Domenico Tardini

Domenico Tardini (1881 - 1961) was an Italian bishop and cardinal.

Quotes

What will happen when the stark and painful reality opens the eyes of this innumerable mass of demented people?
- Che avverrà quando la realtà cruda e dolorosa aprirà gli occhi a questa innumerabile massa di dementi?
  - Domenico Tardini, Previsioni e giudizi di Mons. Tardini sul conflitto tra l’Italia e l’Etiopia, in L. Ceci, «Il Fascismo manda l’Italia in rovina». Le note inedite di monsignor Domenico Tardini (23 settembre – 13 dicembre 1935), in «Rivista Storica Italiana» 1/2008, pp. 304-305

Everyone understands that the Holy See cannot stop Hitler. But who can understand that it does not know how to rein in a priest?
- Domenico Tardini, Vatican undersecretary, in March 1942 Ward, James Mace (2013) (in en). Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801468124.

While important Italian cardinals offered support to the military campaign and L’Osservatore Romano remained in a position of prudent legitimization of the war, Tardini assesses and judges the consequences on the clergy, that in his eyes represent ‘the greatest disaster. [...] [Tardini was aware that] the Italian Church is accused of being in league with Fascism. And with the Italian Church, the Holy See. The Holy See has never passed a more difficult period than this’, in which it risks ‘seriously compromising for a century the moral prestige’ accumulated.
- Alberto Melloni, Corriere della Sera. As quoted in Bishops seduced by Fascism, 30giorni.it, 2008, n°. 4.