PASSINGS / Cardinal Pio Laghi

Cardinal Pio Laghi, 86, a longtime Vatican diplomat who went to Washington to try to dissuade President Bush from launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq, died Saturday at a Rome hospital where he had been treated for some time, Vatican Radio said.

Pope John Paul II tapped Laghi, a former envoy to Washington, in 2003 to meet with Bush on the eve of the war. Laghi was trying to prevent what he said was a morally and legally unjustified invasion.

Laghi, who had been friendly with the Bush family, delivered a letter from John Paul and pressed Bush on whether he was doing everything to avert war. “You might start and you don’t know how to end it,” Laghi said at the time.

Born in Forli, Italy, on May 21, 1922, Laghi had a long career in the Vatican diplomatic corps, serving first in Nicaragua in 1952.

He was dispatched to India, Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, Cyprus, Greece and Argentina before being named envoy to Washington in 1980.

At the time, there were no formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy See; Laghi oversaw the establishment of ties in 1984 and remained as the Vatican’s permanent diplomatic representative there until he was recalled to Rome.

Laghi was named a cardinal in 1991.