Feast day: October 10

St. Francis Borgia

Priest, Religious · 1510–1572

Patron of —

A Spanish duke and great-grandson of a pope who, stunned by the sight of an empress's decayed body, renounced his rank, joined the new Society of Jesus, and rose to lead it.

Francis Borgia was born in 1510 into one of the most powerful — and notorious — families of Renaissance Europe; he was a great-grandson of both Pope Alexander VI and a king of Aragon, and bore the name Borgia with all its worldly splendour and scandal. As Duke of Gandía and a trusted courtier of the Emperor Charles V, he seemed the very model of a great Renaissance nobleman.

A turning point came in 1539, when he was charged with escorting the body of the beautiful Empress Isabella to her burial. When the coffin was opened for identification, the sight of her ruined, decaying face — she who had been the loveliest woman of the court — struck him to the soul with the vanity of all worldly glory, and he resolved to serve a Master who could never die.

After the death of his wife, and having seen to the future of his eight children, he renounced his dukedom and astonished Europe by entering the new and still-suspect Society of Jesus as a simple priest — a duke become a Jesuit. His humility, gifts, and zeal were such that in 1565 he was elected the third Superior General of the order.

Under his leadership the Society of Jesus expanded enormously — founding colleges, sending missionaries to the Americas and the East, and becoming a chief force of the Catholic Reformation. Worn out by his labours, he died in 1572 and was canonized in 1670, the grandee who gave up everything for God.

Tasked with escorting a dead empress's coffin and seeing her beauty ruined, he vowed never again to serve a master death could take from him — and became a Jesuit.

Image: Alonso Cano (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/06213a.htm