VAN ROSSUM, WILLEM. - Cardinal, b. at Zwolle (Holland) on 3 Sept. 1874, d. at Maastricht (Holland) on 30 Aug. 1932.
Having entered the Redemptorists at Ruremonde in 1873 and been ordained a priest in 1878, he was appointed teacher of dogmatic theology at Ruremonde and at the College of Wittem, of which he subsequently became prefect of studies (1886) and superior (1893). Called to Rome in 1900, he was appointed consultor of the Congregation of the Holy Office and in 1904 was among the first members of the Pontifical Commission for the Codification of Canon Law. Consultor general of his Congregation (1909), he was created cardinal by Bl. Pius X in 1911. After having held the office of major penitentiary (1915), he was called by Benedict XV to the office of prefect of the Congregation "de Propaganda Fide," and from the same Pontiff he received episcopal consecration.
He was one of Pius XI's principal collaborators in his vast work on behalf of the missions and had a great part in the Vatican Missionary Exposition in the Holy Year 1925, in the building of the new Urban College "de Propaganda Fide," in the election of the first Chinese bishops and of the first Japanese bishop, and in the erection of numerous apostolic vicariates and prefectures; he was moreover legate a latere of Bl. Pius X at the International Eucharistic Congress of Vienna (1912) and of Pius XI at that of Amsterdam (1924).
A distinguished cultivator of theological studies, he published numerous writings, among which the following are remembered: Dissertatio S. Alphonsi de praedestinatione D. N. J. Christi (Rome 1896), Commentarius de Iudicio Sacramentali (Rome
1897); Alphonsus Maria de Ligorio et Immaculata Conceptio B. M. V. (Rome 1904); De essentia Sacramenti Ordinis (Fribourg 1914, 2nd ed. 1931); Aan mijne Katholieke landgenooten (Rotterdam 1923).