Listers, St. Pope Pius V is certainly one of the Church’s most prominent pontiffs. The following encyclopedic entry demonstrates that St. Pope Pius V is a pope of which our modern world is in desperate need of remembrance. Encroaching Islam, the need for a unified Roman liturgy, and the Catholic faithful being led astray by heretics are all traits the current time shares with the time of St. Pope Pius V’s pontificate.

St. Pope Pius V, Bartolomeo Passarotti ca. 1566

Pope Saint Pius V (17 January 1504 – 1 May 1572), born Antonio Ghislieri (from 1518 called Michele Ghislieri, O.P.), was Pope from 1566 to 1572 and is a saint of the Catholic Church. He is chiefly notable for his role in the Council of Trent, the Counter-Reformation, and the standardization of the Roman liturgy within the Latin Church. Pius V declared saint Thomas Aquinas a Doctor of the Church and patronized prominent sacred music composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. As Cardinal Ghislieri he gained a reputation for putting orthodoxy before personalities, prosecuting eight French Bishops for heresy. He also stood firm against nepotism, rebuking his predecessor Pope Pius IV to his face when he wanted to make a 13-year old member of his family a cardinal and subsidize a nephew from the Papal treasury.
In affairs of state, Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I of England for schism and persecutions of English Catholics during her reign. He also arranged the formation of the Holy League, an alliance of Catholic states. Although outnumbered, the Holy League famously defeated the Ottomans, who had threatened to overrun Europe, at the Battle of Lepanto. This victory Pius V attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and instituted the feast, Our Lady of Victory.1

The Tomb of St. Pope Pius V is located in the Papal Basilica, Basilica Sanctae Mariae Maioris in Rome.


Tomb of St. Pope Pius V, Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major, Rome.


  1. Wikipedia Introduction: Pope Pius V [↩]