Blessed Pius

This week, for the first time in almost three centuries, a Pope was beatified.* Giuseppe Sarto, Pope Pius X, was that rarest of combinations--a holy man and a great statesman.

The son of a Lombard village cobbler, young "Beppo" Sarto was as bright as he was poor, but he never lost his humility. Even when he was a fledgling country priest, his powerful sermons attracted attention beyond his own parish. He was raised to be a monsignor, then Bishop of Mantua, in 1893 Cardinal Patriarch of Venice. He made a point of giving away everything that he had. In his will he wrote: "I was born poor, I have lived poor, and I wish to die poor."

Cardinal Sarto's election to the papacy in 1903 came as a surprise to him. When he saw the balloting swinging in his favor, he rose to plead passionately with his brother cardinals not to elect him to a post for which he felt himself unfitted and unworthy. But his eleven-year reign was packed with decisions that have proved historic for the Roman Catholic Church.

Synthesis of Heresies. "The sole aim of Our Pontificate," he wrote, "will be to restore all things to God." Among his actions:

P:His encyclical Acerbo nimis revived the importance of the Catholic catechism, established the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in every parish to teach it.

P:His Apostolic Letter in 1905 set forth principles for the laymen's movement known as Catholic Action.

P:His decree calling for "frequent and [even] daily Communion" settled a longstanding church controversy, silenced those who had argued that man was unworthy to take the Eucharist except at long intervals.

P:His encyclical Pascendi in 1907 condemned, lock, stock & barrel, the theological trend toward Modernism, which tended to look upon religion as a subjective experience and the church as a purely human institution in the process of evolution. Pius X called this "a synthesis of all heresies," cracked down so hard on Modernism that some Catholics called the encyclical harsh. Retorted Cardinal Mercier of Belgium: "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?"

Ora pro Nobis. In August 1914, heartsick at the World War then beginning, Giuseppe Sarto died at 79. Even during his lifetime he had been spoken of as a saint; soon after his death, steps were taken to proclaim him one. In his case, the "process" toward sainthood, which sometimes takes centuries, has moved in double-quick time; only last fall (TIME, Sept. 18) he was declared "venerable."

Last week his blackened body was exhumed from its tomb in St. Peter's and the face covered with a silver mask replica of his features. The body was dressed in new papal vestments, then placed in a gold-leaf sarcophagus with a glass top for public view. As it was unveiled this week, at the height of the beatification ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica, St. Peter's archpriest, Cardinal Frederico Tedeschini, spoke for the first time the words of public veneration, to which only saints and blesseds are entitled:

"Beate Pie, ora pro nobis [Blessed Pius, pray for us]."

*Last occasion: the beatification of Pius V in 1672, which was followed 40 years later by his canonization as Saint Pius V.

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