Giuseppe Dalla Torre, the jurist friend of the Popes, died

President of the Vatican City State Court until last year, Professor Giuseppe Dalla Torre Del Tempio di Sanguinetto died today in Rome at the age of 77. The funeral will be celebrated on Saturday 5 December in St. Peter's Basilica, while the Academic Senate of the Lumsa University, where he was rector from 1991 to 2014, will remember him in a special session tomorrow. "He was for all of us - recalls the current rector of the Catholic university, Francesco Bonini - a teacher and for many a father. We remember him with gratitude and we are committed to developing his testimony of truth and goodness, a testimony of service". Jurist and teacher, he spent his entire life, as well as in the courtrooms, in the service of the Popes, precisely in his capacity as a jurist, but also among young university students. Born in Rome in 1943, he graduated in Law in 1967 at the Sapienza University of Rome and, in 1968, in Canon Law at the Pontifical Lateran University. He taught at the Universities of Modena and Bologna, then in 1991 he was appointed rector of Lumsa in Rome, a position he held until 2014. From 1997 to 2019 he was president of the Vatican City State Court. Among the trials carried out under his presidency, that on the so-called Vatileaks. Instead he took a step back in the trial on the attic of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to avoid a conflict of interest, as a member of the board of the Bambino Gesù. the revision of the Concordat between the State and the Holy See. During his long career he was awarded numerous honors such as that of Knight of Collar and Lieutenant General of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem and of Knight of Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He was also national president of the Italian Catholic Jurists Union. As he himself told in his latest book, "Popes of the family", the life of Dalla Torre, and of his family, was marked by the relationship with the Holy See and by friendship with the Popes. The close relations with the Popes began for the family of Treviso origin at the time of Pius X: grandfather and father were linked to the direction of the Osservatore Romano and the Vatican Museums, and then the nephew, Giuseppe, was called by Giovanni Paul II in 1994 to direct the Vatican State Court and before that, among other things, he had been involved in the trial of Ali Agca, the bomber of Pope Wojtyla. Furthermore, last April his brother Fra Giacomo Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta, passed away.