St. Pius X
What is St. Pius X known for?
What is St. Pius X the patron saint of?
Is the body of St. Pius X incorrupt?
St. Pius X (born June 2, 1835, Riese, Venetia, Austrian Empire [now in Italy]—died August 20, 1914, Rome, Italy; canonized May 29, 1954; feast day August 21) was the pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, from 1903 to 1914. A strong opponent of Modernism, a contemporary intellectual movement, he was noted for his piety and his staunch political and religious conservatism, which dominated the early 20th-century . His accomplishments include calling for the codification of church laws (resulting in the first Code of Canon Law) and reviving the use of Gregorian chant in liturgy.
- Birth name: Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto
- Died: August 20, 1914, Rome, Italy
- Reign as pope: August 4, 1903–August 20, 1914
- Preceded by: Pope Leo XIII
- Succeeded by: Pope Benedict XV
Early life and pastoral career
The second of 10 children, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto came from humble origins. His father was a cobbler and postman, and his mother was a seamstress. In 1850 he entered the seminary at Padua and was ordained a priest in 1858. For many years, Sarto served as a parish priest in the Italian region of Venetia; his pastoral experience would distinguish him from many of the other pontiffs of the 20th century. Sarto gained a reputation for being especially pious, giving away his food and clothing to those in need and developing local programs to instruct children and adults in the catechism.
In 1884 Pope Leo XIII made Sarto bishop of Mantua, and in 1893 he was appointed cardinal and patriarch of Venice. He was elected pope on August 4, 1903.
Papacy
Tepid toward Leo’s social reforms, which laid the foundation for modern Catholic social teaching, Pius decided to concentrate on apostolic problems and to make the defense of Roman Catholicism his cause. Three aspects of his policy particularly aroused bitter controversy: his repression of Modernism, a contemporary intellectual movement seeking to reinterpret traditional Catholic teaching in the light of 19th-century philosophical, historical, and psychological theories; his reaction against Christian democracy, a popular action movement; and his attitude toward the separation of church and state in France.
Opposition to Modernism and Christian democracy
Because Modernism tended to ignore certain traditional values in order to achieve its ends, Pius placed several Modernist books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) and in 1907 issued the decree Lamentabili sane exitu (Latin: “On a Deplorable Outcome”) and the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis (“Feeding the Lord’s Flock”), rejecting Modernist teachings and suggesting remedies to extirpate them. He also urged immediate compliance with his strict censorship program. On September 1, 1910, he ordered that all teachers in seminaries and all clerics before ordination take an oath denouncing Modernism and supporting his decree and Pascendi Dominici gregis.
Although he took the first tentative steps to improve relations with liberal Italy and allowed Catholics for the first time to vote in Italian national elections, Pius led the reaction against Christian democracy because he could not tolerate the idea of some Catholics making their social work a matter independent of the hierarchy and conducting it in an increasingly political direction. He opposed the contemporary trend in European countries whereby Christians reacted against doctrines of materialism by forming their own social movements or popular action groups. Accordingly, he formally condemned the Italian priest Romolo Murri’s popular action movement in 1903 and the pioneering Christian liberal Marc Sangnier’s Sillon movement in France. The Sillon movement broke from the church, whose authority it challenged. Murri was excommunicated.
On Pius’s accession, the separation of church and state in France was already visible, and the break was inevitable, occurring amid a growing anticlericalism in France. In 1905 the French formally separated church from state, an act that was formally condemned by Pius on February 11, 1906. Most of the French bishops were willing to try the new French legislation, which safeguarded all that could still be preserved of the church’s material interests, but Pius rejected the compromise.
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Liturgical reforms and the Code of Canon Law
Some of Pius’s directives, though superseded by later social developments, mark him as one of the forerunners of Catholic Action, the organization of the laity for special and direct collaboration in the church’s apostolic work. His decrees concerning the Eucharist eased the regulations governing daily communion and lowered the age at which Catholics receive their first holy communion from about 12 years old to about seven. His revival of the Gregorian plainsong and his recasting of the breviary (a book containing the daily prayers for clergy and nuns) and of the missal (the book containing the prayers and responses for celebrating mass) were also important liturgical reforms. Pius’s decision to adapt and systematize canon law led to the publication of the new code in 1917, effective in 1918. It would be the first time in the church’s history that its laws were codified into a single volume. His reorganization of the Roman Curia modernized the church’s central administration, including a codification of the conclave, the process of electing the pope.
Death and legacy
Pius died of a heart attack in 1914 and was buried in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He was beatified (declared “Blessed”) on June 3, 1951, after which his incorrupt body was transferred to the Presentation Chapel of St. Peter’s, where it is kept beneath the altar in a glass sarcophagus. He was canonized (formally declared a saint) on May 29, 1954, by Pope Pius XII.
The Society of St. Pius X, a traditionalist priestly society that was founded in 1970 by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), is named for him.