Ernesto Cozzi (6 July 1870 – 23 March 1926) was a

South Tyrol South Tyrol ( , ; ; ), officially the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol, is an autonomous administrative division, autonomous provinces of Italy, province in northern Italy. Together with Trentino, South Tyrol forms the autonomo ...

-born priest of the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

who worked as a missionary and ethnologist in Albania until, in 1920, he was given the rank of archbishop and made the representative of the

Holy See The Holy See (, ; ), also called the See of Rome, the Petrine See or the Apostolic See, is the central governing body of the Catholic Church and Vatican City. It encompasses the office of the pope as the Bishops in the Catholic Church, bishop ...

to the Church in Albania.

Biography

Ernesto Cozzi was born in Trent, in the

, in the

Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...

, on 6 July 1870. He became a priest of the Catholic Church and served as a military chaplain in

Bolzano Bolzano ( ; ; or ) is the capital city of South Tyrol (officially the province of Bolzano), Northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third largest in historical Tyrol. The ...

. From May 1901 he was a parish priest and missionary to the northern mountain tribes of Albania. Albania was then under

Ottoman rule The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Euro ...

, with Austria-Hungary providing for its Catholic population. Cozzi publicly espoused Albanian independence. In 1914 he was briefly an archbishop's secretary and in 1915 was sent on a diplomatic mission to Poland. With the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Albania in 1916, he became a military chaplain again. At the end of World War I, he returned to Albania and became a parish priest in

Obot Obot (also: ''Obot i Ri'') is a settlement in the former Ana e Malit municipality, Shkodër County, northern Albania. At the 2015 local government reform it became part of the municipality Shkodër Shkodër ( , ; sq-definite, Shkodra; histor ...

. In 1919 he was appointed an

apostolic visitor In the Catholic Church, an apostolic visitor (or ''Apostolic Visitator''; Italian: Visitatore apostolico) is a papal representative with a transient mission to perform a canonical visitation of relatively short duration. The visitor is deputed ...

and traveled throughout Albania in 1920 to produce a report for the

Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (CEP; ) was a congregation (Roman Curia), congregation of the Roman Curia of the Catholic Church in Rome, responsible for Catholic missions, missionary work and related activities. It is also kn ...

(CPF) and on 12 November

Pope Benedict XV Pope Benedict XV (; ; born Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa, ; 21 November 1854 – 22 January 1922) was head of the Catholic Church from 1914 until his death in January 1922. His pontificate was largely overshadowed by World War I a ...

named him the first

Apostolic Delegate An apostolic nuncio (; also known as a papal nuncio or simply as a nuncio) is an ecclesiastical diplomat, serving as an envoy or a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See to a state or to an international organization. A nuncio is ...

to Albania. On 16 December Pope Benedict named him a

titular archbishop A titular bishop in various churches is a bishop who is not in charge of a diocese. By definition, a bishop is an "overseer" of a community of the faithful, so when a priest is ordained a bishop, the tradition of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox an ...

as well, the customary rank for papal diplomats. Cozzi received his episcopal consecration on 27 December from Cardinal

Willem van Rossum Willem Marinus van Rossum, C.Ss.R. (3 September 1854 – 30 August 1932) was a Dutch prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was made a cardinal in 1911, led the Apostolic Penitentiary from 1915 to 1918, and served as Prefect of the Congr ...

, Prefect of the CPF. Most of his research, written in Italian, was published between 1909 and 1914 in ''Anthropos'', a Viennese scholarly journal, the ''Revue d’ethnographie et de sociologie'', and others. His interests included folklore and superstition, women’s religious observance, blood feuds, and–his most significant contribution–popular legal norms. He died on 23 March 1926 on board a ferry en route to Bari, Italy. He was initially buried in Bari, but his remains were exhumed, returned to Albania, and buried in Shkodra on 29 May.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cozzi, Ernesto 1870 births 1926 deaths Apostolic nuncios to Albania Roman Catholic missionaries in Albania 20th-century Italian Roman Catholic titular archbishops Austrian ethnologists Albanian ethnologists Albanologists People from Trento Missionary linguists