Latino Orsini

Latino Orsini (1411 – 11 August 1477) was an Italian Cardinal.

Life
Of the Roman branch of the Orsini family, he was the fourth child of Carlo and Paola Gironima Orsini. He entered the ranks of the Roman clergy as a youth, became subdeacon, and as early as 10 March 1438, was raised to the Episcopal See of Conza in Southern Italy. Transferred from this see to that of Trani (Southern Italy) in 1439, he remained archbishop of Trani after his elevation to the cardinalate by Pope Nicholas V on 20 December 1448.

In 1450, the Archbishopric of Urbino was conferred upon him, which made it possible for him to take up his residence in Rome, the See of Trani being given to his brother, Giovanni Orsini, Abbot of Farfa. He rebuilt San Salvatore in Lauro as a chapel for a monastery he established next door, and in which he installed the Canons Regular of San Giorgio in Alga. In February 1459, as papal legate acting for Pope Pius II, he crowned Ferdinand I of Naples at Barletta Cathedral.

Pope Sixtus IV, for whose election in 1471 Cardinal Latino had worked energetically, named him Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, granted him in 1472 the Archdiocese of Taranto, which he governed by proxy, and, in addition, placed him at the head of the government of the Papal States. He was also appointed commander-in-chief of the papal fleet in the war against the Turks.

In the last years of his life he became deeply religious, though he had been worldly in his youth, leaving a natural son named Paul, whom, with the consent of the pope, he made heir of his vast possessions.