It often happens that the history of the Roman Curia in the 20th century is reduced to that of its reforms. This is a convenient but deceptive shortcut, because this history is much more complex and is made up of theologies, cultures, and links that are constantly intertwining and distancing themselves. This is why is important to delve into the biographies of those who played an important role within curial offices, to see what relationships they had with other officials in the Curia, to assess what their contribution was during the years they spent in the service of the Holy See, and, conversely, to understand how this same service marked their lives. Dutch Cardinal Willem van Rossum (1854–1932) was in this sense one of the main – and in some respects mythical – characters in 20th-century curial history, first of all because, in a time marked by the omnipresence of Italians, he was one of the few Curia cardinals not from Italy. Moreover, his relevance was determined by the kind of positions he held: after serving as president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, van Rossum was for fourteen years the prefect of Propaganda Fide, a congregation which since its establishment in the 17th century has held a central position among curial dicasteries. The very title of this volume (Red Pope), alludes precisely to the informal but very well-known nickname by which it was customary to refer to the prefect of this congregation, almost comparable in importance to the bishop of Rome, such was the breadth of the missionary dicastery’s powers.

The author therefore wrote this biography in order to remedy to what she judged to be a serious gap in curial historiography, which has so far neglected to document the role played by van Rossum during the several decades he spent within the central governing bodies of the Catholic Church. Admittedly, profiles compiled by van Rossum’s former secretary, Joseph Drehmanns, had already surfaced in 1935, as had one by Monsignor Jan Olav Smit in 1954: but these were short texts of a memoiristic nature and inevitably apologetic in tone. With this volume, on the other hand, Vefie Poels, who died prematurely in 2022, has offered us a biography possessing all the trappings of scholarly work and which, for many years to come, will be the reference text about van Rossum. This book is in fact the outcome of the author’s decades-long research process, which prompted her to dig through all available archives to find the sources necessary for the reconstruction of the life of this Dutch clergyman who had entered the Redemptorist congregation at the age of nineteen. Poels had already offered some initial samples of her research in previous publications, intervening on circumscribed aspects of van Rossum’s biography: one can understand from those contributions as well as from the pages of this book the passion that guided her work, but that did not prevent her from approaching the reconstruction of the complex and sometimes grating personality of the Dutch prelate with a critical spirit. It was his passion for the figure of Alphonsus de’ Liguori that determined the fundamental turning point in van Rossum’s life, who in 1896 begins to collaborate with the Holy Office because it happened to need a specialist on this subject. From that moment on, van Rossum’s lifepath is marked, as his collaboration with Rome becomes more and more stable and this mature cleric from the Netherlands also begins to distinguish himself: he is among the very first, and well before the advent of Pius X, to point out the dangerousness of Alfred Loisy’s thought (pp. 148–152), and it is precisely during the pontificate of Giuseppe Sarto that other important steps in defining van Rossum’s curial identity take place. From 1904 he works with Pietro Gasparri, who certainly cannot be placed among the integrists, on the drafting of the Code of Canon Law; but it is precisely during the pontificate of Pius X that the Dutch prelate finds his ideal environment: he is esteemed by the pope and he constantly reciprocates this feeling by sharing the pontiff’s pastoral program and collaborating with conviction in the antimodernist campaign, also forging an important relationship with Monsignor Umberto Benigni’s Sapinière (pp. 153–175); but, what is more, he is directly involved in the drafting of documents condemning modernism, including the antimodernist oath. The author also reconstructs the complexity of van Rossum’s relations with his home country and the Redemptorist congregation. It is thus understood that relations with the Dutch episcopate, especially after his promotion to the head of Propaganda Fide, would never be easy. Van Rossum is certainly not in a comfortable position, for he has to manage a Roman dicastery that is committed, especially after World War I, to abandon all indulgence toward the hitherto tolerated nationalism of the countries engaged in mission lands. But it is clear from the pages of this volume that van Rossum’s difficulties also arose from his personality, which was not prone to diplomacy and accommodation. And in fact, contrary to the pope’s own wishes, van Rossum was not elected superior of the Redemptorist congregation. The cardinal’s hat Pius X granted him in 1911 thus represented a reward for his zeal in fulfilling the requests submitted to him by the pope and compensation for the lack of trust expressed in him by the religious congregation of which he was a member. Although he was a devoted supporter of Pius X, he was not overwhelmed by his death and indeed was involved in the drafting of two important missionary documents such as Maximum Illud (1919) and Rerum Ecclesiae (1926). In 1918 comes his appointment as head of Propaganda Fide by Benedict XV, a role which he will keep until his death in 1932; at the same time it is important to note that van Rossum, unlike the other prefects of Propaganda Fide, will never be appointed as a member of the Congregation for the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a dicastery that is fundamental in shaping the Holy See’s foreign policy. In this book, Vefie Poels repeatedly insists on van Rossum’s atypicality within the Curia, which, however, is not so much that of one who, coming from a humble background, cannot adapt to court life, but rather that of one who maintained throughout his curial career, without ever openly expressing them, strong misgivings about the functioning of Roman institutions, as documented in his 1931 reform project (pp. 585–605), which envisioned not mere tweaks but a fundamental rethinking of papal government.