Rafael Merry del Val
Spanish cardinal and diplomat. (1865–1930)
Rafael Merry del Val y Zulueta, (10 October 1865 – 26 February 1930) was a Spanish Catholic bishop, Vatican official, and cardinal.
Before becoming a cardinal, he served as the secretary of the papal conclave of 1903 that elected Pope Pius X, who is said to have accepted his election through Merry del Val's encouragement. Pius X later appointed him as the
Cardinal Secretary of State. Merry del Val's writings and example prompted greater popularity for the Litany of Humility, which was for some decades incorrectly attributed to him. He was greatly responsible to restoring the privileges to Hispanic countries, which honor him for the devotions and traditionalist practices he fostered by personally signing and executing their petitions to the Holy Office.
A cause for his canonization was opened in 1953 at the behest of Pope Pius XII. He now has the title Servant of God.
Early life
He was born as Rafael María José Pedro Francisco Borja Domingo Gerardo de la Santísima Trinidad Merry del Val y Zulueta at the Spanish Embassy in London, in the United Kingdom, the second of four sons of a nobleman, Rafael Carlos Merry del Val, secretary to the Spanish legation in London. His mother was Sofia Josefa de Zulueta (died 1925), elder daughter of Pedro José de Zulueta, count of Torre Díaz, of the London bank of Zulueta & Co., and his wife, Sophia Ann Wilcox, who was of English ancestry.
The Merrys were originally an Irish Catholic family (the O’Hoolachan family of the County of Connaught) but anglicized their name to Merry in order to avoid the persecution of Roman Catholics that the English were accustomed to carrying out. The O’Hoolachan branch from which Rafael descended were Irish merchants who settled in County Waterford in the 18th century before moving to Seville.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rafael Merry del Val” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.