With the recent death of Pope Francis and living in this “in between” space as the Church awaits the papal conclave and the election of a new pope, the Feast of Pope St. Pius V, OP, offers us an opportunity both to reflect on the Dominican saint's legacy and consider the spiritual significance of the papacy as a whole.
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
“Lord, you know everything, and you know that I love you,”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
The Gospel reading for April 30, the Feast of Pope St. Pius V (1504–72), carries a double weight of meaning. First, the passage is often cited for the theology of the papacy: the Pope is called to lay down his life for God’s people, feed them the Bread of Life, guard them as a shepherd guards his flock, and guide them after the heart of Jesus, who entrusted the early Church first to St. Peter.
In addition, long before he became Pope Pius V, Antonio Ghislieri was a poor shepherd boy in the Duchy of Milan (now part of Italy). That background likely gave this Gospel passage deep personal meaning—he knew a shepherd’s hard work firsthand. Each time he heard it later in life, he may have recalled both the rugged fields of his youth and his mission to guard the Church like a shepherd tending his flock.
Pius, elected in 1566 just after the Council of Trent, played a pivotal role in shaping the Catholic Church’s response to the Reformation. He standardized the Mass into the Tridentine rite, which endured for 400 years, and issued the groundbreaking Roman Catechism to guide priests in preaching and teaching. In an era in need of urgent reform, he stood out as a disciplined, deeply prayerful leader devoted to holiness.
Certainly the papacy now has different pastoral concerns (and methods) than the papacy of the 1500s. (Pope Pius was a pope for his times, as was Francis.) But some marks of virtue and goodness remain consistent across the centuries. While Pius and Francis differed in their pastoral methods and emphases, they both would almost certainly agree with the timeless approach to preaching and pastoral practice recommended by the Roman Catechism that Pope Pius’s legacy gave to the Church and that the current Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) cites:
Whoever teaches must become "all things to all men" (Cor 9:22), to win everyone to Christ....Above all, teachers must not imagine that a single kind of soul has been entrusted to them, and that consequently it is lawful to teach and form equally all the faithful in true piety with one and the same method! Let them realize that some are in Christ as newborn babes, others as adolescents, and still others as adults in full command of their powers....Those who are called to the ministry of preaching must suit their words to the maturity and understanding of their hearers, as they hand on the teaching of the mysteries of faith.
The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love.” (CCC, 24 and 25, citing the Roman Catechism).
Today, we can pray that our next pope be, like Pius and Francis both, a man who is faithful in his prayer life, who understands his vocation as a shepherd of souls, and who in his ministry directs the Church to “the love that never ends.”*
*Perhaps not coincidentally, Pope Francis was recently laid to rest in St. Mary Major—the same basilica where Pope St. Pius V is buried.
Hope Zelmer
Hope Zelmer is a writer and a former theology teacher and campus minister at Fenwick High School, a Dominican Catholic preparatory school in Oak Park, Illinois. Hope has written for publications such as FaithND, Church Life Journal, and FemCatholic. She holds a BA and MA in theology from the University of Notre Dame.