strengthen communion between people and the awareness that the community needs the Eucharist and vice-versa.” Cardinal Zuppi also stressed that the elderly “are not objects” but “indispensable people” who face a double burden of isolation. “It is not acceptable that age should become a discriminating factor to save or condemn a life,” he said. The cardinal said it is a regrettable reality that too little is done to care for parents and grandparents and to support them at home. If more of the elderly had been able to “stay at home,” they would have been better protected, he said. This crisis, he noted, is teaching a lesson on how to treat the weakest. “If it’s true that nothing will be like before, we too must be better,” he said.
26
The film synopsis reads: “Don Matteo (as he prefers to be called) is one who rides a bike and lives in a retirement home for priests, one who quotes Alda Merini and Saint Francis, the Gospel and the Constitution, John XXIII and Guccini. He was the first bishop of Bologna to speak on the May Day stage, to enter a social center, to dialogue with the LGBTI community and to let refugees dance in the Basilica of San Petronio during the Mass for their Patron Saint.”
27
He is also regularly featured on a program broadcast by the Italian public broadcasting system (RAI) called A Sua immagine (In His Image) to comment on the Gospel and highlight how it is being lived out in the Archdiocese of Bologna. For example, on March 3, 2020, he traveled to a monastic community in the mountains of Bologna to comment on the Transfiguration. A Sua immagine, 7 March 2020, Raiplay. On another occasion, he visited a former hermitage that had been transformed into a home for young migrants and refugees. A Sua immagine, 27 April 2019, Raiplay On October 5, 2019, Pope Francis created Archbishop Zuppi a cardinal in St. Peter’s Basilica; he was assigned the church of St. Egidio as his titular church. He is a member of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, appointed by Pope Francis on 21 February 2020, and of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), appointed by Pope Francis on 18 April 2020.
28
Yet when Paul VI used the expression stanza del mondo (room of the world), he used it entirely in reference to Christ, the true Light, who shines into “the room,” illumining nations, and giving beauty and brightness, meaning and the splendor of supernatural life, to every soul who welcomes Him. The original text of Paul VI is: “There resound in Our spirit the words of the Gospel that yesterday, on the feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple, and the Purification of Mary Most Holy, the liturgy offered to Our meditation, proclaiming Jesus the Messiah of the Lord ‘Christum Domini,’ the salvation of all peoples, ‘salutare omnium populorum,’ the light to illumine the nations ‘lumen ad revelationem gentium’ (Lk. 2:30-32). . . . Jesus is at the summit of human aspirations, He is the end of our hopes and prayers, He is the focal point of the desires of history and civilization, He is the Messiah, the center of humanity, He who gives meaning to human events, He who gives value to human actions, He who forms the joy and fullness of the desires of all hearts, the true man, the type of perfection, beauty, and holiness, placed by God to embody the true model, the true concept of man, the brother of all, the irreplaceable friend, the only one worthy of all trust and all love: He is the Christ-man And at the same time Jesus is at the source of all our true good fortune, He is the light through which the room of the world takes proportions, form; beauty and shadow; He is the word that defines everything, explains everything, classifies everything, redeems everything; He is the principle of our spiritual and moral life; He says what must be done and gives the strength and grace to do it; His image, indeed His presence, reverberates in every soul that becomes a mirror to welcome His ray of truth and life, that is, who believes in Him and welcomes His sacramental contact; He is the Christ-God, the Master, the Savior, the Life.”
29
Explaining his words, Zuppi told the journalist Edward Pentin that he was “not defending” law 194, but rather “reiterating that no one in the Catholic world (except for a few ‘gladiators’) wants to open a discussion on the law. What is needed is an application of the whole law, especially the part about deterrence. To do this we need to get away from an ‘Orazi and Curiazi’ [Horatii and Curiatii] logic, whereby we do not cooperate on the matter. Regarding pain, I reiterated that the Church favours palliative care, taking away pain, and that this is sacrosanct. The problem is taking away pain, not life! That was all.”
30
The one-day conference, sponsored by numerous pro-life, pro-family organizations, was titled “Humanae Vitae: Natural Methods: A Road to Happiness.” It also featured a talk by wife, mother, and journalist Costanza Miriano on “How Humanae Vitae Saved My Life.”
31
“‘Chiesa casa per tutti’ (Church: home for all) aims at being an opportunity to experience an inclusive way of being ‘Church’ that is open to all; an ecclesial space where one can get to know, tell, and share one’s spiritual experience with others starting from the condition that each one lives: lay or religious, old or young, homosexual or straight, single or married, living together or divorced.”
32
Some argue that by merely using the acronym LGBT, a politically loaded term, Zuppi was signaling his support for their agenda. Certainly, this was how Father Martin saw it, tweeting on the day he was announced a new cardinal that Zuppi is a “great supporter of #LGBT Catholics.”
33
In 2011, Benedict XVI eliminated common prayer so as not to give the impression that theological differences have been reduced or are inconsequential.
34
Participants in the Bologna meeting included the founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, Andrea Riccardi; the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb; the Syrian Orthodox patriarch, Ignatius Aphrem II; the chief rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia; the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani; and the former president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi. Also participating were three bishops from the People’s Republic of China: Joseph Shen Bin, bishop of Haimen; Anthony Dang Mingyan, bishop of Xi’an; and Joseph Yang Yongqiang, bishop of Zhoucun. Among the other important personalities were Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King and guardian of his “dream” of a world without discrimination; Fr. Solalinde, who in Mexico defends migrants and takes young people away from the network of drug traffickers; and the Beninese Grégoire Ahongbonon, who fights for the dignity and care of the mentally ill in West Africa.
35
Sachs, Jeffrey D.,” Sant’Egidio, September 2019: Sachs has gained increasing influence in the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences and drew attention in 2020 for his tirade against U.S. President Donald Trump at an academy meeting, to the applause of many attending, including academy chancellor Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo.
36
The Abu Dhabi document sparked controversy for stating: “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.”
37
Dialogo interreligioso: mons. Zuppi, (Bologna), ‘la fratellanza abbatte l’indifferenza che spesso è al limite dell’intolleranza,’” SIR, 5 September 2019. The summer school, held in the Archdiocese of Bologna, was an initiative promoted by the National Office for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue (UNEDI) of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) in collaboration with the Italian Islamic Religious Community (COREIS), the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII), and the Italian Islamic Confederation (CII).
38
Dialogo interreligioso: Mons. Zuppi, (Bologia), ‘la fratellanza abbatte l’indifferenza che spesso è al limite dell’intolleranza,’” SIR, 5 September 2019
39
“Diocesi: Bologna, a fine Ramadan momenti di scambio e incontro come Iftar pubblici nella zona Barca, in via Torleone e piazza Marzabotto,” SIR, 28 May 2019
40
Controversy erupted in October 2019 when reports emerged that Cardinal Zuppi had ordered a chicken-variation of the traditionally pork-filled tortellini customarily eaten at Bologna’s patronal feast to be provided for the sake of Muslim guests. In a statement, the archdiocese called the reports “fake news,” saying that Cardinal Zuppi learned of the news from the media. The archdiocese did confirm that non-pork tortellini would be provided, saying the decision was made so that “everyone can participate in the feast, even those who have problems or other dietary needs or religious reasons.”

Service to the Church

Ordination to the Priesthood: 9 May 1981
Incardinated in Rome: 15 November 1988
Ordination to the Episcopate: 31 January 2012
Elevation to the College of Cardinals: 5 October 2019

Education

Virgilio Lyceum, Rome
1977: University of Rome “La Sapienza”; License in letters and philosophy
Palestrina Seminary
Pontifical Lateran University; Theology (B.A.)

Assignments

1981-2000: Vicar to Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere
1983-2012: Rector, Church of Santa Croce alla Lungara
2000-2012: General ecclesiastical assistant, Sant’Egidio community
2000-2010: Parish priest, Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere
2005-2010: Prefect of the third prefecture of Rome
2010-2012: Parish priest of Santi Simone e Giuda Taddeo a Torre Angela, Rome
2011-2012: Prefect of the seventeenth prefecture of Rome
2012-2015: Auxiliary bishop of Rome, titular bishop of Villanova
2015-present: Archbishop of Bologna
2015-present: President of Emilia-Romagna Bishops’ Conference
2022-present: President, Italy’s Bishops’ Conference

Memberships

1990s-present: Member of Sant’Egidio community
1995-2012: Member of diocesan presbyteral council

Memberships (Roman Curia)

Member of Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Member of Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See

Photo: Massimiliano Migliorato/CPP

Table of contents

Cardinal

Matteo Maria

Zuppi

Sant'Egidio

Italy

Table of contents

Key Data

Summary

Where He Stands

Ordaining Female Deacons

Blessing Same-Sex Couples

Making Priestly Celibacy Optional

Restricting the Vetus Ordo (Old Latin Mass)

Vatican-China Secret Accords

Promoting a “Synodal Church”

Full Profile

SANCTIFYING OFFICE

Eucharistic Congress

Liturgical Guidelines

Liturgy and Sacraments during the Covid Crisis

Vocations

Popular Devotions

Traditional Latin Mass

Interreligious Prayer

GOVERNING OFFICE

President of Italy’s Bishops

Running One of the World’s Wealthiest Dioceses

Influence of Sant’Egidio

Peace Missions

Ties to the Political Left

Pro-Europeanism

Bologna’s Eucharistic Congress

Papal Visit

First Pastoral Letter

Reorganizing the Archdiocese

Pastoral Visit

Amoris Laetitia Guidelines and the Synod of Bishops

Coronavirus

Communications

TEACHING OFFICE

Attitude toward the Second Vatican Council

On Hell

On the Death Penalty

Euthanasia and Abortion

Amoris Laetitia

Humanae Vitae

Homosexuality

Response to Church Crisis

Civil Unions

Interreligious Dialogue

Islam

Immigration

Service to the Church

Education

Assignments

Memberships

Memberships (Roman Curia)

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