Saint Pius X

Pope

Feast Day

August 21

Life

1835–1914

Canonized

1954

Born

Riese, Lombardy-Venetia (Austrian Empire)

Saint Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto at Riese in the Veneto on June 2, 1835, the second of ten children of a village postman. After studies at the seminary of Padua he was ordained priest at Castelfranco Veneto on September 18, 1858, and served for nine years as a parish curate at Tombolo and seventeen years as parish priest of Salzano. He was named bishop of Mantua in 1884, Patriarch of Venice with the dignity of Cardinal in 1893, and was elected Pope on August 4, 1903, as a compromise candidate after the Habsburg veto exercised by Cardinal Puzyna of Krakow excluded the favored Cardinal Rampolla. He took the name Pius X.

His pontificate (1903-1914) is one of the most consequential of the modern era. His motto, Instaurare omnia in Christo (to restore all things in Christ, Ephesians 1:10), set the program. The principal acts include: the encyclicals Pascendi Dominici Gregis (September 8, 1907) and the decree Lamentabili (July 3, 1907) condemning Modernism (a synthesis of all heresies, in his phrase) and requiring the Anti-Modernist Oath of clergy (1910); the comprehensive reform of the codification of canon law, completed in 1917 (the first Code of Canon Law) under his successor; the reform of the Roman Curia by the constitution Sapienti Consilio (1908); the reform of the Roman Breviary (1911); the reform of liturgical music with the motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini (November 22, 1903), restoring Gregorian chant; the encyclical Editae Saepe (1910) on the centenary of Saint Charles Borromeo; and his decisive resistance to the French Republic's separation of Church and state (the encyclicals Vehementer nos and Une fois encore, 1906).

Most enduring in popular Catholic memory, the decree Quam Singulari of August 8, 1910, lowered the age for First Communion of children to the years of discretion (about seven), and the decree Sacra Tridentina Synodus of December 20, 1905, urged daily reception of Holy Communion by the faithful at a time when reception even monthly was uncommon. For these acts he is universally called the Pope of the Eucharist and the Pope of the Children.

Of austere personal life, he refused all the customary papal honors that touched his Sarto family, allowing his sisters only a modest stipend. The outbreak of the First World War in late July 1914 brought him profound grief; he died at the Vatican on August 20, 1914, three weeks after the war began. Pope Pius XII beatified him on June 3, 1951, and canonized him in Saint Peter's Square on May 29, 1954, the first canonized pope since Pope Saint Pius V (canonized 1712). His incorrupt body lies under the altar of the Presentation in Saint Peter's Basilica.