Roman Catholic Cardinal. He served as the Archbishop of Naples from 1845 until his death. Born into a noble family, in 1824 he decided to become a priest and moved to Rome, where he would be educated under the presence of his cardinal uncle, Tommaso Riario Sforza. He received his education at the Pontifical Roman Major before attending the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Institute and the La Sapienza College where he went on to obtain a theological doctorate through an apostolic brief in 1845.
His rapid rise through the Church ranks began with a series of unique appointments before he served as the Bishop of Aversa for seven months before he was promoted to the Naples archdiocese and the cardinalate two months after that. He was a close supporter of Pope Pius IX and was a vocal participant in the First Vatican Council. He was opposed the cause for Italian unification and exiled from Naples for a time following unification following his refusal to adhere to the requests that the new government made to him. He used this time in exile to travel while setting up a private network to create periodical publications to oppose the anticlerical press coming from his archdiocese. Later, he was allowed to return and carried out his duties such as aiding victims of two cholera epidemics and from the 1861 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Towards the end of his life, there were rumors that the French, who were preparing for a papal conclave to be held outside of Rome (due to the Italian unification), were aiming to propose Sforza as a papal contender. However, he died from heart problems just five months before Pope Leo XIII was elected. He was originally interred at the church of San Mario del Pianto before being relocated to the Naples Cathedral. In April 1927 his remains were moved to the chapel of the SS. Crocifisso in the church of SS. XII Apostoli in Rome, Italy. His beatification process launched in the 1920s and culminated on 28 June 2012 after Pope Benedict XVI recognized his heroic virtue and titled him as Venerable.