Raffaele Rossi

Raffaele Carlo Rossi was born Carlo Rossi on 28 October 1876 in Pisa, Tuscany, in the Kingdom of Italy. After formation in the diocesan seminary he entered the Discalced Carmelite order in 1898 and received the religious name Raffaele of Saint Joseph. Professed in the order, he was ordained a priest in 1901. He spent the following years teaching philosophy and theology in Carmelite houses of study and serving as prior and as provincial of the Tuscan province of the order.

In 1920 he was appointed Bishop of Volterra by Pope Benedict XV and was consecrated later that year. After a brief episcopate he was summoned to Rome in 1923, named titular Archbishop of Thessalonica, and appointed Assessor of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation, the curial department that handled the appointment of bishops. His work in that office during the 1920s brought him into the inner circle of the Roman Curia.

Pope Pius XI raised him to the College of Cardinals on 30 June 1930, assigning him the Roman church of Santa Prassede as his titular church, and named him Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation. He remained in that post until his death. As secretary he was responsible for the process of selecting bishops worldwide during a period of political upheaval that included the Fascist regime in Italy, the Nazi regime in Germany, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War. He participated in the 1939 conclave that elected Pope Pius XII.

Cardinal Rossi died on 17 September 1948 at Crespano del Grappa in northern Italy. He was seventy-one years old. A member of a mendicant order who devoted his later career to the central administration of the Catholic Church, he has not been beatified or canonized. His life reflects the trajectory of a number of religious priests who were drawn into curial service in the early twentieth century.