Fr Claudio Rossi RIP

Source: Jesuit Office

Fr Claudio Rossi SJ, who served in parishes in the dioceses of Clifton and Westminster in the 1980s and '90s, has been killed died in a tragic accident near Rome. He was visiting his mother in Palestrina on Wednesday, 31 May, as he did every week. In the property, located in a country area, there is a little chapel where Claudio used to go to say the rosary.

Being the feast of the Visitation, Claudio and his mother were taking flowers to the chapel and going to say the rosary. They did not know of the existence of an old artesian well, just covered by flooring. Claudio fell in this well, about 30m deep. When they pulled him out, he was dead.

Claudio was born in Crema, Italy, in May 1945, and entered the Society of Jesus in March 1973. He studied philosophy in Pretoria, theology in Rome, and pastoral theology at Heythrop College in London. After his ordination in 1975, he worked in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) and South Africa part of the British Province.

On his return to Britain, he served at St Ignatius Church, Stamford Hill, and St Mary-on-the-Quay in Bristol, where he was the Jesuit Superior from 1989 until the parish was handed back to the Diocese of Clifton in 1996. He went on to work in parishes in Rome and South Africa, and since 2003, had been student chaplain at La Sapienza University in Rome.