Saint Pius X

Giuseppe Sarto was the first pope in centuries to come from the poor: the son of a village postman and a seamstress in the Veneto, a country curate for seventeen years, then bishop of Mantua and patriarch of Venice, with no diplomatic or curial experience at all. He was elected on 4 August 1903 only after the Austrian emperor's veto had knocked out the favorite, Cardinal Rampolla, and his first significant act was to abolish that veto forever. His motto was Instaurare omnia in Christo, to restore all things in Christ, and he meant the parish rather than the chancery. He lowered the age of First Communion to about seven and urged frequent communion for everyone; he reformed the breviary, restored Gregorian chant, and pressed for a single catechism. He reorganized the Roman Curia in 1908 and set in motion the codification of canon law that became the Code of 1917. Most of Catholic parish life in the twentieth century was shaped by decisions he made in his first seven years.

The other face of the reign was fear. Convinced that a movement of scholars was dissolving the faith from within, he condemned Modernism in Lamentabili and Pascendi in 1907 and imposed an anti-Modernist oath on all clergy in 1910, while a secret network run by Monsignor Umberto Benigni informed on suspects. Catholic biblical and historical scholarship went dark for a generation. In France, when the Republic separated church and state in 1905, he refused every compromise and accepted the loss of all church property rather than give the state a hand in appointing clergy, a decision that impoverished the French church and, some argued, freed it.

He died on 20 August 1914, three weeks into the war he had watched approach with dread. Pius XII canonized him on 29 May 1954, the first pope made a saint since Pius V.