Saint John Baptist de Rossi

Saint John Baptist de Rossi was an eighteenth-century Roman priest and a canon of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Despite the epilepsy he had struggled with since his youth, he devoted his whole priestly life to the poor, the homeless, and the sick, and many Romans sought him out for confession. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on May 23, the day of his death.

He was born on February 22, 1698, in Voltaggio, near Genoa, into a family of modest means but real piety. At about the age of thirteen he went to live in Rome with a relative, a priest and canon of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. He studied at the Roman College, run by the Jesuits, and in 1714 he decided to become a priest. Around that time he had his first epileptic attacks. He studied theology with the Dominicans. He was ordained a priest on March 8, 1721, and celebrated his first Mass at the tomb of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga in the Roman church of Saint Ignatius.

Already as a student he helped the poor. He became involved with the hospice of Saint Galla, a night shelter for the destitute, farm laborers, and newcomers with no roof over their heads, and he introduced there times of prayer and of conversation with the sick. At the adjoining church he founded the Pious Union of Secular Priests of Saint Galla, meant to support priests in their spiritual life. Next to the hospice he opened a second one, for homeless women and girls, and placed it under the patronage of Saint Aloysius. He visited the sick in the hospitals of Rome, and in the squares near his church he gathered children and passersby to teach them the truths of the faith.

After his relative’s death he succeeded him as canon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. He gave the income of the canonry to the poor, while he himself lived in a cramped little room under the roof. Because of his illness he long held back from hearing confessions and received the faculty to do so only in 1738, at about the age of forty. From then on the confessional became the center of his ministry. He spent long hours in it every day, and penitents lined up to see him. He was dispensed from the obligation of joining the canons in choir so that he could give himself more freely to this work.

Exhausting work and illness wore down his strength, and in the last months of his life his epilepsy grew worse. He died in Rome on May 23, 1764, at the age of 66, and was buried in the church of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini.

Pope Pius IX, who had earlier been president of the union of priests he had founded, beatified him on May 13, 1860. Leo XIII canonized him on December 8, 1881, in the Vatican Basilica, on the same day as Saint Benedict Joseph Labre.