Saint Anthony Zaccaria

Priest

Feast Day

July 5

Life

1502–1539

Canonized

1897

Order

Clerics Regular of Saint Paul (Barnabites)

Born

Cremona, Duchy of Milan

Saint Anthony Mary Zaccaria was born at Cremona in 1502. He took a doctorate in medicine at the University of Padua in 1524 but soon turned to theological studies and was ordained priest at Cremona in 1528. While a young priest he gave catechetical instruction to the children and the poor of his native city.

Settled at Milan, he founded in 1530 the Clerics Regular of Saint Paul, a community of priests living under vows and dedicated to preaching, the reform of clerical life, and the renewal of Christian piety among the laity. The community took its popular name, the Barnabites, from its early base at the Church of Saint Barnabas in Milan, given them in 1545. With Countess Ludovica Torelli he also founded a women's branch, the Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul, the first congregation of women religious in the Counter-Reformation Church to receive papal approval (1535) without strict enclosure for the active apostolate.

Zaccaria promoted frequent Communion at a time when reception even once a year was the norm, the public ringing of bells at three o'clock on Friday afternoon in memory of the Lord's Passion, and the Forty Hours' Devotion before the Blessed Sacrament. Worn out by preaching missions through northern Italy, he died at his mother's house at Cremona on July 5, 1539, at the age of thirty-six.

Pope Leo XIII canonized him on May 27, 1897, calling him one of the precursors of the Council of Trent.