Rossi pushes for canonization
A former Cranberry Township pastor is in the news again, this time for his attempt to get Pittsburgh Pirates legend Roberto Clemente canonized as a Catholic saint.
Richard Rossi, who in 1996 escaped an attempted homicide charge after a mistrial was declared in the beating of his wife, is mounting an effort to have the pope name his boyhood baseball idol a saint.
From his Southern California home, Rossi said he is leading the sainthood campaign because Clemente's life and death showed he lived a saintly existence.
Clemente played for the Pirates from 1955 until his death in 1972, when a small plane carrying Clemente and a load of relief supplies for the people of earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. His body was never found.
Rossi said Clemente's death embodies the John 15:13 passage: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”
“The way he died made me think about Jesus,” Rossi said from Hollywood, where he and his wife, Sherri, moved after the mistrial nearly 20 years ago.
Because Clemente's death had such a great impact on the nine-year-old Rossi, the pastor-turned-actor and filmmaker decided to make a movie about his hero.
The film “Baseball's Last Hero: 21 Clemente Stories” premiered in 2013, including a sold-out weekend showing at the Strand Theater in Zelienople.
Rossi, who left his First Love Church in Cranberry after the mistrial, moved to Hollywood with his wife to pursue a career in film and music.
Sherri Rossi initially said her husband severely beat her on June 24, 1994, in Connoquenessing Township in an incident that left her near death with a crushed skull. She later recanted and said it was someone who looked just like him.
She stayed with Rossi, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges and served 96 days in the Butler County Prison plus four years probation.
Richard Rossi said that he got the idea of trying for sainthood for Roberto in 2009 while meditating.
“I knew that if I did this, I would be ridiculed and people would say I was nuts,” Rossi said.
Rossi said he talked to Clemente's son, Luis Clemente, twice, but not about the sainthood idea.“He was very cordial and very nice to me,” Rossi said.Regarding the process of sainthood for Clemente, Rossi produced a letter from the Vatican that tells him to start by contacting the Archbishop of the Diocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico.However, two people at that diocese said that they did not know of any diocese personnel who are working on a sainthood project regarding Clemente.An online blog started this month, called Catholic News Wire, is apparently another creation of the Rossis.“(The blog) was created specifically to give up-to-date information on the Clemente Canonization story alone,” Sherri Rossi explained in an e-mail.The e-mail said the Rossis are researching the backgrounds of Catholic leaders who support their efforts to select the best individuals to form a canonization committee that will communicate with the Archbishop of San Juan and the media, meet with the Clemente family if the project is approved by the archbishop, answer objections to the canonization, and gather and evaluate evidence of miracles related to Clemente.Anne Madarasz, the director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, said while Clemente's story transcends sports, she questions whether he was a saint.“In many ways, his life was exemplary,” Madarasz said, “but I also think one piece of the beauty of his story is that he was so human.”She said Clemente was down to earth and relatable, and not a Mother Teresa type who lived his life totally in the service of others.She said his personal sense of drive and achievement in baseball, which led to 12 Gold Glove awards, a Most Valuable Player status in 1966, and being named to the National League's All Star team 11 times, shows that side of Clemente.“So it's hard for me to grasp thinking about him in that way,” Madarasz said. “He was well-deserving of his accolades for his humanitarian efforts, but there were aspects of his character that makes it hard for me to deify him.”Rossi said one stumbling block in the march to sainthood is Clemente's religious background because his father was Catholic but his mother was Baptist.He hopes Clemente's baptism, marriage and memorial service in a Catholic Church will push aside that hurdle.For now, Rossi said he is waiting to hear back from the diocese in San Juan on that issue.But he said he will not give up in his quest to attain sainthood for Clemente.“He was my hero,” Rossi said.
