Saint John Baptist de Rossi

A poor family's son called to Rome

John Baptist de Rossi was born on February 22, 1698, in Voltaggio, Piedmont, to a devout but poor family. In 1711, his cousin, Canon Lorenzo de Rossi, called him to Rome, where he completed his studies at the Collegium Romanum under the Jesuits — a path that took a boy from a small provincial town straight into the heart of the Church's capital.

Ordained despite a condition that frightened him

He was ordained a priest on March 8, 1721, though not without difficulty. Years of overly severe mortification had left him with epilepsy, and he was ordained only with a special dispensation. For years afterward, that same condition kept him away from one of a priest's central duties: he was too afraid of his own illness to sit in the confessional at all.

A ministry to Rome's forgotten

While he hesitated over confession, he found other ways to serve. He devoted himself to Rome's sick, homeless, and prostitutes, visiting hospitals by day and ministering to people living on the streets by night, and he helped found a hospice for homeless women near Saint Galla. It wasn't until 1738 that his bishop finally persuaded him to hear confessions, granting him faculties to do so in any church in Rome. Once he began, he showed particular zeal in seeking out the confessions of the illiterate and the poor, the very people other confessors often overlooked, finding them in hospitals and homes rather than waiting behind a screen.

A quiet death, a lasting recognition

John Baptist de Rossi died on May 23, 1764, in his room at Trinita de Pellegrini. Pope Pius IX beatified him on May 13, 1860, and Pope Leo XIII canonized him on December 8, 1881 — recognition, more than a century later, for a man whose ministry had been built on precisely the fear he eventually overcame.