Cardinal Michele Pellegrino, ‘The Liberal’

Cardinal Michele Pellegrino, the former archbishop of Turin who championed the cause of Italy’s industrial workers and urged the Pope to permit priests to marry, died in a Turin clinic Friday at the age of 83.

The prelate had been hospitalized since suffering a stroke in 1982. Pellegrino, son of a bricklayer, was a major figure in the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), where he earned a reputation as a “new kind of bishop” for his strong stance in favor of theological freedom in the church.

“If each one knows that he is permitted to express his opinion with wholesome freedom, he will act with the straightforwardness and sincerity that should shine in the church,” he said at the session. “Otherwise, the abominable plague of dishonesty and hypocrisy can hardly be avoided.”

In the Turin Archdiocese, which he headed between 1965 and 1977, he encouraged his priests to study philosophy, history, biology and physics because of the relation of these disciplines to theology in today’s world.

During his service in Turin, a city racked by social problems and labor unrest, he was solidly on the side of the workers.

After he issued a pastoral message in 1971, “Walking Together,” in which he urged all members of his diocese to join in a common program for the poor, he became known as “the liberal” of the Italian church.

Pellegrino was made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1967.