Raimondo Spiazzi

Raimondo Spiazzi OP (18 January 1918 – 14 October 2002) was an Italian Catholic theologian, advisor to Pius XII, and Mariologist with over 2,500 publications.

Spiazzi was born in Moneglia, province of Genoa.

He met Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli in 1937, who left a major impression on him and facilitated his entry in the seminary. 25 March 1944, he was ordained to the priesthood. During the war years he taught religion in a secondary school in Turin. After the war, he studied at the Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome and completed his doctorate in Sacred Theology there in 1947 with a dissertation entitled Il cristianesimo perfezione dell'uomo.

He taught in Rome at the Angelicum until 1972. Spiazzi, a tireless scholar authored 2.500 publications of which are 150 publications in book format. l'Edizione Marietti dell'Opera Omnia di San Tommaso d'Aquino, l'Enciclopedia Moderna del Cristinesimo, l'Enciclopedia Mariana "Theotòcos". Many of his later publications are in the area of Mariology.

In 1959, Spiazzi published an article, which costs him banning from Rome and the wrath of Pope John XXIII. Aware of discussions on the continued mandatory priestly celibacy, most prominently by the Cardinal Archbishop Emmanuel Célestin Suhard of Paris, Spiazzi argued in Monitor Ecclesiasticus, that historical evidence for mandatory priestly celibacy was extremely shaky. He pointed out, that even at the Ecumenical Council of Trent, the fathers did not consider clerical celibacy a matter of divine positive law, "nor could they since there were validly ordained married priests in communion with Rome".

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