The 65-year-old Brazilian Dom Ilson de Jesus Montanari, born in Sertãozinho (SP), is, since 2020, the runner-up of the Catholic Church and Vatican. That is, it is the second in the hierarchy of religious who assumed the administrative functions after the death of Pope Francis. He is only below Camerlengo, Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, appointed by Francisco in 2019.
It is the function of the camerlengo to take care and manage the temporal goods and rights of the Church during the Vacant See and to verify the death of the Pope. Direct employees of the Pontiff, the Crimles are responsible, in addition to the funeral rites after the death of the church leader, also for summoning the conclave, a meeting that will elect Francis’s successor.
Dom Ilson also fulfills the functions of secretary of the College of Cardinals – set of prelates of the Catholic Church – and the dicker for the bishops, responsible for the appointment and formation of new bishops.
Career
The Paulista priest was ordained in 1989, in Ribeirão Preto, a city where he studied law, economy and philosophy. He also studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1985. After performing various functions in the Archdiocese of Ribeirão Preto in the following decades, such as that of professor of theology, chancellor and pastoral coordinator, Dom Ilson returned to Rome in 2002 to study dogmatic theology, also at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
In 2008, he became official in the congregation for the bishops and, three years later, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI Chaplain of his holiness, a distinction in recognition of the services provided by a priest to the Church.
Already under the papacy of Francisco, he was appointed secretary of the dicker for the bishops in 2013 and received from the archdiocese of Ribeirão Preto, Dom Moacir Silva, the episcopal ordination, becoming bishop.
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The appointment as Secretary of the College of Cardinals by Pope Francis came the following year. The conclave for choosing a new Pope is one of the events that brings together the Cardinian College.
