Feast day: April 30

Pope St. Pius V

Pope · 1504–1572

Patron of —

A Dominican friar who as pope carried out the reforms of the Council of Trent, standardized the Mass, and rallied Christian Europe to the naval victory of Lepanto.

Antonio Ghislieri was born in 1504 to a poor family in northern Italy and worked as a shepherd boy until the Dominicans took him in and educated him. He entered the order, taking the name Michele, and rose through a life of rigorous austerity and unbending zeal for the faith — as a teacher, a bishop, and a stern inquisitor — until, to his own dismay, he was elected pope in 1566, taking the name Pius V.

He brought the same austerity to the papal throne, living like the friar he had always been, and threw all his energy into carrying out the great reform of the Church decreed by the Council of Trent. Under him appeared the new Roman Catechism, and the revised Missal and Breviary that standardized the Mass and the prayer of the Western Church for the next four centuries — the form often called the 'Tridentine' rite.

His pontificate faced the Ottoman Empire advancing by sea against Christian Europe. Pius labored to unite the quarreling Christian powers into a Holy League, and when their fleet met the Turkish navy at Lepanto in 1571, he called on all the faithful to pray the Rosary for victory. The Christian fleet won an overwhelming triumph, which the pope attributed to Our Lady — establishing in thanksgiving the feast now kept as Our Lady of the Rosary.

Severe with himself and with others, tireless in reform, and devoted to prayer and the care of the poor of Rome, he died in 1572. He kept his white Dominican habit even as pope — which is why the popes have worn white ever since. He was canonized in 1712, the great reforming pope of the Catholic renewal.

He kept his coarse white Dominican habit as pope — which is why popes have worn white ever since — and credited the win at Lepanto to the Rosary.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/12130a.htm