Rafael Merry del Val y de Zulueta was a British-born Spanish Roman Catholic cardinal.
Background
Rafael Merry del Val y de Zulueta was born in London, on October 1, 1865. His father, Don Rafael, was with the Spanish legation in London and was subsequently ambassador to Belgium, Austria, and the Vatican. Rafael's mother was Josephine de Zuleta, daughter of Count de Torre Diaz.
Education
He attended Ushaw College, Durham, and, at the behest of Pope Leo XIII, the Academy for Noble Ecclesiastics, where he prepared for a diplomatic career.
Career
Ordained a priest in 1888 and summoned to the Vatican in 1891, he became the pope's private chamberlain and began his lifelong work with boys in the slums of Rome. Merry del Val took part in the investigations concerning the validity of Anglican orders (1895 - 1897), and in 1897 the pope sent him to Canada to investigate the Manitoba Law of 1890, which required that Catholics send their children to public schools or pay a double school tax. Appointed president of the Academy for Noble Ecclesiastics in 1899, Monsignor Merry del Val was consecrated titular archbishop of Nicaea in 1900. Upon the death of Leo XIII in 1903, the cardinals designated him secretary of the conclave that ended with the election of Pius X. The new pope appointed him secretary of state and made him a cardinal. During his term as secretary of state (1903 - 1914), he showed extraordinary statesmanship in handling a series of ecclesiastical and international crises: the rift between church and state in France; revolution in Spain, Portugal, and Mexico; anticlericalism in Italy; and the Modernist heresy, which attempted to reduce Catholicism to individual religious psychology. Cardinal Merry del Val was archpriest of St. Peter's under Pius X, and Benedict XV named him secretary of the Holy Office in 1914.