Father Angelo Secchi, astronomer, astrophysicist and Jesuit priest died in Rome. Formed in England and the United States, in 1850 he assumed the direction of the Observatory at the Roman College in Rome, creating a dome on the Church of St. Ignatius and equipping it with new instruments. He founded the Society of Italian Spectroscopists with P. Tacchini, from which came to be formed the present day Italian Astronomical Society. He was among those who operated the transition from astronomy to astrophysics, thanks to the development of spectroscopy. The first spectral classification of stars is due to Secchi. In this date, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, learned of his death while observing the planet Mars with the Brera telescope, notes: «Father Secchi died. Italy has been deprived of its principal and most authoritative astronomer.» With his popularization and his writings he contributed to the development of a Christian-inspired dimension of the sciences. He lived, with personal consequences, the difficult historical moment of the confiscation of ecclesiastical assets in the city of Rome, after the entry of the government troops of the newborn Italian State.