Pope St. Pius V

A Dominican shepherd-boy who became Grand Inquisitor and then pope, Pius V implemented the reforms of the Council of Trent: revising the Roman Missal and Breviary, publishing the Roman Catechism, and disciplining the curia. He organized the Holy League whose victory at Lepanto in 1571 — credited to the rosary — saved the Mediterranean from Ottoman conquest. He was the last pope to be canonized for over four hundred years.

Born Antonio Ghislieri to a poor family near Alessandria, he entered the Dominicans at fourteen and spent decades as professor, inquisitor, and bishop before his election in 1566. As pope he lived with the austerity of a friar, wearing his white Dominican habit beneath the papal vestments and walking barefoot in penitential processions through Rome.

He excommunicated Elizabeth I of England, enforced clerical residence, and required bishops to make regular visits to Rome. His pontificate was brief — only six years — but it gave the post-Tridentine Church its shape for the next four centuries. He died on May 1, 1572, and was canonized by Clement XI in 1712.