Red Pope

Front matter

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En

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Introduction

1 Childhood 1 The Hanseatic town of Zwolle 2 The Catholic community of Zwolle 3 Willem Marinus's childhood 4 The Catholic orphanage

2 Minorseminary 1 Kuilenburg 2 The horarium 3 Ultramontane Jesuits 4 Leaving Kuilenburg

3 Redemptorist formation 1 Choosing the Redemptorists 2 The Redemptorists in the Netherlands 3 Asonof Alphonsus: the noviciate 4 Petrus Oomen 5 The Wittem studentate

4 Lecturer, prefect and rector in Wittem 1 The Roermond juvenate 2 Lecturer and prefect in Wittem 3 Becoming an expert in Alphonsian dogmatic theology 4 Rector of Wittem

Where there's smoke, there's fire:

polarisation in the Dutch Redemptorist province

1 The1894 general chapter

2 TheDutch province under fire

3 Theextraordinary visitation of 1894.

4 Provincial Jan Kronenburg and the smoking question 5 Amatter of conscience

6 Appointment to Brazil and transfer to Rome

7 Oomen and his protégé

8 Kronenburg: friend and rival

1 SantAlfonso

2 TheRoman community

3 TheSchola Major

4 Van Rossum’s position in the generalate

1 First task: vindicating Alphonsus

2 Consultor of the Holy Office

3 Preparations for the Pontifical Biblical Commission 4 Van Rossum delates Loisy

1 The codification commission

2 Preparing Lamentabili and Pascendi 3 Loisy condemned as vitandus

4 The antimodernist oath

5 Sodalitium Pianum

6 Ruthlessness and mercy

1 Secret mission to Montevergine

2 Rausresigns

3 Van Rossum v. Kronenburg at the 1909 general chapter 4 Consultor generalis (1909-1911)

114 114 119 128 132

135 135 138 146 148

178 178 182 184 189

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 The creation 2 Anew lifestyle 3 The Famiglia Cardinalizia

1 Member of the College of Cardinals

2 The 23“ international eucharistic congress in Vienna

3 On his own ‘Protestant’ soil: visit to the Netherlands in 1913

1 President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission

2 The death of Pope Pius x and the 1914 conclave

3 Benedict xv's politics of peace

4 Guardian of conscience and indulgences: major penitentiary (1915-1918)

Prefect of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide 1 Van Rossum becomes the ‘red pope’

2 Abird's-eye view of Propaganda Fide since 1622

3 Prefect on Piazza di Spagna

4 The office of Propaganda Fide

5 The general congregations of Propaganda Fide

6 Van Rossum's work as a member of Propaganda Fide, 1912-1918

7 The prefect's power

1 Rediscovering old principles

2 Maximum Illud (1919) and Rerum Ecclesiae (1926)

3 Concentrating controlin clerical hands

4 Combating nationalism in the missions and building up indigenous churches

5 The formation and deployment of missionaries

6 The training of missionaries at Propaganda

7 Propaganda Fide and the Secretariat of State

195 195 206

223 223 231 238

251 251 255 257

297 297 300 304

308 316 320 336

Bitter struggle over missionary funding (1919-1924) 1 Missionary fundraising

2 TheSociety for the Propagation of the Faith

3 American support for the missions

4 The Propagation of the Faith's rocky road to Rome

5 The motu proprio Romanorum Pontificum

6 Persevering to the end

1 Cardinalglobetrotter

2 Apostolic journey to Scandinavia in the summer of 1923

3 TheAmsterdam international eucharistic congress (1924)

4 Second journey to Iceland (1929)

5 TheScandinavian eucharistic congress in Copenhagen (1932)

1 Theshock troops of the church

2 Member of the Congregation for Religious

3 Prefect of Propaganda Fide

4 Expanding Propaganda Fide's authority over religious in the missions

1 Leader, protector and corrector 2 Concentration of power

3 Van Rossum’s long arm

The Society of Saint Peter the Apostle and the banishment of Drehmanns by Pius x1 1 Private secretary 2 The Society of Saint Peter the Apostle (s.P.A.) as a cornerstone of Maximum Illud 3 Drehmanns’s plans for two missionary congregations 4 Van Rossum intervenes in the S.P.A. 5 Banished from Rome 6 Aweak link

TABLE OF CONTENTS

20 No second pope 514 1 The 1922 conclave 514 2 Relations with Pius x1 517 3 Shifting alliances 524 21 Van Rossum’s parting shot 536 1 Personal situation 536 2 Crisis in the Vatican 543 3 Proposals for a drastic overhaul of the curia 546 4 Looming dismissal? 556 5 Van Rossum’s death 559 Retrospect 569 Epilogue 579 Appendix1 De quibusdam rebus in ecclesiastico regimine emendandis 585 Appendix2 Publications by Willem Marinus van Rossum 607 Abbreviations 611 Archival sources consulted 615 Works consulted 623 Illustration credits 647 Index 649

Translator's preface

A s she was completing the Dutch-language edition of this book (published in 2021 by Valkhof Pers of Nijmegen), Dr Vefie Poels was diagnosed with a deadly disease. It made her all the more determined to see the English translation of her magnum opus through to the end, and she took an active part, together with Dr Hans de Valk, in discussing the translated chapters with me as I sent them to her over the course of 2021 and 2022. She reviewed the final part shortly before her untimely death on 2 October 2022; she sent me her last email about the project three days before she died.

As per her wishes, and motivated by the desire to honour her legacy as a historian, Dr De Valk and I worked during the months that followed to prepare the English manuscript for publication, with the expert assistance of Dr Hans Krabbendam of the Catholic Documentation Centre at Radboud University Nijmegen. In doing so, we made a number of minor changes to the text as it was seen by Dr Poels: apart from some linguistic tweaking, these adjustments consisted mainly of the improvements suggested by the peer reviewers.

I wish to thank Dr Poels’s husband Hans Peters very warmly for offering Dr De Valk and me every encouragement and granting the required permissions. I am very grateful to Dr De Valk for his close reading of the manuscript, his judicious corrections and suggestions for improvement, and his kindness and delicacy throughout the process. Thanks are due furthermore to Dr Krabbendam and the staff at Radboud University Press, the anonymous reviewers, who offered valuable feedback, Gerrit Vroon, Dr Hanneke Westhoff, Dr Otto S. Lankhorst, Sr Magdalena Schumann O.Ss.R. and Fr Dan Baragry C.Ss.R. for assistance rendered, and to Vrienden van het KDC and an anonymous donor for funding the translation.

It is my fervent hope that, in introducing Cardinal Van Rossum to an international audience, this book will at the same time be testimony to the meticulousness and far-sightedness of Dr Vefie Poels’s historical work.

Brussels, 25 June 2023

Brian Heffernan

Author's preface

N | y interest in Cardinal Willem van Rossum (1854-1932) was quickly aroused when I first began to study the heyday of Dutch Catholicism during the first

half of the twentieth century. The name of this Rome-based Redemptorist priest

appeared sooner or later in many of the sources I used for my historical research.

I began to realise that Van Rossum, prefect of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide (the Vatican’s missionary department) since 1918, though operating behind the scenes, exerted a crucial influence there. In fact, it is impossible to understand the rise of missionary activities and the flourishing of religious institutes without looking at his contribution. My doctoral research on a Dutch Catholic mission in Norway drove this truth home to me. But who was this man, how did he come to occupy such an exalted position in the Vatican, and what agenda did he pursue? The existing literature offered little to go on. Two dated and hagiographical biographies gave limited and unsatisfactory answers. The plan started to take shape in my mind to write a scholarly biography myself, one that would shed light on his Dutch origins, his position within the Congregation of the Redemptorists and his career in the Roman curia, and on the links between these various aspects.

My fascination for Van Rossum was shared by my doctoral supervisor at the time, Jan Roes, and, after his death in 2003, by other historians who were interested in placing the history of Dutch Catholicism in the wider context of the global church. Their support helped me to begin my biographical research on this Dutch cardinal in 2008, initially as a pilot project at the Nijmegen Institute for Mission Studies (NIM) and, from 2009-2014, as a postdoctoral project at the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology (rsr). I continued working on the biography in my own time after 2014, facilitated by the Catholic Documentation Centre (KDC) in Nijmegen.

This book is the result of extensive research in a large number of archives in the Netherlands and abroad. The active assistance of many archivists was of crucial importance. I would like to mention here, for the Vatican archives, Marcel Chappin s.J., and Alejandro M. Dieguez (Vatican Apostolic Archives), Msgr L.M. Cuna Ramos (Propaganda Fide Archives), Msgr Alejandro Cifres (Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), and Johan Ickx (Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State). My research in the archives of the Redemptorists benefited much from the support of the late Piet Nelen and Jozef Konings (Dutch province), and in Rome of Jean Beco, Gilbert Enderle and Adam Owczarski (Historical Institute of the Generalate). For the archives in the Netherlands, the staff of the Heritage Centre for Religious Life in the Netherlands in St. Agatha and of the Catholic Documentation Centre in Nijmegen helped me on innumerable occasions. Jos Drehmanns gave me access to the family archives (Roermond). I would also like to thank the archivists of a number of regional heritage centres and diocesan archives in the Netherlands, and, further afield, Gunnar Gudmundsson (Reykjavik), Patrick Hayes (Redemptorists, New York), Agnes Maria Weber (Ingenbohl) and the staff of KADOC (Leuven). I thank the board of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome for its generosity in facilitating the colloquium on Cardinal Van Rossum held there in June 2009.

I received indispensable financial support for my research and for the publication of the biography from KDC Fonds, the Conference of Dutch Religious (KNR, PIN Commission), Missio Nederland, NIM, Nuyensfonds, the Order of Redemptoristines, Sormani Fonds, St. Clement's Redemptorist Province, Stichting Echo, TST and the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross in Ingenbohl. Iam most grateful to all of them.

While researching and writing this book, I benefited greatly from the critical comments made by the members ofthe supervisory committees at NIM and TST: Eric Corsius, Adelbert Denaux, Jan De Maeyer, Peter Rietbergen, Theo Salemink, Maria ter Steeg, Hans de Valk, Joop Vernooij C.ss.R., Joos van Vugt and Lodewijk Winkeler. I also thank the other readers who offered critical comments on the text or parts of it: Jan Bank, Gilbert Enderle C.ss.R., Eduard Kimman S.J., Jozef Konings C.ss.R., Hans Krabbendam, Melanie van Oort-Hall, Ton van Schaik and Jan Snijders s.M.

A special word of thanks must go to Theo Salemink and Hans de Valk, who supported my plans for a biography from the start and who helped bring it about. Moreover, Hans de Valk, for whom the Vatican archives have no secrets, offered inestimable help as a guide and assistant during the archival research. It truly was a pleasure to work with him. In the last phase of the biography, Otto S. Lankhorst and Hans de Valk were a great help to me; the former by compiling the bibliography and the latter by compiling the list of archives consulted and the index. The same is true for Mariken Roes and Hanneke Westhoff of Valkhof Pers, who followed the original Dutch-language project throughout with warm interest. Thanks are due also to Brian Heffernan for his excellent English translation and for our pleasant cooperation. Finally, I thank my husband Hans and our children Daniel, Myriam and Jakob. They were there throughout the genesis of this book, and 'the Cardinal has become somewhat of a family member over the years.

The Netherlands, with Roman Catholic dioceses (1853-1956)

UTRECHT

Maastricht}

© Gerrit Vroon

Introduction

Az™ ago, the Dutch Redemptorist Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum (1854-1932) was one of the most influential Catholic prelates. As the ‘red pope’, the moniker given to the prefect of Propaganda Fide, he gave Catholic missions worldwide a decisive impetus after the First World War, as Europe lay destroyed and a new world order presented itself, in which the church of Rome had to redefine its position. The great missionary drive of the interwar years was crucial in this endeavour, and its results are still visible today: the Catholic church with its 1.2 billion members is the most numerous Christian denomination in the world. As the church’s influence in Europe declines, its role in the other continents of the world continues to be significant. The non-European pole in the church is consequently becoming more and more important, and one of the visible signs of this was the election of the Argentine Pope Francis in 2013. Van Rossum would have been delighted at this: he was a great protagonist of a centrally governed but universal church, which would no longer be beholden to the Italian element. It was a point of view he did little to hide within the Roman curia.

Van Rossum is an intriguing figure, who more than merits a biography, if only because it is odd that a man of his stature and influence should have left so few traces in national and international historiography. As a Dutchman, he was an outsider in the predominantly Italian College of Cardinals. He was also an exception among his fellow cardinals of the curia because he was a Redemptorist. This helped shape the way he operated in the Roman curia: these two aspects of his background paradoxically proved to be both an impediment and the key to his successful career.

Three historical developments converged during Van Rossum’s lifetime. In the first place, hailing as he did from the mainly Protestant town of Zwolle, he was a representative of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Dutch Catholicism, which was slowly emancipating itself from its second-class position in society. Secondly, he was a religious and a priest at a time in which orders and congregations flourished in the Catholic world and were able to wield great power. As an adolescent, he was educated by the Jesuits, but at the age of eighteen he chose to join the Redemptorists, at the time a strict congregation that specialised in moral theology and the ministry of confession. In this environment, he became an expert in the doctrine of the founder of this congregation, the doctor of the church Saint Alphonsus Liguori. Thirdly and finally, he joined the Roman curia in 1896, and served the Vatican under four popes:

INTRODUCTION

Leo XIII (1878-1903), Pius x (1903-1914), Benedict xv (1914-1922) and Pius XI (1922- 1939). In this capacity, he had a rigorist profile, influenced by a tendency that strongly opposed modern interpretations of church doctrine. He went from being a 'humble' consultor of the Holy Office to receiving the cardinal’s hat in 1911, and was appointed prefect of Propaganda Fide in 1918. In this latter position, which he held until his death, he operated as a strong manager who proved very capable of responding strategically to contemporary developments at a global level.

Not only was Willem van Rossum a representative of these historical periods and developments, he also exerted influence over them. A product of his time and circumstances, he was simultaneously a driver of change. In addition, he uniquely stood at the intersection of these three processes - I have previously called him an ‘embodied interface’ between them.' The microhistory of this cardinal of the curia can provide insight not only into each of these periods, but also permits us to trace how they were interrelated to and interwoven with each other through Van Rossum. Of course, this biography cannot aspire to give a full account of the historical periods and developments at issue. Its subjects are the life of Willem van Rossum and his convictions and activities in their historical context. Thus, readers will look in vain for a history of the missions or of Propaganda Fide in the 1918-1932 years. The central position which this one historical figure occupies served as the criterion for determining whether important issues required extensive and detailed discussion, or had to be left aside or discussed only in passing.

The need for a biography was felt immediately after Van Rossum’s death in 1932. His former private secretary Joseph Maria Drehmanns published Kardinaal van Rossum. Korte levensschets (‘Cardinal Van Rossum. A Brief Life’) three years later. Drehmanns was an advocate for the cardinal's beatification, and his book is of limited use, not least because it is based largely on the secretary's personal memories. In 1955, Jan Olav Smit, one of Van Rossum’s protégés, published a lecture he gave on the occasion of the cardinal's hundredth birthday, entitled Wilhelmus Marinus kardinaal Van Rossum. Een groot mens en een wijs bestuurder (“Wilhelmus Marinus Cardinal Van Rossum. A Great Man and a Wise Administrator’). Both biographies are hagiographical and were intended to hold Van Rossum up as an example to Dutch Catholics. In 1976, Josef Metzler, the archivist of Propaganda Fide, published a brief scholarly description that focuses exclusively on Van Rossum’s role as prefect of that congregation, in the standard work Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide. Much later, in 2007, the

1 Vefie Poels, ‘Embodied interface. The importance of the biography of Willem van Rossum’, in: Vefie Poels, Theo Salemink, Hans de Valk (eds.), Life with a Mission. Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum CSsR (1854-1932), Ghent 2011, also published as a special edition of Trajecta. Religie, cultuur en samenleving in de Nederlanden 19-20(2010-2011), 188-194.

historical journal of the Redemptorists carried a more extensive biographical essay by Joop Vernooij, subtitled ‘The Great Cardinal of the Small Netherlands’.

This book is the first extensive scholarly biography of the life of this Dutch curial cardinal. That itis the first is partly due to the fact that the Vatican archives for the pontificates of Pius x, Benedict xv and Pius x1 were only opened between 1985 and 2006. The current author consulted these and other archives from 2008 to 2015, together with Dr. Hans de Valk, a staff member of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome.

The research in the Vatican collections covered the archives of Propaganda Fide (ASPr), the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (AAV; formerly the Archivio Segreto Vaticano [Vatican Secret Archives]), the Archivio del Dicastero per la Dottrina della Fede (ADDE; the archives of the Holy Office) and the Historical Archives of the Secretary of State: Section for Relations with States and International Organizations (ASRS; specifically the archives of the Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari). Despite various requests, I was unable to gain access to the archives of the Congregation for Religious. The archives of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which Van Rossum chaired for many years, appear to have disappeared without a trace after the 1960s.? Although Van Rossum was also a member of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches (the ‘Orientale’), the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities and the Congregation of Rites, I chose not to consult these archives and to focus instead on his most important roles as regards the curia.

In addition, I was given unlimited access to the general archives of the Redemptorists in Rome, the Archivum Generale Historicum Redemptoristarum (AGHR), and the provincial archives of the same congregation in the Erfgoedcentrum Nederlands Kloosterleven (ENK; Heritage Centre for Religious Life in the Netherlands) in Sint Agatha (Cuijk). I would like to pay tribute to the hospitality of the Redemptorists, who frequently welcomed Hans de Valk and me on Via Merulana to do research in Rome and the Vatican, allowing me literally to tread in Van Rossum’s footsteps in the monastery of Sant’Alfonso and in his former apartment on Via dello Statuto.

The Van Rossum papers and those of his secretary Drehmanns in the Catholic Documentation Centre in Nijmegen proved to be of particular interest. The genesis of this remarkable collection is somewhat peculiar. In 1932, after Van Rossum's death, his apartments were immediately sealed, following curial tradition. Officials

2 Jos. Maria Drehmanns, Kardinaal van Rossum. Korte levensschets, Roermond/Maaseik 1935; Jan Olav Smit, Wilhelmus Marinus kardinaal Van Rossum. Een groot mens en wijs bestuurder, Roermond 1955; J. Metzler, ‘Prafekten und Sekretare der Kongregation in der neuesten Missionsara (1918-1972). Willem Marinus van Rossum’, in: Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide. Memoria rerum 350 Jahre im Dienste der Weltmission, 1622-1972. Ed. J. Metzler (Rome 1971-1976), vol. 111/2: 1815-1972, 303-312; J. Vernooij, ‘Cardinal Willem van Rossum, c.ss.R. "The Great Cardinal of the Small Netherlands" (1854-1932); in: Spicilegium Historicum Congregationis Ss.mi Redemptoris (SHCSR), 55(2007), 347-400.

3 Formoreon this, see Chapter 12.1.

INTRODUCTION of the curia then went through the cardinal's papers and took all official material, and clearly also other documents that interested them, and deposited these in the archives of the various dicasteries.^ A few days later, the remaining documents were examined by the executor of Van Rossum's will, Drehmanns. He took these papers, which included thousands of letters exchanged with members of the general curias of orders and congregations, shipped them to the monastery of his congregation in Wittem in the Netherlands, and added many pieces from his own archives to the collection. Remarkably, he removed most of his own letters to Van Rossum and deposited them in his family archives. He selectively used these various collections for the biography mentioned above. After this book was published in 1935, the papers remained in the Redemptorist archives and they were rudimentarily catalogued for the first time in the 1960s. In consultation with the archivist at the time, Jan Vinkenburg, they were transferred to the Catholic Documentation Centre in the 1990s, because their importance transcends the history of the congregation. They were fully catalogued there and are now accessible digitally.

In addition to these archives, I consulted archival collections in Belgium, France, Ireland, Iceland, the United States and Switzerland, and in various repositories in the Netherlands. A full list is included in the bibliography.

I also used the extensive library collection of the Dutch province of the Redemptorists, which was purchased by the university library of Radboud University in Nijmegen in the 1970s. This collection includes rare works from Van Rossum's and Drehmanns's personal collections, and some of them proved important for this biography, such as a book of dietary advice for diabetics from 1925, or the Communicanda, a periodical published by Drehmanns but banned by Propaganda Fide after only a few issues.

The research for this biography benefited greatly from the results ofa colloquium on Cardinal Van Rossum held on 11 and 12 June 2009 in the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. International experts, archivists, historians and theologians gathered to shed light on Van Rossum’s activities from their specific disciplines. The conference was attended by the then prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples - the successor to Propaganda Fide -, Cardinal Ivan Dias. The contributions by Joop Vernooij C.ss.R., Otto S. Lankhorst, Eric Corsius, Giuseppe M. Croce, Otto Weiss, Anna Luisa Casiraghi, Marcel Chappin s.J., Johan Ickx, Claude Prudhomme, Hans de Valk, Theo Salemink and Vefie Poels were subsequently published in the volume Life with a Mission. Cardinal Willem Marinus van Rossum CSsR (1854-1932) mentioned above.

4 The Archives of Propaganda Fide contain four boxes of ‘Carte W.M. van Rossum’: documents and correspondence on a wide range of subjects.

This biography of Willem van Rossum consists of three parts: the first two are structured largely chronologically and cover the 1854 to 1918 period. The first five chapters are set in the Netherlands. After his youth in Zwolle (1), his years in the minor seminary (2), his formation as a Redemptorist (3), and his years as a lecturer in Wittem (4), they discuss the polarisation in his congregation at the time, which led to his departure for Rome in 1895 (5). The following chapters chronologically address his life up to his appointment as prefect of Propaganda Fide: life in the generalate (6), his first steps in the curia (7), his support for antimodernist movements within the church (8), his near-election as superior general (9), his creation as cardinal (10), his position within the College of Cardinals as a Dutchman (11) and his first roles as a cardinal of the curia (12). The remaining chapters are largely thematic and examine the period that he was prefect of Propaganda Fide. After an introductory chapter on this department of the curia (13), attention turns to the apostolic letter Maximum Illud (1919) and the encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae (1926) and Van Rossum's part in their drafting (14), the conflict with France and the American bishops over the centralisation of fundraising and support for the missions (15), his journeys to the Netherlands and Scandinavia (16), the role of religious in the church and specifically in the missions (17), his activities as cardinal protector of orders and congregations (18) and the problematic role his private secretary Drehmanns played (19). The last chapters address his difficult relationship with Pius XI (20), as well as his criticism of the way the church was being governed in a sensational anonymous pamphlet that advocated fundamental reorganisation of the Roman curia. It was circulated shortly before his death in Maastricht in 1932 (21).

CHAPTER 1 1 The Hanseatic town of Zwolle

Willem Marinus van Rossum was born on Sunday 3 September 1854 in the central Dutch town of Zwolle in the region of Salland, as the second son of a cooper, or barrel maker. “No one in Zwolle”, his biographer Joseph Drehmanns intimated, “suspected that on this day the man was born who would make Zwolle famous across the whole world." It was no exaggeration to state that Cardinal Van Rossum was a well-known name across the world, at least among Catholics, at the time that Drehmanns's Korte levensschets or ‘Brief Life’ was published, in 1935. But it is doubtful that the town of his birth ever shared in his fame. And yet the circumstances in which he grew up in Zwolle had a major impact on his life.

The house on Hagelsteeg, Zwolle, Willem van Rossum's birthplace

Willem's native town still breathed the atmosphere of its origins as a Hanseatic stronghold at the place where four rivers meet: the IJssel, the Vechte, the Zwarte Water and the Aa. The inhabitants of this area are called Sallanders. They have the reputation of being reserved but sensitive and a little conservative, strongly attached to their region and its customs.? Zwolle became prosperous in the fourteenth and fifteenth century thanks to its trade relations with Amsterdam and cities in Germany and Flanders. In 1798, at the time of the Batavian Republic, the town became the administrative centre of the region. When the United Kingdom of the Netherlands was founded in 1815, it was made the capital of the province of Overijssel.

The young Willem, or Marinus as he was usually called by relatives, grew up in the old centre of the town. Zwolle had approximately 18,000 inhabitants in the mid nineteenth century; half of the population lived in the crowded town centre. The medieval city walls and towers had been demolished in the first half of the century, because space was needed to accommodate the growing population. Only the Sassenpoort was spared; later certain vestiges of the old city walls were dug up and ‘restored’. Wealthy residents in particular began to build stately townhouses outside the city moat or singel, where the new train station was also built. The first steam train pulled into this station from Utrecht at 3.25 pm on 4 June 1864, to the rapturous welcome of hundreds of inhabitants, among whom perhaps also the nine-year-old Willem.

Willem was born in Hagelsteeg in the old town centre, which was dominated by narrow alleys and single-room dwellings. This part of town was the domain of the poorer labouring class, the kleine lieden or common people. In 1850, the industrial sector in Zwolle was made up of about a thousand craftspeople who employed at most one member of staff? The Van Rossum family belonged to this group: they were coopers who manufactured wooden barrels for the storage and transportation of fluids and other products.

Willem Marinus's grandfather Jacob van Rossum had moved to Zwolle at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was a farmer's son from Emmerich, a small town in the German Rhine Province, in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia. Like many other Catholics he decided to leave the area when it was assigned to the Protestant state of Prussia after the fall of Napoleon by the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). On 10 March 1815 the twenty-three-year-old Jacob married the widow Willemijntje Tollenaar, fourteen years his senior, who owned a cooper's business. Willemijntje died precisely a month later, but not before Jacob had apparently managed to master the cooperage trade. He remarried three months later, this time with the seamstress

2 Otto S. Lankhorst, ‘La jeunesse du cardinal Van Rossum et son lien avec le Salland, sa région d'origine’, in: Life with a Mission, 26-37, at 30. 3 Jan ten Hove, Geschiedenis van Zwolle (Zwolle 2005), 409-421, 441-457.

Maria Gerrits Krommendam from the neighbouring town of Dalfsen.^ Jan van Rossum, one of their sons, followed in his father's footsteps and also became a cooper. He married Hendrika Veldwillems, a farmer's daughter from nearby Hellendoorn, on 19 May 1852.5 They had five children: three boys, Jacobus (1853), Willem (1854) and Johannes (1858), and two girls, Hendrina (1856) and Hendrika (1860).°

2 The Catholic community of Zwolle

Zwolle and its environs have gone down in history as the birthplace of a fifteenth-century spiritual movement called the Devotio Moderna or Modern Devotion. The monasteries of St. Agnes and Windesheim near Zwolle were the most important centres of this movement. The mystic Thomas a Kempis died in Zwolle in 1472; he was deeply influenced by the Modern Devotion. His book De imitatione Christi continues to be one of the most read and most translated spiritual texts of all times. We do not know if Willem van Rossum knew this work during his years in Zwolle, but he would certainly become familiar with it during his seminary formation. In his later life and during his journeys, he always carried a copy of The Imitation of Christ with him as well as his breviary.”