The feast day of Pope St. Pius X is celebrated Aug. 21.
By Andrew Winter
1. As a boy, Giuseppe Sarto (1835-1914) lived in a small village near Venice, Italy, the second of 10 children. He walked five miles to and from school every day. His father was an impoverished postman.
2. In 1858, he was ordained a priest, and after serving as a pastor for 17 years, was made chancellor of the Diocese of Treviso. Then in 1884, he was made Bishop of Mantua by Pope Leo XIII.
3. Pope Leo XIII called Bishop Sarto even higher when he made him Patriarch of Venice in 1892. Eleven years later, Leo died, and Bishop Sarto succeeded him, taking the throne of Peter and the name Pius X. Though he had very little experience in the high spheres of the papacy, and had never been a noble or diplomat, he proved an excellent pope and an even greater saint.
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4. Pius X took as his motto: “Instaurare omnia in Christo,” “To restore all things in Christ.” The power of this motto became fully evident as Pius began a campaign against modernism in the Catholic Church. He became a great reformer, and was always bold in his improvements, refusing to back down in the face of angry opponents. Pius X High School in Lincoln has the same motto: “To restore all things in Christ.”
5. In his campaign to reform the Church, Pius X issued a motu proprio letter on sacred music in the liturgy, where he praised Gregorian chant as the ancient traditional sacred music of the Mass. He also commissioned the first ever codification of canon law, completed in 1917. Pius X invented the system of Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat used by the church today. These two certificates, usually given by priests or bishops, are often printed on the inside front covers of Catholic books, and they attest to the sound Catholic theology written inside. They mean, respectively, “Let it be printed” and “Nothing obstructs.”
6. Before the time of Pius X, the typical age for a person to receive first Holy Communion was 13 or 14, but the pope decreed that children should begin to receive the Eucharist as soon as they reached the age of reason (about 7 years old).
7. The most important document from Pius’ pontificate is Pascendi Dominici Gregis, or Feeding the Flock of the Lord. This extensive encyclical condemned modernism as “The synthesis of all heresies,” and commanded that it be uprooted from within the ranks of the Catholic Church. Pius wrote that the triumph of modernism “means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion.” Thanks to his reforms, modernism within the Church was almost completely eliminated.
8. Throughout his life, Pius X was known for his simplicity, humility and poverty. He was always uncomfortable with the pomp of the papacy, saying that travelling with guards made him feel like Jesus surrounded by soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane.
9. Just two weeks after the outbreak of World War I, Pius X died, brokenhearted at the untold pain which had begun. But everyone spoke of his holiness, and he was canonized only 40 years later, in 1954. He was the first pope to receive the title of saint since Pius V, who died in 1572.
