Antonio Caggiano

Topics: Argentine anti-communists, Argentine cardinals, Roman Catholic Church in Argentina

His Eminence Antonio Caggiano (30 January 1889 23 October 1979) was an archbishop and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church of Argentina.

Caggiano was born in Coronda, Santa Fe Province. He studied in the seminary of Santa Fe and became a priest there in 1912, at the age of 23. From 1913 to 1931 he taught at the seminary. In the 1920s he was sent to Rome by the Argentine Episcopacy, together with three other priests, in order to study the organization of the Azione Cattolica (the Italian Catholic Action). The Argentine Catholic Action was founded in 1931 following this model.

Caggiano was appointed the first bishop of the newly erected Diocese of Rosario on 13 September 1934, for which he was specifically ordained on 14 March 1935. Pope Pius XII elevated him to Cardinal on 18 February 1946. In 1946, he went to the Vatican to offer his country, in the name of the Argentine government, as a refuge for French Collaborationists and Nazi war criminals which were in hiding in Rome. Uki Goni, The Real Odessa, Granta, London, 2002, and La Odessa que creo Peron, Pagina/12, 15 December 2002 .