Pope Pius X

Good hearted pontiff was made a saint

A retouched photograph of Pius X,
taken in 1903 by Francesco De Federicis 

Pope Pius X, who chose to live in poverty and devote his life to the Blessed Virgin Mary, died on this day in 1914 in the Apostolic Palace in Rome.

His body was exhumed from its tomb nearly 30 years later and was found to be miraculously incorrupt and Pius X was made a saint in 1954.

Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto in 1835 in Riese in the province of Treviso, which was then part of the Austrian Empire.

He was the second son of the ten children born to the village postman and his seamstress wife. Although the family were poor, they valued education and, as a young boy, Sarto walked six kilometres (3.7 miles) to attend school every day.

In 1850 he was given a scholarship to attend the seminary in Padua, where he completed classical, philosophical and theological studies with distinction.

After being ordained a priest, he continued to study while carrying out the duties of a parish pastor. He then became an arch priest, a vicar capitular and was appointed Bishop of Mantua and Patriarch of Venice.

Pope Leo XIII made Sarto a Cardinal in 1893 and he progressed to become one of the most prominent preachers in the Catholic Church. He was elected Pope after the death of Leo XIII in 1903.

Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto,
photographed as a young man

As Pius X, he made the defence of Roman Catholicism his main cause. He rejected attempts to reinterpret traditional Catholic teaching by Modernists and placed some Modernist books on the index of forbidden books.

He promoted liturgical reform and scholastic theology and initiated the Code of Canon Law,  which was introduced in 1917.  He regularly gave sermons from the pulpit, which was rare for popes at the time.

As a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis he remained committed to living in poverty and refused to do any favour for members of his family who were also impoverished. His brother remained a postal clerk, his sisters lived in straitened circumstances in Rome and his nephew remained a simple parish priest.

After the 1908 Messina earthquake, Pius X housed refugees in the Apostolic Palace, long before the Italian Government reacted to the disaster.

Pius X suffered a heart attack in 1913. The following year he is said to have become distressed by the seemingly inevitable approach of war and he died after falling ill again in August 1914.

He had been loved for his essential goodness of heart and crowds of pilgrims came to pray before his tomb in the crypt of St Peter’s.

Pius X was beatified in 1951 and canonised in 1954 by Pope Pius XII in front of an estimated 800,000 people. Pius X was the first Pope to be made a saint since Pius V, 400 years before.

The house in Riese, Treviso, where Pope Pius X
was born in 1835, is now a museum

Travel tip:

Pius X’s birthplace of Riese, a municipality in the province of Treviso in the Veneto, was renamed Riese Pio X in his honour. The house in which the Pope was born has now become a museum dedicated to his life. In the village of Cendrole just outside Riese Pio X, Santuario della Beata Vergine delle Cendrole, which the Pope often visited as a child, has also become popular with pilgrims. Formerly a pagan temple, the Sanctuary, in Via Cendrole, became a Christian Church but had to be rebuilt several times over the centuries after fires. The present building dates back to 1730 when it was rebuilt with a façade in Doric style to the design of architect Ottavio Scotti. An effigy of the Vergine delle Cendrole, which would be a childhood memory for Pius X, remains on the Baroque major altar to this day.

Travel tip:

There is a monument to Saint Pio X in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Designed by the architect Florestano Di Fausto and carved by the sculptor Pietro Astorri, the white marble statue was erected in 1923 on the 20th anniversary of his accession to the papacy.  It can be found to the left of the nave, squeezed into a small niche above a column between the Presentation Chapel and the Choir Chapel.  The body of Pius X can be seen under the altar in the Presentation Chapel, to which it was transferred from the original, simple tomb in the crypt following the canonisation in 1954.

Also on this day:

1561: The birth of composer and singer Jacopo Peri

1799: The death of poet and revolutionary Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel

1936: The birth of ballerina Carla Fracci

1937: The birth of composer Stelvio Cipriani

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19 August

Nanni Moretti - film director

Award winning filmmaker helped shape politics

Giovanni ‘Nanni’ Moretti, film director, producer, screenwriter and actor, was born on this day in 1953 in Brunico in South Tyrol.  Moretti has been a prominent opponent to Silvio Berlusconi’s governments and policies in Italy. In his 2006 film, Il Caimano, a comedy drama focusing on allegations about Berlusconi’s lifestyle, he played the role of Berlusconi himself.  Moretti’s parents, who were both teachers, were from Rome but he was born while they were on holiday in Trentino-Alto Adige. His father, Luigi Moretti, taught Greek at Sapienza University in Rome.  While growing up Moretti developed a passion for the cinema and water polo. He started making films as a hobby and played in the junior national water polo team in 1970.  His first feature film, Io sono un autarchico - I am Self-sufficient, was released in 1976.  Two years later he wrote, directed and starred in the film Ecce Bombo, which was screened at the Cannes film festival. This is still a cult film for many Italians.  His film Sogni d’Oro won the Silver Lion at the 38th Venice International film festival.  He is perhaps best known for the films Caro Diario - Dear Diary, in 1993 and La stanza del figlio - The Son’s Room, in 2001, which won the Palme D’Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.  Read more…

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Andrea Palladio - world's favourite architect

Humble stonecutter became his profession's biggest name

Andrea Palladio, the humble stonecutter who became the most influential architect in the history of his profession, died on this day in 1580, aged 71.  The cause of his death is not clear but some accounts say he collapsed while inspecting the construction of the Tempietto Barbaro, a church in Maser, a town in the Veneto not far from Treviso.  He was initially buried in a family vault in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza, the city in which he spent most of his life, but later re-interred at the civic cemetery, where a chapel was built in his honour.  Examples of Palladio's work can be found all over the region where he lived and in Venice, where he was commissioned to build, among other architectural masterpieces, the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the focal point of the view across the lagoon from St Mark's Square through the Piazzetta.  He built a substantial number of villas for wealthy clients across the Veneto region, some of them lining the Brenta Canal that links the lagoon of Venice with Padua. Others such as the Villa Capra, otherwise known as La Rotonda, famous for its symmetrically square design with four six-columned porticoes, can be found in open countryside near Vicenza.  Read more…

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Cesare Prandelli – football coach

Led Italy to the final of Euro 2012

The former head coach of the Italian national football team, Cesare Prandelli, was born on this day in 1957 in Orzinuovi, near Brescia.  Under Prandelli’s guidance, the Azzurri finished runners-up in the European Championships final of 2012 and qualified for the finals of the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.  Despite winning a two-year extension to his contract, he quit after Italy’s elimination at the group stage in Brazil, which he considered was the honourable course of action after a very disappointing tournament in which the Azzurri beat England in their opening match but then lost to Costa Rica and Uruguay.  As a player, Prandelli had been a member of a highly successful Juventus team in the early 1980s, winning Serie A three times and the European Cup in 1985 – albeit on a night overshadowed by tragedy at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels.  After beginning his coaching career as youth team coach with Atalanta in Bergamo, his last club as a player, he twice achieved promotion from Serie B, with Hellas Verona in 1999 and Venezia in 2001.  But it was his achievements in Serie A with Fiorentina that impressed the Italian Football Federation (FIGC).  Read more…

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Salomone Rossi - violinist and composer

Leading Jewish musician of the late Renaissance 

The composer and violinist Salomone Rossi, who became a renowned performer at the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and is regarded as the leading Jewish musician of the late Renaissance, is thought to have been born on this day in 1570.  Jews had periodically been the subject of persecution in the Italian peninsula for hundreds of years. At around the time of Rossi’s birth, Pope Pius V expelled all Jews from all but two areas of the papal states and Florence established a ghetto, in which all Jews within the city and the wide Grand Duchy of Tuscany were required to live.  The Mantua of Rossi’s day was much more enlightened than many Italian cities, however. Jews were not only tolerated but they were often allowed to mix freely with non-Jews. The liberal atmosphere allowed Jewish writers, musicians and artists to have an important influence on the culture of the day.  The court of Mantua was not only renowned for its royal luxury but as a centre of artistic excellence. At the end of the 15th century the duchess Isabella d’Este Gonzaga actively sought out the finest musicians in Italy, bringing them to Mantua.  Read more…

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18 August

Antonio Salieri - composer

Maestro of Vienna haunted by Mozart rumours

Antonio Salieri, the Italian composer who in his later years was dogged by rumours that he had murdered Mozart, was born on this day in 1750 in Legnago, in the Veneto.  Salieri was director of Italian opera for the Habsburg court in Vienna from 1774 to 1792 and German-born Mozart believed for many years that “cabals of Italians” were deliberately putting obstacles in the way of his progress, preventing him from staging his operas and blocking his path to prestigious appointments.  In letters to his father, Mozart said that “the only one who counts in (the emperor’s eyes) is Salieri” and voiced his suspicions that Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the poet and librettist, were in league against him.  Some years after Mozart died in 1791 at the age of just 35, with the cause of death never definitively established, it emerged that the young composer - responsible for some of music’s greatest symphonies, concertos and operas - had told friends in the final weeks of his life that he feared he had been poisoned and suspected again that his Italian rivals were behind it. Salieri was immediately the prime suspect.  Read more…

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Gianni Rivera - footballer and politician

Milan legend served in the Italian Parliament and as MEP

Gianni Rivera, a footballer regarded as one of Italy's all-time greats, was born on this day in 1943 in Alessandria, a city in Piedmont some 90km east of Turin and a similar distance south-west of Milan.  Rivera played for 19 years for AC Milan, winning an array of trophies that included the Italian championship three times, the Italian Cup four times, two European Cup-Winners' Cups and two European Cups.  He won 63 caps for the Italian national team, playing in four World Cups, including the 1970 tournament in Mexico, when Italy reached the final.  Later in life, he entered politics, sitting in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament from 1987 to 2001 and serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 2005 to 2009.  Rivera had a tough upbringing in Alessandria, which suffered heavy bombing during the later stages of the Second World War, with hundreds of residents killed.  His family were not wealthy but Rivera found distraction playing football with his friends in the street and it was obvious at an early age that he had talent.  His father, a railway mechanic, arranged for him to have a trial with the local football club.  Read more…

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Beatrice Borromeo - journalist and model

Glamorous aristocrat who specialises in gritty real-life stories

The journalist Beatrice Borromeo, a descendant of one of Italy’s oldest aristocratic families and married to a member of the Monegasque royal family, was born on this day in 1985 in Innichen in the German-speaking province of South Tyrol in northeast Italy.  Although born into wealthy high society, Borromeo was driven by her political and humanitarian beliefs from an early age, taking part in demonstrations in Milan against the government of Silvio Berlusconi in her teenage years and deciding to pursue a career in journalism, working full time for the Italian daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.  Since marrying long-time boyfriend Pierre Casiraghi - grandson of Prince Rainier III and the actress Grace Kelly - and having two children, she has devoted much of her energy towards making documentary films, but always on hard-hitting topics such as climate refugees, the women of ‘Ndrangheta - the Calabrian mafia - and the slum children of Caivano, an impoverished area northeast of Naples.  Her looks and family connections have also helped her to have a parallel career in modelling, in her early days as a catwalk model for high-end fashion houses.  Read more…

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Umberto Guidoni - astronaut

First European to step on to the International Space Station

The astronaut Umberto Guidoni, who spent almost 28 days in space on two NASA space shuttle missions, was born on this day in 1954 in Rome.  In April 2001, on the second of those missions, he became the first European astronaut to go on board the International Space Station (SSI).  After retiring as an active astronaut in 2004, Guidoni began a career in politics and was elected to the European Parliament as a member for Central Italy.  Although born in Rome, Guidoni’s family roots are in Acuto, a small hilltown about 80km (50 miles) southeast of the capital, in the area near Frosinone in Lazio known as Ciociaria.  Interested in science and space from a young age, Guidoni attended the Gaio Lucilio lyceum in the San Lorenzo district before graduating with honours in physics specialising in astrophysics at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1978, obtaining a scholarship from the National Committee for Nuclear Energy, based outside Rome in Frascati.  He worked in the Italian Space Agency as well as in the European Space Agency. One of his research projects was the Tethered Satellite System, which was part of the payload of the STS-46 space shuttle mission.  Guidoni moved to Houston, Texas and trained for a year as an alternate payload specialist for that mission, for which he was part of the group of scientists coordinating the scientific operations of the Space Shuttle Atlantis from the ground.  Read more…

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Francesco Canova da Milano – lutenist and composer

Brilliant virtuoso performed for popes and noblemen

Lute player and composer Francesco Canova da Milano was born on this day in 1497 in Monza near Milan in Lombardy.  Nicknamed il Divino by his contemporaries, Francesco Canova da Milano was known throughout Europe as the leading composer of his time for the lute. More of his work has been preserved than that of any other lutenist from the period and he influenced the work of other composers for more than a century after his death.  Francesco’s father, Benedetto, and his older brother, Bernardino, were also talented musicians.  Francesco studied the lute as a child and by 1514 he was known to be a member of the papal household in Rome. He and his father became private musicians to Pope Leo X in 1516.  His father was employed until 1518, but Francesco stayed with Leo X till the pope’s death in 1521. Francesco was still in Rome in 1526, when he and another lutenist performed for Pope Clement VII. At the time he was considered one of the greatest virtuoso performers on the lute.  In 1528 he obtained a position at a church in Milan and between 1531 and 1535 he was in the service of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. He became lute teacher to Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, the grandson of Pope Paul III, in 1535.  Read more…

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17 August

NEW - The Milan-Monza railway

First line in northern Italy sparked industrial growth 

The first railway line laid in northern Italy was opened on this day in 1840. The line, authorised by Ferdinand I of Austria, within whose empire the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia fell at the time, connected the city of Milan with the smaller city of Monza, covering a distance of 12.8km (eight miles).  It was the second railway line to be built on the Italian peninsula, following on from the shorter Naples-Portici line, which had been opened in October of the previous year.  Italy was a little behind in developing railways. The first steam-powered railway engine had completed its maiden journey some 56 years earlier, in England.   But once Milan-Monza was operational, quickly followed by the first section of what would become a Milan-Venice line, the rest of Italy awoke to their potential.  By the end of the 1840s, there were nine or 10 routes, mainly in the north; by unification in 1861, the network had expanded to more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) and by the early 1870s, there were some 7,000km (4,340 miles) of track, enabling travel from the outposts of Susa in the northwest, close to the border with France, and Udine in the northeast, all the way down to Maglie, south of Lecce, and Cariati, east of Cosenza, in the south.  Read more…

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Franco Sensi - businessman

Oil tycoon who rescued AS Roma football club

The businessman Francesco ‘Franco’ Sensi, best known as the businessman who transformed a near-bankrupt AS Roma into a successful football club, died on this day in 2008 in the Gemelli General Hospital in Rome.  He was 88 and had been in ill health for a number of years. He had been the longest-serving president of the Roma club, remaining at the helm for 15 years, and it is generally accepted that the success the team enjoyed during his tenure - a Serie A title, two Coppa Italia triumphs and two in the Supercoppa Italiana - would not have happened but for his astute management.  His death was mourned by tens of thousands of Roma fans who filed past his coffin in the days before the funeral at the Basilica of San Lorenzo al Verano, where a crowd put at around 30,000 turned out to witness the funeral procession. The then-Roma coach Luciano Spalletti and captain Francesco Totti were among the pallbearers.  Sensi, whose father, Silvio, had helped bring about the formation of AS Roma in 1927 in a merger of three other city teams, grew up supporting the club and followed his father into a business career.  Read more…

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Cesare Borgia – condottiero

Renaissance prince turned his back on the Church

Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, became the first person in history to resign as a Cardinal on this day in 1498 in Rome.  Cesare was originally intended for the Church and had been made a Cardinal at the age of 18 after his father’s election to the Papacy. After the assassination of his brother, Giovanni, who was captain general of the Pope’s military forces, Cesare made an abrupt career change and was put in charge of the Papal States.  His fight to gain power was later the inspiration for Machiavelli’s book The Prince.  Cesare was made Duke of Valentinois by King Louis XII of France and after Louis invaded Italy in 1499, Cesare accompanied him when he entered Milan. He reinforced his alliance with France by marrying Charlotte d’Albret, the sister of John III of Navarre.  Pope Alexander encouraged Cesare to carve out a state of his own in northern Italy and deposed all his vicars in the Romagna and Marche regions.  Cesare was made condottiero - military leader - in command of the papal army and sent to capture Imola and Forlí.  He returned to Rome in triumph and received the title Papal Gonfalonier from his father.  Read more...

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Pope Benedict XIV

Erudite, gentle, honest man was chosen as a compromise

Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini began his reign as Pope Benedict XIV on this day in 1740 in Rome.  Considered one of the greatest ever Christian scholars, he promoted scientific learning, the baroque arts and the study of the human form.  Benedict XIV also revived interest in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, reduced taxation in the Papal States, encouraged agriculture and supported free trade.  As a scholar interested in ancient literature, and who published many ecclesiastical books and documents himself, he laid the groundwork for the present-day Vatican Museum.  Lambertini was born into a noble family in Bologna in 1675. At the age of 13 he started attending the Collegium Clementinum in Rome, where he studied rhetoric, Latin, philosophy and theology. Thomas Aquinas became his favourite author and saint. At the age of 19 he received a doctorate in both ecclesiastical and civil law.  Lambertini was consecrated a bishop in Rome in 1724, was made Bishop of Ancona in 1727 and Cardinal-Priest of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in 1728.  Following the death of Pope Clement XII, Lambertini was elected pope on the evening of August 17, 1740.  Read more…

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