Saint Charles Borromeo

Charles Borromeo was born in Arona on October 2, 1538, into one of the most powerful families in Italy: his mother was a Medici, and his uncle became pope as Pius IV. At twenty-two he was already a cardinal and secretary of state — nepotism in its purest form. What nobody expected was that the young man would take it seriously. He was one of the driving forces behind reconvening and concluding the Council of Trent, and he pushed through the reform that changed the modern Church more than any other: the creation of seminaries, that is, the requirement to train priests before ordaining them. Then he did something even less predictable: he left Rome and went to be bishop in Milan, where no archbishop had lived for eighty years. He found a huge diocese in disarray, and he visited all of it, valley by valley, even the Alpine parishes you could only reach on foot. He was very tall for his time — about six feet — and ate once a day, bread and water, giving the poor what he saved. During the plague of 1576, when the notables fled, he stayed: he organized the pest houses, sold the furnishings of his home to pay for bread, and walked in procession barefoot with a rope around his neck. The people of Milan still call it Saint Charles’s plague. He died in Milan on November 3, 1584, at forty-six. If your name is Charles or Carla, today is your name day.