This is the story of Giuseppu Melchior Sarto, the son of a poor postmaster in Riese, a little village in Italy, who was to become one of the greatest Vicars of Christ the Church has ever known.
Ordained a priest at the exceptionally young age of 24, this hard-working and brilliant country boy was consecrated Bishop of Mantua in 1884, where he helped revive the struggling diocese. In 1893, he was made a cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, where he won the reputation for simplicity, sincerity, and forthrightness. He was elected pope in 1903, taking the name Pius X and choosing as his motto “to restore all things in Christ”, based on Ephesians 1:10.
Pius X was venerated as a holy man in his lifetime. He was seen as a strong leader who held the Church together at a time when modern thought attacked the very importance of God and religion. He never forgot his impoverished roots, often financially and spiritually min-istering to the poor in Rome and around the world.
He reformed the breviary, restored Gregorian chant, initiated the process of collecting many laws of the Church into what later would become known as the Code of Canon Law, encouraged frequent communion, lowered the age for first Communion to seven, and wrote several Encyclicals, the most influential and well known of them Pascendi Dominici Gregis, against the modernist heresy, which he called the “synthesis of all heresies”.
Pius X died on 20 August, 1914. He was beatified in 1951 and then canonized a saint in 1954 by Pope Pius XII. His feast day is celebrated around the world on 21 August.
This biography of Pope Pius X, written by Mother Frances Alice Forbes, is easy to read, filled with lively anecdotes and written in a style that will fascinate and inspire readers of all ages and back-grounds.