Msgr. Crispino Valenziano, liturgist, dies at 93

January 27, 2026

Msgr. Crispino Valenziano, an influential Italian liturgist, died on January 24 at the age of 93.

“His expertise served the universal Church significantly,” the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy stated in its announcement of his death, adding:

Called by Pope Paul VI in 1965 to the Consilium for the implementation of the liturgical reform, he subsequently served as a consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship, the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff and the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church. At Sant’Anselmo, his work culminated in the establishment of a specialized curriculum for architecture and arts for the liturgy.

(The pontifical institute’s reference to Msgr. Valenziano as a participant in the Consilium may be inaccurate: Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, the Consilium’s secretary, did not include Msgr. Valenziano in his lists of the Consilum’s members and consultors in The Reform of the Liturgy.)

Cettina Militello, a theologian who has known Msgr. Valenziano since 1967, paid tribute to him in an article in the Vatican newspaper.

Militello wrote that Msgr. Valenziano, a priest of the Diocese of Cefalù in Sicily, accompanied his bishop to the Second Vatican Council as a peritus (expert).

“In the fervor of the immediate post-Council period, we were consumed by the desire to implement its prophecy,” she recall in her tribute. “For him, who had known the rigid Church of the 1940s and 50s well, and who had been, in his own way, a prophet of the Council, the zeal to implement its constitutions and decrees was agonizing.”

“Valenziano stated that for him, the via pulchritudinis (the way of beauty) was not the invention of a discipline but the transcendent experience of his life,” she added. Msgr. Valenziano served as founding president, and Militello as vice president, of the Fondazione Accademia Via Pulchritudinis.

Msgr. Valenziano was responsible for the publication of the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea in Italian, Archbishop Piero Marini said in 2005. The following year, Pope Benedict XVI named Valenziano a protonotary apostolic.

 

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Further information:

• In Memoriam: Monsignor Crispino Valenziano (1932–2026) (OSB.org)
• Ora è sulla via della suprema bellezza (L'Osservatore Romano, 1/26/26)