RAMPOLLA DEL TINDARO, Mariano. Polizzi Generosa, Palermo 26.10.1893 — Rome 21.10.1945. Monsignor. Italian Indologist. Born in a Sicilian noble family. Student of O. Nazari at Palermo, then at Università Gregoriana in Rome. Ordained priest 1920. With his early interest in India he planned a missionary career. Instead, from 1933 he taught Sanskrit at the “Pontificium Institutum Missionale Athenaei Urbani de Propaganda Fide” in Rome as professor of “Historia religionum in India et lingua Sanscrita”. Wrote a Sanskrit grammar in Latin. He was a nephew of Cardinal Mariano R. del T. (1843–1913) and an early friend of Cardinal Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, who had been his classmate in academy for diplomatic studies in Rome.

Publications: Lingua sanscrita. Grammatica – exercitia – anthologia – vocabulorum indices. 259 p. Romae 1936.

Sources: Preface to his Sanskrit Grammar; briefly in connection of the Pope in L’Osservatore Romano 26.8.2016 (English version); *S. Garofalo (ed.), Una rara amicizia: Giovanni Battista Montini e Mariano Rampolla Del Tindaro: carteggio 1922-1924. Quaderni dell’Istituto 9. Brescia 1990; briefly in Italian Wikipedia on his uncle.