Saint Gregory Barbarigo

Saint Gregory Barbarigo was bishop of Bergamo and then of Padua, and a cardinal. He was one of the pastors who put the decrees of the Council of Trent into practice in the seventeenth century, and he took Saint Charles Borromeo as his model. The Church commemorates him on June 18, the day of his death.

He was born on September 16, 1625, in Venice, into a patrician family. During a time of plague he spent his childhood outside the city with his mother and siblings, and after his mother’s death he returned to Venice, where his father taught him. At eighteen he went with the Venetian envoy Alvise Contarini to Münster, where the Peace of Westphalia was being prepared. There he became a friend of the envoy of the Holy See, Fabio Chigi, the future Pope Alexander VII.

After returning to Venice in 1648 he thought of religious life, but on Chigi’s advice he earned a doctorate in law at Padua, and in 1655 he was ordained a priest in Venice. Alexander VII called him to Rome and entrusted him with offices in the Curia. When plague struck Trastevere in 1656, the pope put him in charge of the care of the sick. Barbarigo organized relief and went from house to house himself, heedless of his own safety.

In 1657 Alexander VII named him bishop of Bergamo. In a letter to his diocese Barbarigo wrote that a bishop’s miter is woven more of thorns than of jewels. Following in the footsteps of Saint Charles Borromeo, he visited the parishes, cared for the seminary and convened a synod. In 1660 he was made a cardinal, and in 1664 the pope transferred him to Padua.

He led the diocese of Padua for thirty-three years. He gave most of his energy to the seminary, which he called “the heart of his heart”: he gave it a new course of studies, a rich library and a printing press with type for Eastern languages as well. Many times, often on foot, he visited every parish. He saw to it that children were taught the catechism in their own language, he founded schools, and he supported the poor so generously that he himself sometimes went without. Innocent XI, who valued his counsel, kept him in Rome for several years.

He longed for the unity of the Christians of the East with the Church of Rome, and for this reason he introduced the study of Eastern languages in the seminary, so that future priests could carry the message of unity and peace to Constantinople. He used to say that he found it hard to understand how a priest who celebrates Holy Mass could fail to be a saint. He died in Padua on the morning of June 18, 1697, after receiving Viaticum and the anointing. His body rests in the cathedral of Padua.

Clement XIII recognized his heroic virtues in 1759 and declared him blessed in 1761. John XXIII, who had venerated him since his seminary days in Bergamo, proclaimed him a saint on May 26, 1960, the solemnity of the Ascension, in the Lateran Basilica, and extended his cult to the whole Church. He wished seminarians to have in him a special patron.