Vincenzo Vannutelli

Styles of Vincenzo Vannutelli
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal

Vincenzo Vannutelli (5 December 1836 – 9 July 1930) was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church for over forty years. When he died in 1930, aged 93, he was the oldest member of the College of Cardinals, the last surviving cardinal elevated during the 19th century, and the next to last surviving cardinal of Pope Leo XIII, the last to survive being Lev Skrbensky z Hriste.

He was born in Genazzano, Diocese of Palestrina, Lazio, and was from the beginning of his life destined for a high position in the Catholic Church. He was the younger brother of Serafino Vannutelli, whose career he followed closely. Vincenzo studied at the pontifical universities, the Collegium Capranica and the Pontifical Gregorian University. Ordained a priest in 1860, he was never a pastor in his almost seventy years of priesthood: his career began as a faculty member in seminaries and continued in the Roman Curia. Most of his early career was in Roman and foreign postings of the Secretariat of State, aside from two years starting in 1878 when he was an Auditor of the Roman Rota.

In 1880 he became a Titular Archbishop of Sardes and Apostolic Delegate to the Ottoman Empire and the Patriarch of Constantinople, and after further postings was named a cardinal in pectore in December 1889 and publicly announced in the consistory of 1890, becoming Cardinal-Priest of San Silvestro in Capite. His elevation was an exception to a rule in effect since 1586 barring the elevation of anyone whose brother was in the College of Cardinals, as Vincenzo's brother Serafino Vannutelli (1834–1915) had been elevated in 1887 and was still living. (Pope Leo XIII appointed his older brother Giuseppe Pecci a cardinal in 1879, but that was not a case of appointing the brother of a current cardinal.)

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