Saint Gregory the Great

Saint Gregory the Great, pope and Doctor of the Church, led the Church from 590 to 604, in a time of war, natural disasters, and plague. He was a monk who, as bishop of Rome, cared for the poor, defended the city, sent out missionaries, and wrote works that are still read in the Church today. His memorial falls on September 3, the anniversary of his elevation to the See of Peter in 590.

He was born in Rome about 540 into a wealthy patrician family of the Anicii, a family that had already given the Church two popes. His parents, Gordian and Sylvia, are venerated as saints, and two of his father’s sisters lived as virgins consecrated to God. Gregory began a career in public administration, and in the early 570s he held the office of prefect of Rome.

Soon, however, he gave up his offices, turned his family home on the Caelian Hill into the monastery of Saint Andrew, and began to live there as a monk; later he became its abbot. He was ordained a deacon, and Pope Pelagius II sent him to Constantinople as his representative, or apocrisiarius. After a few years he recalled him to Rome and made him his secretary. When Pelagius died during an epidemic of plague in 590, the clergy, people, and senate unanimously chose Gregory as his successor. He tried to resist and even to flee, but in the end he accepted the election.

As pope he struggled with the effects of floods, famine, and plague, and with the threat posed by the Lombards. With the revenues of the Church he bought and distributed grain, supported the needy and poor priests, monks, and nuns, and ransomed captives. Negotiations with the Lombard king Agilulf brought a truce, and Queen Theodelinda, a Catholic, gradually led her husband toward the Catholic faith. At the end of the sixth century Gregory sent monks from his monastery to England under the leadership of Augustine; his missionary concern also reached the Visigoths in Spain and the Franks.

Gregory was also a writer and a teacher of the faith. He wrote the Moralia, a lengthy commentary on the Book of Job, homilies on the Book of Ezekiel and on the Gospels, the Pastoral Rule on the ministry of a bishop, and the Dialogues, whose second book is the only ancient witness to the life of Saint Benedict. More than eight hundred of his letters have survived. He cared for the liturgy, and tradition links Gregorian chant with his name, although historians debate his actual part in the origin of this chant. He called himself “servant of the servants of God,” and, as Benedict XVI stressed, for him this was not a pious formula but a way of life.

He died in Rome on March 12, 604, and was laid to rest in Saint Peter’s Basilica. He has been venerated as a saint for centuries, and tradition has given him the title “the Great.” Together with Saints Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, he is one of the four great Doctors of the Western Church. Benedict XVI devoted two catecheses to him in 2008 and called him one of the greatest Fathers in the history of the Church.