SANTAROSA-DEROSSI, PIETRO di. — Statesman, born in Turin on 12 Apr. 1805, died there on 5 Aug. 1850.
A scholar of politics and economics, he traveled extensively throughout Europe. A member of the Turin city council since 1840, and a founder—together with Cavour, Balbo, and Alfieri—of the *Risorgimento*, on 5 Feb. 1848 he took the initiative in inviting the city of Turin to petition King Charles Albert for the promulgation of the Statute. Elected deputy for Savigliano to the Subalpine Parliament from its first legislature, he served as Minister of Public Works in the Pinelli-Revel ministry. In 1849, he assumed the portfolio of Agriculture and Commerce in the d’Azeglio ministry and supported in council the Siccardi bill for the abolition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For this reason, when he lay gravely ill in the summer of 1850 and requested the last sacraments, the Archbishop of Turin, Msgr. Franzoni—who had already protested against the Siccardi law and had suffered a month’s imprisonment for it—ordered that the Vatican not be brought to the dying man unless he first withdrew his support for anti-ecclesiastical legislation. The parish priest, Fr. Pittavino, O.S.M., communicated the archiepiscopal decision to the minister, who, after a long crisis of conscience, refused to disavow his political activity and died without the sacraments. The painful episode led to a popular demonstration against the archbishop, the arrest and trial of Franzoni and Pittavino, and the expulsion of the Servites from the city.
Cavour replaced S. in the ministry, thus beginning his own political career.
1839
SANTA ROSA-DEROSSI PIETRO — HOLY SEE
p. 263 ff.; S. Jacini, *La politica ecclesiastica italiana*, Bari 1938, V. indices; P. Pirri, *Pio IX e Vittorio Emanuele II dal loro carteggio privato*, II, Rome 1951, V. indices; W. De La Rive, *Vita di Cavour*, Milan 1951, pp. 151–61.