Saint Robert Bellarmine

Saint Robert Bellarmine was an Italian Jesuit and theologian, a cardinal and archbishop of Capua, who in the years after the Council of Trent defended Catholic teaching in the disputes with the Reformation. He is a Doctor of the Church, and his memorial falls on September 17.

He was born on October 4, 1542, in Montepulciano in Tuscany. His mother was a sister of Marcello Cervini, later Pope Marcellus II. He attended the Jesuit college in his hometown and, having overcome his father’s opposition, entered the Society of Jesus on September 20, 1560. He studied in Rome, Padua, and Louvain. In 1570 he was ordained a priest, and for several years he taught theology at Louvain, where he also became known as a preacher.

In 1576 he was called to the Roman College, where for ten years he taught apologetics. These lectures gave rise to the Controversies, a systematic exposition of Catholic teaching on the questions disputed with the Protestants. Benedict XVI observed that in them Bellarmine avoided a polemical tone and persuaded by arguments drawn from reason and Tradition. From 1588 he was spiritual director of the Jesuit students at the college, among them Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. Later he led the college as rector and then a province of the order.

Clement VIII made him papal theologian and consultor of the Holy Office, and on March 3, 1599, created him a cardinal. In 1597 and 1598 he wrote his short catechism, the most popular of his works, which was printed hundreds of times in dozens of languages. In the Holy Office he took part in the trial of Giordano Bruno and helped draw up a list of propositions from Bruno’s writings that were judged heretical; Bruno refused to retract them and in 1600 was burned at the stake in Rome.

He was appointed archbishop of Capua on March 18, 1602, and received episcopal consecration on April 21. For three years he preached zealously, visited the parishes every week, and convened three diocesan synods and a provincial synod. After the two conclaves of 1605, the new pope, Paul V, kept him in Rome; Bellarmine worked in the congregations of the Curia and defended the rights of the Apostolic See in dealings with Venice and England. In 1616, on the pope’s orders, he admonished Galileo to abandon Copernicus’s teaching that the earth moves around the sun.

In his last years he wrote spiritual works, the fruit of his annual retreats, among them De arte bene moriendi, on the art of dying well. Benedict XVI recalled his teaching that there is no true reform of the Church without personal conversion. He died in Rome on September 17, 1621, at the Jesuit novitiate beside the Church of Saint Andrew. His relics rest in the Church of Saint Ignatius in Rome.

His beatification process lasted a very long time. Pius XI beatified Bellarmine on May 13, 1923, canonized him on June 29, 1930, and in 1931 proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church. Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost, regards him as his patron and celebrates his name day on the day of his memorial.