In the consistory of February 2015, Pope Francis imposed the cardinal’s hat on Monsignor Edoardo Menichelli (Ansa)
The cardinal died on Monday morning in San Severino Marche Edoardo Menichelli, archbishop emeritus of the diocese of Ancona-Osimo. He was 86 years old, having turned a few days ago, on October 14th. He was among the first Italian cardinals created by Pope Francis, receiving the purple in the Consistory of 14 February 2015.
Born in Serripola di San Severino Marche, in the province of Macerata, on 14 October 1939, Menichelli’s first human and priestly model was the parish priest during his childhood, remembered in particular for having promoted the acceptance of the family of the partisan doctor Moses Of Signs, with his wife and first two children, little Elio and Frida (the third child, Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo, had not yet been born).
Among the children of the town who played with them there was also Edoardo Menichelli, who later remembered that circumstance by hugging his old childhood friends again on the occasion of the awarding of honorary citizenship of San Severino to the Di Segni brothers in 2011.
After having attended middle and high school studies in the seminary of San Severino Marche (the diocese of origin which in 1986 was united with the archdiocese of Camerino with the name of Camerino – San Severino Marche) and philosophical and theological studies in Pontifical Pius XI Regional Seminary of Fano, he moved to Rome, to the Pontifical Lateran University, where he obtained a license in pastoral theology.
Tidy priest on 3 July 1965, for three years he was vicar of the parish of San Giuseppe in San Severino Marche and at the same time taught religion in state schools. In 1968 he was called to Rome where he remained for twenty-six years, working until 1991 as an official at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura and later at the Congregation for the Oriental Churches as a secretarial assistant. He also held the position of private secretary of the cardinal prefect of the Dicastery, Achille Silvestrini.
In the Roman years, starting from 1970 and until his episcopal appointment, he worked as a cooperator at the parish of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, in the Trieste district, mainly following family pastoral care.
He was also a spiritual assistant in the Villa Mafalda clinic for more than twenty years and also collaborated with the family counseling center of the medical faculty at the Gemelli Polyclinic, where for some years he taught professional ethics in the nursing school.
Finally, he took an active part in the Synod of the diocese of Rome, which concluded in 1993 after a seven-year journey.
The 10 June 1994 John Paul II appointed him archbishop of Chieti-Vastosuccessor of Antonio Valentini, who resigned after reaching the age limit. The following July 9 he received episcopal ordination in Rome, from Cardinal Silvestrini. He chose as his motto: Sub lumine Matris. During his ministry in Abruzzo he worked above all to relaunch pastoral life, without neglecting particular attention to the reform of the economic-administrative organization of the archdiocese.
Ten years later, on 8 January 2004, he was transferred to the metropolitan headquarters of Ancona-Osimo, successor to Franco Festorazzi. He entered the following March 7, bringing his simple and direct style to the Marche capital.
On 11 September 2011 he welcomed Benedict XVI on a pastoral visit to Ancona, where he presided over the final mass of the XXV Italian Eucharistic Congress in the shipyard. By express wish of the archbishop, the great national assembly was characterized by a triple thematic choice – enclosed in three “Cs”: celebrations, charity and culture – and by some particular meetings with the Pope: one reserved for spouses and priests together, to recover a vocational identity and rediscover the common educational commitment; and another with engaged couples, to show them the closeness of the Church. But the visit is also remembered for another significant moment: the lunch shared by the Pope with a representation of workers on redundancy pay and some poor people assisted by Caritas.
President of the Conference of Bishops of the Marche region, he was also national ecclesiastical assistant of the Association of Italian Catholic Doctors (Amci). Recognition of his special pastoral attention to the family came from his pontifical nomination as a member of the III Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family (October 2014) and subsequently also at the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of 2015.
From 14 July 2017 he became archbishop emeritus of Ancona-Osimo (Italy). Pope Francis then created and proclaimed him cardinal in the Consistory of February 2015, the second of his pontificate, with the title of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Tor Fiorenza.
Cardinal Menichelli’s funeral will take place Wednesday 22 October, at 10am, in the Madonna dei Lumi Sanctuary in San Severino Marche (Macerata). It will be chaired by Monsignor Nazzareno Marconi, president of the Marche Episcopal Conference and bishop of Macerata. At the end of the funeral, the coffin will be accompanied to Ancona and, according to the cardinal’s testamentary provisions, it will be buried in the Cathedral of San Ciriaco. The funeral chapel is set up at the Madonna dei Lumi Sanctuary.
«I learned with great pain that our Cardinal Edoardo Menichelli has returned to the House of the Father», the memory of Monsignor Angelo Spina, archbishop of Ancona-Osimo, «I am united by a long friendship and a profound esteem for the luminous testimony of a pastor that he offered to the archdiocese of Ancona-Osimo. His death leaves an unfillable void. Let us raise our prayer to the good God, rich in mercy, to welcome his beautiful soul into paradise.”
