Domenico Jorio

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Pontifical Roman Seminary
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Domenico Jorio

Biography

Domenico Jorio was born in

Following Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia, on 29 April 1937 Italy introduced race-based legislation for the first time. The Lessona Decree, named for Italy's Minister for Africa Alessandro Lessona, punished sexual relations between Italians and Ethiopians with imprisonment for one to five years. It was aimed more at longterm living arrangements, concubinage, than at casual encounters. Jorio produced an assessment on behalf of his Congregation on 24 August. It asserted at length the Church's belief that race could not be an impediment to marriage. Reflecting the controversy over eugenics a few years earlier in Germany, it said the Church granted "maximum freedom" even to those afflicted "by chronic hereditary disorders". It then welcomed the government's proscription of interracial concubinage as a first step toward outlawing concubinage in all its forms. It said the Church could encourage its missionaries "to prevent such hybrid unions for the wise hygienic and social motivations" the government had outlined. The Church, he offered, would do its part by not granting dispensations for intermarriage between Catholic and Muslims.^[1]

He died on 21 October 1954 in his apartment in the Palace of the Holy Office, Rome. The funeral took place on 25 October 1954 in the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. After the funeral, his body was buried in the church of Sant'Apollinare.

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