The 110th anniversary of the election of Msgr. Raffaele Scapinelli of the counts of Leguigno as titular archbishop of Laodicea and his simultaneous appointment as apostolic nuncio to the imperial court of Vienna, ordered by Pope Saint Pius X, of which he was a close collaborator, on January 27, 1912.
Born in Modena on 25 April 1858, Scapinelli attended the schools of the Urban Seminary in Reggio between 1865 and 1874, completing his theological studies at the age of only twenty. Founder of the “Reggianello”, he was professor of canon law in the episcopal seminary. Then in 1887 his passage to Rome, where he attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. In 1889 he began his career as a diplomat: apostolic annex in Paris, then secretary of the apostolic nunciature in Lisbon; then listen to the apostolic internunciation in The Hague and finally a skilled apostolic in Madrid. From 1897 he undertook his activity at the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs and also became a professor of diplomatic style in the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles. In 1912 Pius X appointed him archbishop and at the same time apostolic nuncio in Vienna, a position he held until 1916. The episcopal consecration was conferred on Scapinelli on February 26, 1912 in the Vatican in the chapel of Countess Matilde di Canossa by cardinal secretary of state Rafael Merry del Val . The prelate also experienced the drama of the First World War, making himself the bearer of a message from Pope Benedict XV to the emperor of Austria to avoid Italy’s entry into the conflict. Created cardinal by Benedict XV in the consistory of 6 December 1915, he definitively left the see of Vienna for Rome on 26 November 1916. In the consistory of 7 December 1916 he received the presbyteral title of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni “ad Illyricos”. He was prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, a position he held until 1920.