Willem van Rossum was born in
Zwolle,
Netherlands, to Jan and Hendrika (née Veldwillems) van Rossum. He entered the
Minor Seminary of
Culemborg in 1867 and joined the
Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, more commonly known as the Redemptorists, on 15 June 1873. He made his
profession as a Redemptorist on 16 June 1874. He was
ordained a
priest in
Wittem on 17 October 1879. He then taught
Latin and
rhetoric in
Roermond and was a professor of
dogmatic theology at the Scholasticate of Wittem from 1883 to 1892. He became the prefect of studies there in 1886 and its
rector in 1893. After becoming a member of the Redemptorist community in
Rome in 1895, Rossum was named a consultor to the
Congregation of the Holy Office on 25 December 1896. He also became a counselor to the Commission for the Codification of Canon Law on 15 April 1904. He served as general consultor of the Redemptorists from 1909 to 1911. On 27 November 1911, although Van Rossum was not yet a bishop,
Pope Pius X named him
Cardinal-Deacon of
San Cesareo in Palatio, the first Dutch cardinal. On 1 October 1915, he was named head of the
Apostolic Penitentiary. On 6 December 1915, he was also raised to the rank of Cardinal Priest, with the titular church of
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. He was appointed Prefect of the
Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) on 12 March 1918. As the head of the Propaganda Fide, he dispatched Jean-Baptiste-Marie Budes de Guébriant as an apostolic visitor to China, where de Guébriant was tasked with visiting all major
Catholic missions and to investigate the
Catholic Church's relative lack of success in China, compared to the growth in
Protestantism. Van Rossum was the primary drafter of
Maximum Illud, which Benedict XV issued during de Guébriant's visit to China. He participated the
1922 conclave that elected
Pope Pius XI. At the latter he was thought a possible compromise candidate. after falling ill on returning from a visit to
Denmark. He was buried in the Witten cemetery, but later in the Redemptorist church in Wittem. ==References==