From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   April 30th - St. Pius V, OP Pope (RM)   
   (also known as Michael Ghislieri)   
      
   Born in Bosco (near Alessandria), Italy, on January 17, 1504; died May 1,   
   1572; canonized in 1712; feast day formerly on May 5.   
   People who know nothing else about Pius V are quite apt to remember him as   
   the Pope of the Rosary, recalling his remarkable connection with the Battle   
   of Lepanto.   
      
   Antonio Michael was born into the distinguished but impoverished Ghisleri.   
   His parents could not afford to educate their alert little boy, who seemed   
   far too talented to be a shepherd. One day, as he was minding his father's   
   small flock, two Dominicans came along the road and fell into conversation   
   with him. Recognizing immediately that he was both virtuous and intelligent,   
   they obtained permission from his parents to take the child with them and   
   educate him. He left home at age 12 and did not return until his ordination   
   many years later.   
      
   After a preliminary course of studies, he received the Dominican habit at   
   the priory of Voghera at age 14 and, as a novice, was sent to Lombardy.   
   Here, for the first time, he met the well-organized forces of heresy which   
   he was to combat so successfully in later years.   
      
   After his ordination in 1528, he went home to say his first Mass, and he   
   found that Bosco had been razed by the French. There was nothing left to   
   tell him if his parents were alive or dead. He finally found them, however,   
   in a nearby town. After he said Mass, he returned to a career that would   
   keep him far from home for the rest of his life. He began as a lector in   
   theology and philosophy for 16 years.   
      
   Then he served as novice-master, then as prior of several convents, Michael   
   proved to be a wise and charitable administrator. He was made inquisitor at   
   Como, Italy, where many of his religious brethren had died as martyrs to the   
   heretics. By the time of Michael's appointment there, the heretics' chief   
   weapon was the printed word; they smuggled books in from Switzerland,   
   causing untold harm by spreading them in northern Italy. The new inquisitor   
   set himself to fight this wicked traffic, and it was not the fault of the   
   heretics that he did not follow his brethren to martyrdom. They ambushed him   
   several times and laid a number of complicated plots to kill him, but only   
   succeeded in making him determined to explain the situation more fully to   
   the pope in Rome.   
      
   He arrived in Rome on Christmas Eve, tired, cold, and hungry, and here it   
   was not the heretics that caused him pain, but his own brothers in Christ.   
   The prior of Santa Sabina saw fit to be sarcastic and inhospitable to the   
   unimportant looking friar, who said he was from Lombardy. The pope knew very   
   well who he was, however, and immediately gave him the commission of working   
   with the heretics in the Roman prisons.   
      
   He was a true father to these unfortunates, and he brought many of them back   
   to the faith. One of his most appealing converts was a young Franciscan, a   
   converted Jew of a wealthy family, who had lapsed into heresy through pride   
   in his writing. Michael proceeded to straighten out his thinking, to give   
   him the Dominican habit, and to assure him of his personal patronage, thus   
   securing for the Church a splendid Scripture scholar and writer.   
      
   In 1556, Michael was chosen bishop of Nepi and Sutri. The next year he was   
   named inquisitor general against the Protestants in Italy and Spain and was   
   appointed cardinal, in order, as he said, that irons should be riveted to   
   his feet to prevent him from creeping back into the peace of the cloister.   
   In 1559, Pope Pius IV made him bishop of the war-depleted Piedmont see of   
   Mondovi, to which he soon brought order. Insofar as possible, Michael   
   continued to adhere to the Dominican Rule.   
      
   He constantly opposed nepotism. Michael opposed Pius IV's attempt to make   
   13-year-old Ferdinand de'Medici a cardinal, and defeated the attempt of   
   Emperor Maximilian II of Germany to abolish clerical celibacy.   
      
   January 7, 1565, when the papal chair was vacant following the death of Pius   
   IV, the cardinals, chiefly through the influence of Saint Charles Borromeo,   
   elected Cardinal Ghislieri pope. With great grief, he accepted the office   
   and chose the name Pius V. Charles Borromeo had backed Michael during the   
   election, trusting that he would act as a much-needed reformer.   
      
   His judgment proved true: on Pius's coronation, the money usually   
   distributed to the crowds was given to the hospitals and the poor, and money   
   for a banquet for the cardinals and other dignitaries was given to poor   
   convents. When someone criticized this, he observed that God would judge us   
   more on our charity to the poor than on our good manners to the rich. Such   
   an attitude was bound to make enemies in high places, but it endeared him to   
   the poor, and it gave right-thinking men the hope that here was a man of   
   integrity, and one who could help to reform the clergy and make a firm stand   
   against the Lutheran heresy.   
      
   There were massive problems of immediate urgency during the brief reign of   
   Pius V. From within, the peace of the Church was disturbed by the several   
   heresies of Luther, Calvin, and the Lombards, and by the need for clerical   
   reform. In addition, England was tottering on the brink of a break with   
   Rome. The Netherlands were trying to break away from Spain and had embraced   
   Protestantism. The missions across the sea needed attention. And all through   
   the Mediterranean countries, the Turkish were ravaging Christian cities,   
   creeping closer to world conquest. In the six years of his reign, Pope Pius   
   V had to deal with all these questions-any one of which was enough to occupy   
   his entire time.   
      
   One of Pius's first actions was to demand that bishops should live in their   
   dioceses and parish priests in their parishes. His efforts at regulating his   
   see embraced issues ranging from the abolition of bullfighting, bear-baiting   
   and prostitution, to cleaning out the Roman curia and eliminating nepotism,   
   to cutting down the activities of bandits. He insisted that Sunday must be   
   hallowed. Once a month he held a special court for anyone who felt they had   
   been treated unjustly. He also brought in shipments of corn during a famine   
   at his own expense.   
      
   In his personal life he continued to be a devout mendicant friar; as pope he   
   set himself to enforce the decrees of the Council of Trent with energy and   
   effect. The catechism ordered by the Council of Trent was completed during   
   his rule (1566), and he ordered translations made. The breviary reformed   
   (1568) and missal (1570). He also commissioned the best edition to date of   
   the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas; it was he who made Thomas a Doctor of   
   the Church in 1567.   
      
      
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