Saint Pius X (1835-1914)

A childhood of poverty in Riese (1835)

Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto was born on June 2, 1835 in Riese, a village in the province of Treviso, in a Veneto then subject to the Austrian Empire.^[10][11] He was the second of ten children. His father, Giovanni Battista Sarto, was a cursore — messenger and usher of the town council — earning the equivalent of about fifty centimes a day; his mother, Margherita Sanson, was a seamstress, and her meagre earnings barely supplemented her husband's.^[12][13] Poverty was not, in that house, an abstraction: it was the daily climate in which the child learned to live on little.

This humble origin is no biographical detail: it is the root of his holiness. All his life, Pius X presented himself as a son of the people who had become a priest, never as a prince of the Church. The epitaph engraved on his first tomb summed up the paradox in a single formula: "Poor and yet rich, gentle and humble of heart, invincible champion of the Catholic faith, whose constant effort was to restore all things in Christ."^[14]

The seminarian who spared his shoes

Gifted and devout, young Giuseppe attended the grammar school of Castelfranco Veneto, some six kilometres from Riese, which he reached on foot each day.^[15][16] Tradition holds that he carried his shoes in his hand along the way, to spare them and put them on only on arrival — a tiny gesture in which one can already read the thrift of a poor boy and the seriousness of a child who knew what a pair of shoes cost.^[17]

Admitted to the seminary of Padua on a scholarship, he pursued brilliant studies there.^[18] He was ordained a priest on September 18, 1858, at the age of twenty-three.^[19] For him the priesthood was no social promotion; it was entry into a service that at once sent him back among the poor from whom he came.

The priest of Tombolo and the parish priest of Salzano (1858-1875)

For nine years, Fr. Sarto was chaplain of Tombolo, where, the parish priest being aged, he assumed most of the parish burden: preaching, catechism, visiting the sick.^[20] In 1867, he became archpriest of Salzano. There he restored the church, enlarged the hospital, and above all spent himself without counting the cost during an outbreak of cholera, at the bedside of the contagious whom others fled.^[21]

At Salzano, Sarto was a parish priest close to his parishioners, generous to the poor and attentive to the religious instruction of adults.^[22]

In 1875, he was called to Treviso as chancellor of the diocese, canon and spiritual director of the seminary.^[23] The poor boy from Riese climbed the steps of the hierarchy without losing any of his simplicity: it is this continuity, from village to Vatican, that made him a saint recognizable among all.

From Mantua to Venice: a pastor's heart (1884-1903)

Appointed bishop of Mantua on November 10, 1884, Sarto found a weakened diocese and raised it up through pastoral visitation, seminary reform and care of the clergy.^[24] In 1893, Leo XIII created him cardinal and named him patriarch of Venice — a dignity whose possession the Italian government delayed for nearly eighteen months, out of political hostility.^[25][26] In Venice, the patriarch remained the pastor close to his people that he had always been.

Elected pope on August 4, 1903, he took the name of Pius X. The details of that conclave — marked by the last imperial veto in history — and of his government belong to the companion piece on the pontificate of Saint Pius X. What matters here lies elsewhere: on the throne of Peter, the former parish priest of Salzano had not changed in soul.

A saint's programme: "to restore all things in Christ"

The motto Pius X chose for his pontificate is no administrative slogan but a spiritual programme drawn from St. Paul. From his opening encyclical E Supremi (1903), he made it the heart of his mission:^[27]

"To restore all things in Christ." — Pontifical motto of Saint Pius X, Instaurare omnia in Christo (Ephesians 1:10)^[28]

Everything in him flowed from this intuition: to bring souls back to Christ through the Eucharist, through the catechism, through the holiness of the clergy. Pius XII would say, at the canonization, that the deep source of Pius X's work was his personal holiness, and not the reverse.^[29]

Communion restored to the Christian people

The nickname of "Pope of the Eucharist" rests first not on decrees, but on a saint's conviction: that the Body of Christ is the ordinary bread of souls, not the exceptional reward of a perfect few. Against a mentality still marked by a Jansenist rigour that kept the faithful away from the holy table, Pius X reopened access to Communion.

By the decree Sacra Tridentina Synodus of December 20, 1905, he recommended frequent and even daily Communion to all the faithful in a state of grace.^[30] Five years later, the decree Quam singulari of August 8, 1910 lowered the age of first Communion to the age of reason, around seven years old, so that little children would no longer be deprived of Christ.^[31] His joy at admitting very young children to the holy table himself is well attested.

Behind these measures speaks a mystique of the Eucharist. Devotional tradition sums up his conviction in a formula often quoted as a saying of Saint Pius X: Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to Heaven.^[32]

Pius XII summed up this dimension in a lapidary formula in his canonization homily: "A priest above all in the Eucharistic ministry: this is the truest portrait of Saint Pius X."^[33]

Strippedness as a virtue

The other face of his holiness is poverty, lived not by constraint but by choice. Once pope, Pius X kept a room furnished with the sobriety of a country parish priest and went on giving to the poor whatever passed through his hands.^[34] He refused to raise his family: his sisters, who lived near him in Rome, remained in modesty, with neither title nor fortune.^[35]

"I was born poor, I have lived in poverty, and I wish to die poor." — Saint Pius X, last will^[36]

He even asked not to be embalmed after his death, out of fidelity to his origins and refusal of all funeral pomp — a detail that made the discovery of his intact body thirty years later all the more striking.^[37]

The catechist and Marian devotion

True to his past as a parish priest, Pius X remained a catechist at heart: he wanted every one of the faithful, from the humblest to the most learned, to know the faith. The Catechism of Saint Pius X would bear his name for generations.^[38] His piety was nourished by a profound Marian devotion, witnessed by his encyclical Ad diem illum (1904) on the mediation of the Virgin.^[39] Catechesis, the Eucharist and devotion to Mary form the three pillars of a spirituality wholly turned toward souls.

The "wonder-working pope"

In Pius X's very lifetime, the people attributed healings to him. It is told that during audiences he restored health to a paralyzed child by embracing him, or that a child suffering from meningitis recovered after he counselled the parents to hope, to fast and to pray.^[40] These accounts belong to popular devotion rather than to a canonical dossier: they must be received for what they are — the sign of a reputation for holiness already vivid before his death — not as officially recognized miracles.

What is certain is the spiritual authority that radiated from him. This same Pius X, in 1904, canonized a humble wonder-working brother of the preceding generation, Saint Gerard Majella, and presided over the Church at the time when figures of contemporary holiness such as Saint Gemma Galgani were dying.

A heart broken by war (August 1914)

The summer of 1914 saw Europe slide into war. The old pope, who had prayed so much for peace, was physically crushed by it. To the ambassador who pressed him to bless his country's arms, he reportedly answered that he did not bless arms, but peace.^[41] Taken ill around the feast of the Assumption, laid low by the shock of the conflict, he died on August 20, 1914, at seventy-nine years of age.^[42][43] Tradition holds that he died of a broken heart over a war he had been unable to prevent — the last offering of a pastor who, it is said, would gladly have given himself for peace.

"This hour of radiant triumph, which God, the raiser of the humble, has ordained and as it were hastened, to seal the admirable ascent of His faithful servant Pius X to the supreme glory of the altars…" — Pius XII, canonization homily, May 29, 1954^[44]

From death to the cause

Pius X's reputation for holiness did not die with him. Introduced under the pontificate of Pius XI, his cause moved through its stages to the recognition of the heroicity of his virtues, which earned him the title of Venerable.^[45] The process examined his life as priest and pope, his virtues, and the healings attributed to his intercession after his death.

The 1944 exhumation: an intact body

On May 19, 1944, as part of the process, the body of Pius X was exhumed — nearly thirty years after his death, and although he had expressly refused embalming. When the coffin was opened, witnesses found that the body had remained incorrupt, the limbs still supple.^[46][47] This unexpected preservation, without any preparatory procedure, was received by many as a supernatural sign; the Church, prudently, did not count it among the required miracles, but it struck minds powerfully and nourished popular devotion.

The four approved miracles

Four miraculous healings were retained by the Church for the two stages of the cause — two for the beatification, two for the canonization. All concern illnesses declared incurable and healings judged instantaneous, complete and medically inexplicable.^[48] The table below summarizes them.

For the beatification, the healing of the Visitandine Marie-Françoise Deperras, afflicted with bone cancer, was judged by the commission of Rites "instantaneous, perfect, definitive and clearly of supernatural order".^[49] For the canonization, the lawyer Francesco Belsami, dying of a lung abscess, and the religious Maria Ludovica Scorcia, struck by a grave neurological affliction, likewise recovered their health in a manner judged inexplicable.^[50]

The first pope canonized since Saint Pius V

On June 3, 1951, before an immense crowd gathered in St. Peter's, Pius XII beatified his predecessor.^[51][52] Less than three years later, on May 29, 1954, he solemnly canonized him, in the presence of some eight hundred thousand faithful.^[53] The event was historic: Pius X is the first pope inscribed in the catalogue of saints since Saint Pius V, canonized in 1712 — an interval of more than two centuries without a pontifical canonization.^[54][55] After him, the twentieth century would see several others, but it is Pius X who reopened the way.

Pius XII's homily: the portrait of a holy priest

In his homily of May 29, 1954, Pius XII painted of his predecessor a portrait that goes beyond praise of the ruler to reach the heart of the saint. In it he celebrated the union, in him, of humility and greatness:

"Thou in whom humility seemed wedded to greatness, austerity to gentleness…" — Pius XII, canonization homily for Saint Pius X, May 29, 1954^[56]

And he designated the single source from which all the work of the reforming pope sprang: not skill, not canonical learning, but the personal holiness of a man wholly given to Christ.^[57]

The August 21 feast and the body venerated in St. Peter's

First inscribed on September 3, the feast of Saint Pius X was fixed on August 21 at the reform of the Roman calendar in 1969, the day after the anniversary of his death.^[58][59] His body rests beneath the altar of the Chapel of the Presentation, in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome: it can be seen there, face and hands covered with a silver mask, the object of pilgrims' continuous veneration.^[60]

Patronages and spiritual heritage

Saint Pius X is invoked as patron of first communicants — the natural fruit of his decree Quam singulari —, of catechists and of pilgrims.^[61] His spiritual heritage is measured less in laws than in souls: generations of children communicated earlier thanks to him, the faithful recovered frequent Communion, Christians learned their catechism from the handbook that bears his name.

Beyond the controversies that marked his pontificate, the Church recognized in him what the people had sensed from the first day: a poor man of God become pope without ceasing to be poor, a holy priest raised to the throne of Peter without ceasing to be a priest. That is the whole meaning of the epitaph chosen for him: "poor, and yet rich."^[62]

• The pontificate of Saint Pius X (1903-1914) — the complete companion piece on his government: the 1903 conclave, E Supremi, the reform of canon law, the fight against Modernism, the break with France.
• Venerable Pius XII (1876-1958) — the pope who beatified and canonized Pius X.
• Leo XIII (1810-1903) — his predecessor, who made him cardinal and patriarch of Venice.
• Saint Pius V (1504-1572) — the last pope canonized before him, more than two centuries earlier.
• Saint Gerard Majella (1726-1755) — the wonder-working brother whom Pius X canonized in 1904.
• Saint Gemma Galgani (1878-1903) — a figure of holiness contemporary with his pontificate.