Saint Pius X

Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto was born in Riese, in the province of Treviso, on June 2, 1835, the second of ten children. His father was a farm steward and the town messenger; the family was poor, and he walked to school in Castelfranco, seven kilometers there and seven back, carrying his shoes in his hand so as not to wear them out. He went through every step: chaplain, parish priest, chancellor of the diocese, bishop of Mantua, patriarch of Venice. In 1903 he was elected pope, and took the name Pius X. His motto was *instaurare omnia in Christo*. His pontificate has two faces, and both need to be told. On one side, his harshness against modernism, condemned in the 1907 encyclical Pascendi and fought with methods that also hurt people acting in good faith — this is the page historians hold against him most. On the other, a series of reforms that changed the everyday life of Catholics: the Catechism that bears his name, the reform of sacred music that brought back Gregorian chant, the start of the codification of canon law, and above all Communion for children from the age of reason instead of at twelve or fourteen. That last one, in his day, was considered almost scandalous. He died in Rome on August 20, 1914, a few weeks after the outbreak of the world war he had tried in vain to prevent. Pius XII proclaimed him a saint in 1954. If your name is Pio, today is your name day.