Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Pius V, who was born on January 27, 1504, in Bosco Marengo in northern Italy. He was baptized Michael Ghislieri, or some say he was baptized Antonio and later took the religious name Michael. He was from a noble family that had fallen on hard times, and so he was unable to study as he wished to. Instead, he had to work as a shepherd.
At fourteen, he was able to enter the Dominicans and begin studying. In 1528, he was ordained a priest, and he began teaching theology to fellow Dominicans in formation. He continued to serve his confreres in various priories of northern Italy for sixteen years. And during this time, he served four times as prior, that is, as the local superior of the Dominicans.
He acquired not only a thorough knowledge of theology, but also a generous love for the truth, and he displayed an upright character. At this time, the Church was working to reform itself and to stem the Protestant tide. In 1542, Pope Paul III instituted the Roman Inquisition at the suggestion of Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa, who became one of the cardinals that oversaw it. This was a very different institution than the Spanish Inquisition, and even that is not guilty of most of the things of which it has been accused.
The Roman Inquisition was a permanent institution set up to deal with the long-term problem of stopping the spread of heresies, which now were favored by state support or toleration in many places. Since Michael Ghislieri was competent, zealous, and upright, he was a good candidate to aid in this work. He served first as the vicar for another inquisitor and then became the local head of the Inquisition, first at Pavia and then in the Diocese of Como, both in northern Italy.
Cardinal Carafa was impressed with his work, and in 1551, when the position of commissary general became vacant, the highest position in the Roman Inquisition under the cardinals, our saint was promoted to this position. Four years later, the cardinal became Pope Paul IV, and increased the commissary general's powers. The following year, our saint was appointed bishop of the diocese of Nepi and Sutri. The year after that, he was created cardinal, and late in the following year, he became the cardinal in charge of the Roman Inquisition.
Unlike other cardinals, he did not have many servants. He ran his household like a religious community, leading it by example in prayer and work. Paul IV was a very zealous pope in combating heresy, even to the point of suspecting it where it didn't exist. So our saint found himself being rebuked by the pope for not being tough enough, when in reality he was simply being fair.
Paul IV died in the summer of 1559, and Pius IV succeeded him at the turn of the year. Initially, our saint had good relations with the new pope. This is the same pope who made his nephew, Saint Charles Borromeo, a cardinal, and then the archbishop of the vast diocese of Milan. Pius IV made our saint bishop of Mondovi, but gave him permission to delegate the administration of the diocese to someone else, so that he could remain in Rome and oversee the Inquisition.
Nevertheless, he did go to his diocese in order to exercise a sort of general supervision over the dioceses in the Piedmont region. He found abuses, and he worked to correct them. He tried to get the help of the civil authorities in this, but they were uncooperative. So he returned to Rome, where he also had to deal with the case of eight French bishops accused of heresy.
By 1564, our saint had fallen out of favor with the pope due to opposition to his ecclesiastical policies. Among other things, he firmly opposed the pope's desire to make Ferdinand de' Medici a cardinal, because Ferdinand was only thirteen. He also led the opposition to the plan of Emperor Maximilian II to abolish the celibacy of the clergy.
Pius IV died on December 9, 1565, and our saint took part in his second conclave. This time, St. Charles Borromeo, who was in his first conclave, pushed to have our saint elected. Or, to have our saint elected, that is. Politically, St. Charles might have been expected to oppose Michele Ghislieri, who had been created cardinal by Paul IV of the rival house of Carafa, and had been looked on with disfavor by his uncle. But St. Charles thought only of the good of the Church, and St. Pius V was elected on January 7.
He was crowned on January 17, 1566, his 62nd birthday. He took the name Pius V at the request of St. Charles to honor his uncle, despite the fact that he had been treated badly by that pope in the last couple of years. At the inauguration, it was customary for the pope to go through the crowd throwing handfuls of coins into it, but St. Pius V thought that this was too haphazard a way to aid the poor. So instead, he had them come to see him and gave them money individually.
He helped the poor during his pontificate, and this was especially needed during his first year, in which a famine struck and was followed by epidemics. He personally visited and cared for the sick. He reduced the size of the papal court by over a third to limit expenses. It is said that the pope wears white because of Pius V's Dominican habit.
Even as a pope, he continued to live much like a religious, making two meditations on his knees every day, or at least two. To reform the morals of the Roman people, he punished begging, which often became a profession. He also punished blaspheming, prohibited bullfighting, and expelled a large number of prostitutes from the city.
Pius IV had published the reform decrees of the Council of Trent, but it was up to St. Pius V to start implementing them. Among other things, bishops had to reside in their dioceses instead of just collecting the revenue and delegating the work to someone else. They had to conduct pastoral visits so that they would know personally the state of the diocese for which they were responsible. Seminaries had to be established in order to make sure that all priests were properly trained before ordination.
St. Pius V completed other projects that the Council had requested. In 1566, he published the Roman Catechism, also known as the Catechism of Trent. In 1568, he published the Roman Breviary, and in 1570, the Roman Missal. His liturgical reform aimed at restoring the purity of the liturgy and ensuring its orthodoxy. Local control over the liturgy had become problematic because it had been used in some places to introduce texts that were theologically questionable or that lacked the sobriety proper to the Roman rite.
The new Missal did not create a new rite, but rather restored the Mass to a form much like that that the Franciscans had adopted from the liturgy of the papal chapel in the Middle Ages. Any priest who wanted to could use the new 1570 Missal, but those who could show that their liturgy was not a recent creation could continue to use it instead. The Dominicans were among the religious orders that continued to use their own traditional liturgy inherited from the Middle Ages.
Heresy was not the only threat to Christendom during the pontificate of Pius V. The Turks were at the height of their power and they were on the move in the later years of St. Pius V. He worked to organize a league to oppose them, especially after they seized Cyprus from the Venetians in 1570. He managed to get Spain and the Republic of Venice to join together with the forces of the papal states.
This Holy League sent its combined fleet under the command of John of Austria to stop the Turks. John was the 24-year-old half-brother of Philip II, King of Spain. The Pope told John that if he got rid of all the soldiers who lived sinful lives from his armada, he would be victorious. He did so, and he was indeed victorious. Catholics prayed the rosary to obtain the victory, and an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was on John's ship.
The Battle of Lepanto was the greatest naval battle since ancient times, involving over 450 warships. It lasted from noon to five in the afternoon on October 7, 1571, and ended with a complete victory of the Christian forces, striking a blow from which the Turks never fully recovered. At the hour of victory, St. Pius V had a moment of ecstasy and then said, Let's not deal with business anymore. Let's go and thank God because the Venetian fleet has achieved victory.
At the beginning of the following year, he began to suffer more from the illness that had tormented him since 1555 and had brought him to death's door in 1564. By April 26, it was so bad that he was frequently losing consciousness. On the 30th, feeling that death had come, he had himself dressed in the Dominican habit and received the sacraments, although he was too ill to receive communion. He was heard to murmur, Lord, increase my pains but also my patience.
To the assembled cardinals he said, Try to elect a zealous successor to me who seeks only the glory of the Lord, who has no other interests on earth than the honor of the apostolic see and the good of Christendom. Let's pray that the cardinals now gathered in Rome follow similar criteria. St. Pius V died on the evening of May 1, 1572.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever