"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
- 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."
