Rozsály (Rozsányi) Dr. Ferenc SP, known by his religious name as St. Francis of Assisi, was a Piarist monk, Roman Catholic priest, classical philologist, philosopher, and university professor. He was born on August 10 in Tövis, Fehér County. After completing his secondary education, he entered the Piarist Order in Vác on August 27, 1935. He studied at the Faculty of Theology and Humanities at Pázmány Péter University, where he earned a teaching degree in Latin and Greek and later received his doctorate. He took his solemn vows on August 28, 1940, and was ordained a priest on June 14, 1942. His doctoral dissertation, titled *Aspects of Hippocratic Ethnology*, was also published as a separate volume in 1942.
Between 1943 and 1944, he served as a teacher at the Piarist high school in Debrecen. At the end of World War II, he went to Germany, where he undertook pastoral care for the Hungarian refugee camps in Bavaria. Within a short time, he became one of the best-known priests among the Hungarian émigré community in Western Europe. He regularly visited the refugee camps, celebrated Mass, heard confessions, led spiritual retreats, assisted university students, and maintained contact with the Hungarian Mission at the Vatican. His contemporaries also referred to him as “the priest of the red fox” because of his legendary off-road vehicle; he visited nearly every Hungarian camp in Bavaria in his jeep.
In addition to his pastoral work, he was also actively involved in media organization. On December 6, 1946, he launched the newspaper *Magyar Vándor* in Munich, becoming its co-editor and publisher. The newspaper served as one of the most important forums for the Hungarian Catholic émigré community. In 1947, he also founded the publication *Katolikus Élet*, which appeared as the newspaper of the Hungarian Catholic community *Patrona Hungariae* in Munich. Both newspapers played a significant role in fostering religious and cultural cohesion among Hungarian Catholic émigrés in the West.
In 1949, he emigrated to the United States. He served first in Glendale, California, and then in Derby, New York, while helping to organize the American Hungarian Piarist community. He was one of the pioneers in establishing the Piarist presence in the United States: together with László Irányi, he founded a study house in Washington, D.C., which became one of the starting points for the later activities of the American Piarists.
In 1955, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America. As a university professor, he conducted scholarly work in the fields of philosophy and classical studies, while continuing to actively participate in the pastoral life of the Hungarian Catholic émigré community in the United States. His brief tenure in Washington, however, was cut short by his unexpected death.
He passed away in Washington on February 18, 1957, at the age of just thirty-nine. He was laid to rest at Mount Olivet Cemetery. The Piarist Order’s register of the deceased specifically notes that he was the first Hungarian Piarist to die in America.

A hippokratesi népismeret szempontjai, Budapest, 1942. (Palaestra Calasanctiana 41.)
1946–1949 – Magyar Vándor – társszerkesztő
1947–1949 – Katolikus Élet – kiadó