Camillo Ruini

Camillo Ruini was born on 19 February 1931 in Sassuolo, in the province of Modena and the Diocese of Reggio Emilia, in what was then the Kingdom of Italy. His father, Francesco Ruini, was a physician and surgeon, and his mother was Iolanda Rizzoli.

He came of age during the Second World War. Late in life he recalled the bombings that struck Sassuolo, the deaths of friends and time spent as an evacuee at his father's country house, where soldiers came asking for food and clothes after the Italian armistice. In late adolescence he discerned a vocation to the priesthood.

Ruini studied in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University while living at the Almo Collegio Capranica, the historic Roman college for diocesan seminarians. He earned licentiates in philosophy and in sacred theology.

He was ordained a priest on 8 December 1954 by Archbishop Luigi Traglia, then vicegerent of Rome and later a cardinal. In 1957 he returned to his home diocese, where he taught philosophy at the diocesan seminary and later dogmatic theology at the Studio Teologico Interdiocesano of Modena, Reggio Emilia, Carpi and Guastalla (1968 to 1986), serving as its headmaster from 1968 to 1977. He also taught at the Studio Teologico Accademico Bolognese. From 1958 to 1966 he was chaplain to university students, and from 1966 to 1970 he served as episcopal delegate for Catholic Action.

On 16 May 1983 Pope John Paul II appointed him auxiliary bishop of Reggio Emilia and Guastalla with the titular see of Nepte. He was consecrated on 29 June 1983 by Bishop Gilberto Baroni and chose the motto Veritas liberabit nos (The truth will set us free).

As vice president of the preparatory committee for the 1985 Ecclesial Convention of Loreto he worked on a landmark meeting between the Church and Italian society. He first met John Paul II at a dinner in the autumn of 1984 and quickly won his trust. In June 1986 he was named secretary general of the Italian Episcopal Conference, and from 1988 to 2011 he was a consultor of the Congregation for Bishops.

In 1991 he was named pro vicar general of Rome (17 January), President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (7 March), Cardinal Priest of Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura (28 June) and Vicar General of Rome and Archpriest of St John Lateran (1 July). He was also apostolic administrator of Ostia, grand chancellor of the Pontifical Lateran University and president of the Lazio bishops' conference. He led the Peregrinatio ad Petri Sedem from 1992 to 1996 and served as cardinal patron of the Almo Collegio Capranica from 1993 to 2009.

He was confirmed as CEI president in 1996, 2001 and 2006, and took part in the April 2005 conclave that elected Benedict XVI. Benedict accepted his resignation from the CEI on 7 March 2007 (succeeded by Angelo Bagnasco) and from the Vicariate of Rome on 27 June 2008 (succeeded by Agostino Vallini). He then presided over the Progetto culturale until 2013, the Vatican commission of inquiry into Medjugorje from 2010 to 2014, and the scientific committee of the Joseph Ratzinger Benedict XVI Foundation from 2010 to 2015.

As a Catholic priest Ruini did not marry and had no children. Colleagues and journalists described him as courteous, reserved and even shy in manner, but intellectually sharp, politically shrewd and very determined on questions of principle. The National Catholic Register noted that he directed severity toward ideas rather than persons and remained polite toward opponents.

He lived for decades in Rome. Late in life he remained in contact with his hometown, returning to Sassuolo to mark his 90th birthday in 2021. He spent his final weeks at home in Rome, cared for by doctors and nurses.

Ruini believed the Church had to be present in culture and public debate rather than tied to a single party, an idea he put into practice through the Progetto culturale of the Italian Church. He defended what Catholic leaders called non negotiable values: the protection of life from conception to natural death, marriage and the family.

He opposed the legal recognition of unmarried and same sex couples, warning that it would gravely compromise the value of the family founded on marriage. He spoke of a healthy secularity, including in relation to Islam, and warned against what he called the naturalistic tendency of modern man. He was a lifelong anticommunist. In his book C'è un dopo? La morte e la speranza he wrote that science cannot prove life after death, while arguing that near death experiences pointed to a probable survival of the soul.

In later years he urged dialogue with Matteo Salvini in a 2019 Corriere della Sera interview, and in 2026 he spoke positively of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, both politically and personally.

Ruini's public interventions often drew accusations of Church interference in the affairs of the Italian state. In 2005 he led the CEI's call for Catholics to abstain from the referendums on Law 40 on assisted reproduction so that the vote would fail to reach the 50 percent quorum. The gynaecologist Severino Antinori filed a complaint against him under a law against incitement to abstain, which was dismissed. Only about a quarter of voters turned out and the referendums failed.

In December 2006 the Vicariate of Rome refused a church funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man with muscular dystrophy who had publicly asked for life support to be withdrawn. Ruini called it a painful decision. He later fought the case of Eluana Englaro. In 2007 he was a key promoter of the Family Day rally against the Prodi government's DICO bill on cohabiting couples. Interviewed by the French writer Frédéric Martel in 2018, he claimed he had helped bring down Romano Prodi's government over civil unions.

In September 2005 a student collective interrupted an award ceremony in his honour with protests over gay rights. Within the Church, allies of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini accused him of abandoning the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Ruini is remembered as the architect of the Italian Church's response to the end of the Christian Democrat era, shifting Catholic influence from party politics to culture. Supporters nicknamed him rovini, the ruiner of secularist plans. The Diocese of Rome called him a key architect of relations between Church and State, shrewd in discerning the country's turning points.

CEI president Cardinal Matteo Zuppi said he had served the Church with intelligence, pastoral passion and a profound sense of mission. At his funeral Pope Leo XIV praised the Progetto culturale, the Rome diocesan synod and his active, dialoguing presence in Church and society. He consecrated many bishops, including Rino Fisichella, Vincenzo Paglia and Cardinal Giuseppe Betori.

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, conferred on 13 June 2005 on the initiative of the President of the Republic, as President of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

Created a cardinal by Pope John Paul II on 28 June 1991, with the title of Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura. He was also a member of the Pontifical Marian Academy and of the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas.

Ruini was one of the Church officials most often seen on Italian television and in newspapers and magazines. He gave many long interviews, including to Aldo Cazzullo of the Corriere della Sera, and to TV2000 for his 90th birthday, when he said he missed John Paul II. His writings include C'è un dopo? La morte e la speranza, a reflection on death and hope that he presented in Reggio Emilia, and the chapter Cattolici toccati da Dio, risorsa morale per l'Italia in the proceedings of the 2006 Verona Ecclesial Convention. The historian Enrico Galavotti analysed his leadership as ruinismo in the Treccani volume Cristiani d'Italia (2011).

Ruini was hospitalised at Rome's Gemelli hospital in July 2024 and fitted with a pacemaker for cardiac ischaemia. In September 2025 he was admitted again with kidney problems but recovered. On 21 May 2026 his condition worsened and was reported as critical; he chose to stay at home, where doctors and nurses cared for him and gave him oxygen. A specific cause of death was not made public.

He died in Rome on the evening of 16 June 2026, aged 95. His body lay in state on 17 June in the chapel of the Madonna della Perseveranza at the Pontifical Roman Minor Seminary on Via Aurelia. Pope Leo XIV presided over the funeral at the Altar of the Chair in St Peter's Basilica on 18 June 2026, quoting from Ruini's spiritual testament. A second funeral Mass was celebrated in Reggio Emilia Cathedral by Archbishop Giacomo Morandi on 19 June, after which he was buried in the family chapel at the cemetery of Dinazzano, in Casalgrande, province of Reggio Emilia.