Saint Pius X

Saint Pius X, born Giuseppe Sarto, was pope from 1903 to 1914. He summed up the program of his pontificate in the words “to restore all things in Christ.” He encouraged the faithful to receive Holy Communion often and opened the way to it for children. The Church celebrates his memorial on August 21.

He was born on June 2, 1835, at Riese near Treviso, into a poor family, the second of ten children. His father was the village’s municipal messenger. He walked every day to the secondary school in Castelfranco. When his father died in 1852, Giuseppe could have taken over his post, but his mother supported his vocation. He completed his studies at the seminary in Padua and in 1858, at the age of twenty-three, he was ordained a priest.

For nine years he was a curate at Tombolo, then parish priest of Salzano, and from 1875 a canon of the cathedral of Treviso and spiritual director of the seminary. Already as a parish priest he compiled a catechism himself. In 1884 he became Bishop of Mantua, and in 1893 a cardinal and Patriarch of Venice. Everywhere he became known as a humble, simple pastor, generous to those in need.

He was elected pope on August 4, 1903. He hesitated to accept the office, because he did not consider himself worthy of it. He reorganized the Roman Curia and began work on the Code of Canon Law, which was promulgated only by his successor, Benedict XV. In his 1903 motu proprio on sacred music he called the active participation of the faithful in the liturgy the first and indispensable source of the Christian spirit. At his initiative, a decree of 1905 encouraged frequent, even daily, Holy Communion, and the decree Quam singulari of 1910 admitted to it children who begin to have the use of reason, at about the age of seven. For the Diocese of Rome he issued a catechism that spread throughout Italy and beyond, and in 1909 he founded the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

He firmly opposed Modernism, above all in the encyclical Pascendi of 1907, in order to protect the faithful from erroneous views of faith and Revelation. The campaign against the Modernists also had a dark side, however: suspicion and denunciations struck scholars and clergy who were loyal to the Church as well.

The last weeks of his life were overshadowed by the outbreak of war in Europe. On August 2, 1914, he called on Catholics throughout the world to pray for peace to Christ, the Prince of Peace. He died in Rome on August 20, 1914, and his memorial is kept on the following day. In his will he wrote that he had been born poor, had lived poor, and was certain he would die very poor. Pius XII beatified him in 1951 and declared him a saint on May 29, 1954.