Andre Zunino

Saint Pius V, Pope

Feast date: Apr 30

St. Pius V was born Michele Ghislieri in 1504 to poor parents of noble lineage at Bosco, near Alexandria, Lombardy on January 17, 1504. He worked as a shepherd until the age of 14 when he encountered two Dominicans who recognized his intelligence and virtue. He joined the Dominicans and was ordained a priest at 24. He taught philosophy and theology for 16 years during which he was elected prior of many houses. He was known for his austere penances, his long hours of prayer and fasting, and the holiness of his speech.

He was elected Bishop of Sutri in 1556, and served as an inquisitor in Milan and Lombardi, and then as inquisitor general of the Church and a cardinal in 1557. He was known in this capacity as an able, yet unflinching man who rigorously fought heresy and corruption wherever he encountered it.

He was elected Pope on January 7, 1566, with the influential backing of his friend St. Charles Borromeo, and took the name Pius V.  He immediately put into action his vast program of reform by getting rid of many of the extravagant luxuries then prevalent in his court. He gave the money usually invested in these luxuries to the poor whom he personally cared for, washing their feet, consoling those near death, and tending to lepers and the very sick. He spent long hours before the Blessed Sacrament despite his heavy workload.

His pontificate was dedicated to applying the reforms of the Council of Trent, raising the standard of morality and reforming the clergy, and strongly supporting foreign missions. The Catechism of the Council of Trent was completed during his reign, and he revised the Roman Breviary and Missal, which remained in use until the reforms of Vatican II.

His six year pontificate saw him constantly at war with two massive enemy forces; the Protestant heretics and the spread of their doctrines in the West, and the Turkish armies who were advancing from the East. He encouraged efforts to battle Protestantism by education and preaching, and giving strong support to the newly formed Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola. He excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, and supported Catholics who were oppressed and intimidated by Protestant princes, especially in Germany.

He worked hard to unite the Christian armies against the Turks, and perhaps the most famous success of his papacy was the miraculous victory of the Christian fleet in the battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. The island of Malta was attacked by the Turkish fleet, and nearly every man defending the fortress was killed in battle. The Pope sent out a fleet to meet the enemy, requesting that each man on board pray the Rosary and receive communion. Meanwhile, he called on all of Europe to recite the Rosary and ordered a 40 hour devotion in Rome during which time the battle took place. The Christian fleet, vastly outnumbered by the Turks, inflicted an impossible defeat on the Turkish navy, demolishing the entire fleet.

In memory of the triumph, he declared the day the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary because of her intercession in answering the mass recitation of the Rosary and obtaining the victory. He has also been called ‘the Pope of the Rosary’ for this reason.

Pope Pius V died seven months later on May 1, 1572, of a painful disease, uttering “O Lord, increase my sufferings and my patience!” He is enshrined at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, and was beatified by Clement X in 1672. He was canonized by Clement XI in 1712.

St. Catherine of Siena

Feast date: Apr 29

St. Catherine was a third-order Dominican, peacemaker and counselor to the Pope. She singlehandedly ended the Avignon exile of the successors of Peter in the 14th century.

She is the co-patron of Italy and of Europe.

Born in Siena, on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1347, Catherine was the 23rd of Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa’s 25 children. Her twin sister died in infancy.

She exhibited an unusually independent character as a child and an exceptionally intense prayer life. When she was seven years old she had the first of her mystical visions, in which she saw Jesus surrounded by saints and seated in glory. In the same year she vowed to consecrate her virginity to Christ. When, at the age of 16, her parents decided that she should marry, she cut off her hair to make herself less appealing, and her father, realizing that he couldn’t contend with her resolve, let her have her way. 

She joined the Dominican Tertiaries and lived a deep and solitary life of prayer and meditation for the next three years in which she had constant mystical experiences, capped, by the end of the three years with an extraordinary union with God granted to only a few mystics, known as ‘mystical marriage.’

St. Catherine suffered many intense periods of desolation alongside her mystical ecstasies, often feeling totally abandoned by God.

She ended her solitude at this point and began tending to the sick, poor, and marginalized, especially lepers. As her reputation for holiness and remarkable personality became known throughout Siena, she attracted a band of disciples, two of whom became her confessors and biographers, and together they served Christ in the poor with even greater ardor.

The Lord called her to a more public life while she was still in her 20s, and she established correspondences with many influential figures, advising and admonishing them and exhorting them to holiness, including the Pope himself who she never hesitated to rebuke when she saw fit.

Great political acts which are attributed to her include achieving peace between the Holy See and Florence who were at war, to convince the Pope to return from his Avignon exile, which he did in 1376, and to heal the great schism between the followers of the legitimate Pope, Urban VI, and those who opposed him in 1380. She achieved this while on her deathbed.

Her Dialogues, one of the classics of Italian literature, are the record of her mystical visions which she dictated in a state of mystical ecstasy.

In 1375, while visiting Pisa, she received the stigmata, even though they never appeared on her body during her lifetime, owing to her request to God. They appeared only on her incorruptible body after her death.

She died in Rome on April 29, 1380, at the age of 33.

St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort

Feast date: Apr 28

On April 28, the universal Church celebrates the feast day of Louis-Marie de Monfort, a 17th century saint who is revered for his intense devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

St. Louis-Marie is perhaps most famously known for his prayer of entrustment to Our Lady, “Totus Tuus ego sum,” which means, “I am all yours.” The late-Pope John Paul II took the phrase “Totus Tuus” as his episcopal motto.

Born in Montfort, Brittany, on January 31, 1673, St. Louis-Marie possessed a strong devotion to the Blessed Sacrament as a child, and was also intimately devoted to the Blessed Virgin, especially through the Rosary. He took the name Marie at his confirmation.

The saint manifested a love for the poor while he was at school and joined a society of young men who ministered to the poor and the sick on school holidays. When he was 19, he walked 130 miles to Paris to study theology, gave all he had to the poor that he met along the way and made a vow to live only on alms. After his ordination at 27, he served as a hospital chaplain until the management of the hospital resented his reorganization of the staff and sent him away.

St. Louis-Marie discovered his great gift for preaching at the age of 32, and committed himself to it for the rest of his life. He met with such great success that he often drew crowds of thousands to hear his sermons in which he encouraged frequent communion and devotion to Mary.

But he also met with opposition, especially from the Jansenists, a heretical movement within the Church that believed in absolute Predestination, in which only a chosen few are saved, and the rest damned. Much of France was influenced by Jansenism, including many bishops, who banished St. Loius-Marie from preaching in their dioceses. He was even poisoned by Jansenists in La Rochelle, but survived, though he suffered ill health after.

While recuperating from the effects of the poisoning, he wrote the masterpiece of Marian piety, “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin,” which he correctly prophesied would be hidden by the devil for a time. His seminal work was discovered 200 years after his death.

One year before he died, St. Louis-Marie founded two congregations: the Daughters of Divine Wisdom – which tended to the sick in hospitals and the education of poor girls, and the Company of Mary, missionaries devoted to preaching and to spreading devotion to Mary.