New cardinal profile: Archbishop Francesco Montenegro

February 05, 2015

Tenth on the list of new cardinals announced by Pope Francis on January 4 is Archbishop Francesco Montenegro, 68, of Agrigento, Italy. The last time a cardinal governed the see was in the eighteenth century.

Agrigento is a southern Sicilian city of 60,000, and the archdiocese’s territory includes the island of Lampedusa—an Italian island that is closer to Tunisia than it is to Sicily.

The island has 5,000 residents, but in 2011 and 2012, over 40,000 refugees fled on boats from strife-torn Tunisia and Libya to the island. In July 2013, Pope Francis made his first apostolic journey to Lampedusa, where he highlighted the refugees’ plight.

Archbishop Montenegro was born in 1946 in the Sicilian city of Messina and attended seminary from his high school years. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Messina in 1969. After two years of parish ministry, he worked as secretary to two bishops from 1971 to 1978.

From 1978 to 1987, Father Montenegro served as priest of a Messina parish, and in 1988 became the regional director of Caritas, the Church’s charitable agency, and served as rector of a shrine to St. Rita and spiritual director of the minor seminary. In 1997, he was appointed archdiocesan vicar general.

In 2000, St. John Paul II named him auxiliary bishop of what had become the Archdiocese of Messina-Lipari-Santa Lucia del Mela. From 2003 to 2008, he served as president of Caritas Italy, and in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him archbishop of Agrigento.

In a programmatic 2008 document, Archbishop Montenegro called for a greater sense of ecclesial communion among the various parishes and movements and a greater willingness to address drug abuse, unemployment, and other problems in various neighborhoods. Ecclesial communion among different parishes in the archdiocese and service to the poor have been frequent emphases in his writings.

In 2012, he denied a Church funeral to a Mafia leader.

In a 2013 decree, Archbishop Montenegro said that Mass should not be celebrated in a manner that is “improvised, slipshod, sloppy, and hasty.” He reminded priests of the canonical limit to the number of Masses per day and denounced the practice of saying multiple Masses in order to receive multiple Mass stipends. Priests, he said, could keep stipends from the first Mass of the day only; stipends from subsequent Masses had to be turned over to the archdiocese.

 

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Further information:

• Annuncio di Concistoro per la creazione di nuovi Cardinali (Holy See Press Office)
• Archdiocese of Agrigento