New Name in the Book

Giuseppe Sarto was a poor boy. His father earned 50-c- a day as municipal messenger and janitor for the Italian town of Riese, near Venice, and his mother made clothes for the local farmers and laborers. When Giuseppe walked the four miles to secondary school and back each day he used to take off his shoes and carry them to save the leather.

Giuseppe Sarto became assistant parish priest at Tombolo, and he was still poor; in all his nine years there he was never able to buy a full set of vestments. Each evening, after the parish work was done, he would study until midnight or later, then rise at 4 to ring the church bells and open the church door because the sacristan was old and easily tired.

When he became a full-fledged parish priest at Salzano he gave away so much to the poor that his clerical ring was often in the pawnshop. At the end of his nine years there his devoted parishioners wrote a poem for him that went: "He came in garments that were torn, he left without a shirt."

Rise of a Country Priest. The Bishop of Treviso surprised everyone and irritated some by making young Don Sarto a canon--a post hitherto held exclusively by noblemen. In his first speech before the Treviso seminary as its spiritual instructor he said: "I am no professor, just a country priest, whom God has most unaccountably brought among you. Remember that study and knowledge and science, excellent things in themselves, are perverted if they become objects of pride."

Giuseppe Sarto became Bishop of Mantua, then Cardinal Patriarch of Venice. He was still poor, still giving away his few belongings and launching quixotic business ventures to help his flock. To one visitor he complained that a gold watch he had been given was engraved with the patri archal arms and therefore could not be pawned. When Pope Leo XIII died in 1903 and Cardinal Sarto had to go to Rome for the conclave, he did not have enough money for the railroad fare and the Catholic bank in Venice refused to lend it to him. He got his loan from a Jewish friend and bought a round-trip ticket to save money.

It was a one-way trip. When after several days of balloting it became obvious that he was going to be elected Pope, he fled in consternation from his fellow cardinals. Msgr. Merry del Val, later his Secretary of State, found him in the Pauline Chapel on his knees, his head buried in his hands. "Monsignor, you can persuade them. Tell them not to vote for me," Sarto pleaded. When the commander of the Noble Guard went to take his first orders, the new Pope offered him a chair with his own hands. When the commander protested, the Pope said sadly: "It was nice to carry chairs for people. Now it's the end of all that."

His Mark on the Church. Pius X was one of the strongest Popes since the Renaissance. He left his mark on the theology of the church by cracking down hard on "modernists," who meant to water down the traditional faith of the church to make it conform to prevailing scientific and rationalist concepts. He left his mark on modern liturgy by stimulating a return to Gregorian chant. He deeply influenced contemporary Catholic life by calling for frequent communion and for the early communion of children, by developing the laymen's movement known as Catholic Action.

Cardinal Mercier of Belgium once said: "If in the days of Luther and Calvin the church had possessed a Pope of the temper of Pius, would Protestantism have succeeded in getting a third of Europe to break loose from Rome?"

Giuseppe Sarto died at the age of 79 in August 1914, broken-hearted over the World War, which had just begun. This week, after a "process" lasting only 31 years, Giuseppe Sarto becomes the 4,394th known saint in the Roman Catholic calendar, the first Pope in 242 years to be canonized (the last: Pius V). It will be one of the most impressive Vatican occasions in years; though only recently recovered from serious illness, Pope Pius XII plans to officiate. Provision has been made for some 500,000 spectators in St. Peter's Square. From all over the world they have come to hear Pius XII (who knew Sarto well) proclaim the words of canonization (in Latin):

"To the honor of the most Holy Trinity and for the exaltation of the Catholic faith and for the increase of the Christian religion, through the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and through our own authority ... we decree and define as saint the Blessed Pius X and order his name to be written in the books of saints."

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