CAPG's Blog: Saint Pius V, Pope and Confessor, A.D. 1572

Saint Pius V, Pope and Confessor, A.D. 1572

by VP

Posted on Monday May 05, 2025 at 12:00AM in Saints

"In his tender years, the most perfect maxims of piety were instilled into him; and he never swerved from them during his life. He took the habit of the Dominicans at fifteen years of age. During his noviciate, it was his holy ambition to surpass all others in humility, purity, and the exercises of mortification, obedience, and devotion. Having prepared himself by a long and fervent retreat, he was ordained priest at Genoa. He taught philosophy and divinity sixteen years, and was long employed in instructing novices, and in governing different houses of his order. Pope Paul IV. promoted him to a bishopric, and soon after created him cardinal. His dignities served to render his humility and other virtues the more conspicuous, but produced no alteration in his furniture, table, fasts, or devotions. By the succeeding pope, Pius IV., our saint was greatly esteemed, and employed in important affairs of the Church. On his death, he was chosen to succeed to the pontifical chair, to which he consented for fear of resisting the will of God, after having in vain opposed it by tears. and entreaties. His tenderness for the poor, and his charities are not to be expressed: but nothing appeared more admirable in him than his profound humility. He published the decrees of the Council of Trent; and extended his solicitude to every part of Christendom. To check the progress of the Turks he entered into a league with the king of Spain and the Venetians; and when the Christians gained a signal victory over the infidels at the battle of Lepanto, the holy pope received a miraculous intimation of it at Rome, at the very time of the victory. In consequence of this, he instituted the Feast of the Rosary, and ordered the words help of Christians to be inserted in the Litany of Loretto. The year following he died on the 1st of May, it being the year 1572.

Pray for the spirit of this holy pope, who, notwithstanding his attention to public affairs, did not forget that the exercises of an interior life are the means by which our souls must maintain and improve the spirit of holy charity, and by this sanctify all our exterior actions." The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother

Tridentine Latin Mass, Sacred Heart Cathedral, Raleigh NC

"On July 14, 1570, the Pope published the reformed missal by the Bull Quo primum, still printed at its beginning. The Bull commands that this missal alone be used wherever the Roman rite is followed. No one, of whatever rank he be, shall use any other. "All rites from other missals, however old, hitherto observed, being in future left out and entirely abandoned, Mass shall be sung or said according to the rite, manner and standard which is given in this missal; nor in celebrating Mass shall anyone dare to add or recite other ceremonies οι prayers than those that are contained herein." That made an end of the mediæval derived rites. But the Pope made one important exception. The Bull allowed any rite to be kept that could show a prescription of at least two centuries. This rule saved some modified uses. A few dioceses, as Lyons, kept and still keep their local forms; so also some religious orders, notably the Dominicans, Carmelites and Carthusians. What is much more important is that the exception saved what was left of really independent rites at Milan and Toledo" The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy By Adrian Fortescue 1914

Papal Bull: Horrendum illud scelus ( August 30, 1568) Saint Pius V

"That horrible crime, on account of which corrupt and obscene cities were destroyed by fire through divine condemnation, causes us most bitter sorrow and shocks our mind, impelling us to repress such a crime with the greatest possible zeal. Quite opportunely the Fifth Lateran Council [1512-1517] issued this decree: "Let any member of the clergy caught in that vice against nature, given that the wrath of God falls over the sons of perfidy, be removed from the clerical order or forced to do penance in a monastery" (chap. 4, X, V, 31).
So that the contagion of such a grave offense may not advance with greater audacity by taking advantage of impunity, which is the greatest incitement to sin, and so as to more severely punish the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime and who are not frightened by the death of their souls, we determine that they should be handed over to the severity of the secular authority, which enforces civil law.
Therefore, wishing to pursue with greater rigor than we have exerted since the beginning of our pontificate, we establish that any priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, let him be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be put to death, as mandated by law as the fitting punishment for laymen who have sunk into this abyss."

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