Carlo Balić

Born in Katuni, near Split in Croatia, on December 6, 1899, Friar Carlo Balić OFM., was a famous theologian, specializing in the figure and works of John Duns Scotus, and rector of the Pontificio Ateneo Antonianum of Rome. Entering the Franciscan Order in 1917, through the Province of the Most Holy Redeemer of Dalmatia, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1923. Successively he was sent to Louvain from where he received a Doctorate for a thesis on Franciscan Mariology of the XIII and XIV centuries. Returning back to Croatia, he served as lecturer in his Province until 1933, when he was sent to Rome to begin teaching in the new Pontifical Athenaeum Antonianum, where he gave his inaugural class, which was to become the beginning of his career. He later became the Rector Magnificus and had the Our Lady of the Assumption hall built. He was entrusted with the International Scotus Commission to which he gave such a new impulse that he was considered a re-founder. He drew up, in fact, a new "way" for the critical edition of Scotus' Opera Omnia. Charged by the Order to preside over the Commissio Marialis Franciscana, he founded, in 1947, the Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis, an entity for the coordination of all the Mariology scholars of the world. Through the Academy, Balić began a series of Franciscan Congresses on the Assumption which prepared the dogma of the Assumption, in which Balić participated actively as a member of the Theological Commission appointed by Pope Pius XII. Seeing the valuable contribution to theological research by the International Marian Mariology Congresses, presided over and organised by Balić, the Holy Office entrusted him with the preparation of the document De Beata, to be presented to the Fathers of the II Vatican Council. During the whole of the council period, Balić showed he was one of the most active and useful experts, cooperating in the redaction of chapter VIII of Lumen Gentium. In 1975, in the Aula Magna of the Antonianum on the occasion of the Mariological Congress, Pope Paul VI thanked and gave homage to Balić for all he had done in the name of the Order for the good of the whole Church. Following a period of illness he fell asleep in the Lord on April 15, 1977, aged 77, at the Antonianum. An austere, simple, kind and straight person, and tireless worker and lover of the Rule and Franciscan life, Balić was a studious friar, investigator, writer and developer of publications and of congresses, having as themes the medieval Franciscan authors. His remains lie buried inside the Mediatrix of All Graces church in his native Katuni.