Thomas Rosica
Thomas Michael Rosica, C.S.B., born March 3, 1959, in Rochester, New York, is an American Catholic priest and Basilian Father. He has worked as an author and held leadership roles in Catholic media, including chief executive officer of Salt + Light Catholic Media Foundation, English-language media attaché for the Holy See Press Office, and president of Assumption University in Windsor, Ontario.
Education and early path: He earned a degree in French and Italian from St. John Fisher College. He joined the Congregation of St. Basil and studied theology and sacred scripture at Regis College in Toronto, the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem.
Key roles and moments: Rosica was appointed national director and CEO of World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto. He helped start Salt + Light Television, which began broadcasting on July 1, 2003. He served as the Vatican’s English-language spokesperson during the 2013 papal transition and as a Vatican media advisor for the 2018 Synod.
Allegations and later events: Beginning around 2015, Rosica faced repeated plagiarism accusations. In February 2019 he stepped down from several boards, and in March 2019 went on sabbatical from Salt + Light, resigning as CEO in June. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops later retracted some of his works for missing citations. In 2020 his plagiarism issues were found to extend to text he ghostwrote for Cardinal Marc Ouellet, and in 2022 new plagiarism allegations emerged about articles in Il Sismografo. In 2024 a lawsuit filed in Ontario accuses Rosica of sexually abusing a younger priest more than twenty years ago.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 12:20 (CET).