Marco Buonocore died at the age of 68 on 24 December. He was one of the undisputed pillars of Vatican self-respect in the field of epigraphic-historical sciences, perhaps one of the last representatives of traditional scholarship in the service of the Holy See.

He began his career as a high school teacher of Latin and Greek and was Scriptor Latinus of the Vatican Library from 1981 to 2019, also director of the archives department since 2003. He worked for the Berlin Academy of Sciences at the CIL from 1988, and was president of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia from 2011 to 2021.

Buonocore, who bore a striking resemblance to Giovanni Battista de Rossi, gave a lecture as recently as February on "G. B. de Rossi nel ,consorzio intellettuale e scientifico' dell'Italia e dell'Europa nell'Ottocento". 

One of his best works in the field of the history of Christian archaeology is undoubtedly his recent study on the biography of de Rossi: "Giovanni Battista de Rossi Scriptor Latinus prefetto del Museo cristiano".

lecture of Buonocores about de Rossi