Julien Ries was the most important historian of religions. He taught for over fourty years at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he founded the Centre d’Histoire des Religions. In 2008 he donated his library and his private archive to the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, thus founding the “Julien Ries” Archive for Symbolic Anthropology, directed by Silvano Petrosino. In February 2012 has been appointed cardinal by the Pope Benedict XVI.