SAINT JOSEPH CALASANZ, priest. — Born at Peralta de la Sal, in Aragon, in 1556 or 1557, of a modest but perhaps anciently noble family; died at Rome on 25 August 1648. In religion, G. della Madre di Dio.
After completing his early studies in his homeland and at Estadilla, he followed the courses in philosophy, law and theology at the universities of Lerida, Valencia and Alcalá, graduating as a doctor. He was ordained priest in 1583. After nine years of zealous ecclesiastical ministry in several dioceses of his native Spain, he went to Rome in 1592, where, in his anxiety to learn precisely what Providence willed of him, he devoted himself for a time to a manifold apostolate that brought him into contact with the profound misery of the people.
One day, as he was passing through a street in Rome, the most distressing sight of a group of abandoned children, uttering blasphemies and obscenities, struck him with extraordinary force. From that moment there took shape within him the mission assigned to him by God: the school. Having vainly sought to induce others to undertake so noble an enterprise, in the late autumn of 1597, in two poor rooms adjoining the sacristy of S. Dorothea in the populous district of Trastevere, he opened his schools, which from the very beginning he called the Pious Schools. He insisted that they be absolutely free and open to all: to poor children and those who were not poor, with special regard for the former.
And truly they were schools, his, for literary and scientific instruction was not absorbed and sacrificed to religious instruction, but was wisely combined with it through well-defined teaching programmes, careful class division, punctual timetables, rigorous periodic examinations, and aims of practical preparation for life. He was not merely a pedagogue, but possessed the talent and natural genius of an educator, also because he admired and loved science as few others did, to the point of showing himself and being fearlessly benevolent and beneficent toward Galileo Galilei and Tommaso Campanella. As the number of boys grew ever greater, he soon had to transfer the schools to more suitable premises on the other side of the Tiber, first near S. Andrea della Valle and then near S. Pantaleo, where the definitive seat was established. And since he was convinced of the necessity of a religious congregation to guarantee the continuity and perpetuity of his schools, he began to this end by keeping his teachers living in community with him.
The Pope, assured of the goodness of the Calasanctian institution by two most learned cardinals, Cesare Baronio and Silvio Antoniano, encouraged and supported it, despite the opposition of envious, self-interested or uncomprehending persons. Paul V in 1617 raised the Piarists to the rank of a true and proper religious congregation of simple vows. Gregory XV in 1621 elevated the Institute to the dignity of a religious Order with solemn vows.
After Rome and Latium, Liguria, then the Kingdom of Naples, Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia, Moravia, Bohemia and Poland requested and received the Calasanctian schools during the founder’s lifetime. Thus there arose within the Order what might be called a growth crisis, contrary to the desire and will of its founder, who resisted such excessive expansion for as long as he could, foreseeing its grave dangers.
Among the less worthy Piarists there were indeed some who exploited the internal situation and opposition to fish in troubled waters; the entire Order was subjected to an apostolic visitor, while the founder himself, for a brief time even imprisoned by the Holy Office, was deposed by Urban VIII on 12 August 1642 from the office of superior general, a position to which the same Pontiff had appointed him for life several years earlier. And in 1646 Innocent X even decreed the suppression of the Order. Heroic was the patience of Calasanz at that time, in his ninetieth year, but alive and steadfast was his hope in the resurrection of his work.
Respectively, Alexander VII in 1656 and Clement IX in 1660 restored to the Calasanctian Order the rank and dignity of a religious congregation of simple vows and of a religious Order with solemn vows. Calasanz was canonized in 1767 by Clement XIII. The feast is celebrated on 27 August.