PIO V, POPE, SAINT. – The last canonized Pope, on 17 Jan. 1564 at Bosco, near Alessandria, by Paolo Ghislieri and Domenica Augeria: he entered the Dominican Order in 1518 at Voghera and there received the name of Michele; he was ordained priest in 1528 and shortly afterwards became a lecturer at Pavia; he was also commissioner of the Inquisition for the diocese of Pavia and later inquisitor at Como and Bergamo. Through this activity he gained the favour of Cardinal Carafa, who in 1551 appointed him general commissioner of the Roman Inquisition, and when the latter became pope as Paul IV in 1556 he named him bishop of Sutri and Nepi, in 1557 cardinal, and on 14 Dec. 1558 Grand Inquisitor.
Under Pius IV he fell into disfavour because of his ties with the Carafa family, so he devoted himself exclusively to the Inquisition and to the reform of the episcopate of Mondovì, which had been entrusted to him in 1560. In the conclave of 1565, following an agreement between Borromeo and Farnese, on 7 Jan. 1566 he was elected pope to the general surprise, as the candidacies of Morone, Sirleto, and Ricci—favoured by Cosimo I—had come to nothing. He was consecrated on 17 Jan. His immortal merit is that, having brought the Council of Trent to completion, he applied its decrees with the utmost rigour in every sphere of ecclesiastical life: he sent the decrees as far as Goa, Mexico, Venezuela, and the most distant lands. In the diocese of Rome he personally began the canonical visitation and had the clergy reformed by Niccolò Ormaneto, a trusted man of Carlo Borromeo. He appointed apostolic visitors for the extraterritorial sees of the Papal States, the Kingdom of Naples, and Upper Italy. The provincial synods of Borromeo in Milan became the model for numerous other provincial synods, both within and outside Italy. Pius V rigorously denied dispensations from the obligation of residence to bishops and parish priests and placed the greatest importance on the appointment of zealous bishops, for whose examination he appointed on 3 May 1567 a delegation of three archbishops. The 21 cardinals he created were chosen with strictly ecclesiastical criteria. With the energetic reform of the Penitentiary (1560) and with the establishment of the Congregations of the Index and of Bishops, he continued the reform of the curial authorities, which had been set aside by the Council of Trent.
With the publication of the Roman Catechism (1566), the reformed Roman Breviary (1568), and the Roman Missal (1570), as well as with the establishment of a commission for the revision of the Vulgate (1569), he responded to the desires expressed by the Council of Trent. On 11 April 1570 he declared St. Thomas Aquinas a Doctor of the Church. On 1 Oct. 1567 he condemned the 79 theses of Michael Baius. He vigorously reinvigorated the Roman Inquisition, which had grown lax under Pius IV; among others, Pietro Carnesecchi and Aonio Paleario were executed as heretics.
From the point of view of Church politics, the pontificate of Pius V is distinguished by continuous tension with the sovereign of the greatest Catholic power, Philip II, on account of the ecclesiastical demands of the royal patronage and the requests for money for the Spanish Church; only with difficulty did the nuncio in Madrid, Giambattista Castagna, avoid a complete rupture. During the second and third French Wars of Religion, the Pope supported the French Catholics with subsidies and military aid; insufficiently informed of events, he also approved the conduct of the Duke of Alba towards the insurgents in the Netherlands. He disapproved, however, of the relationship between Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and Bothwell, but could not prevent the collapse of Catholicism in Scotland after the queen was imprisoned. On 25 Feb. 1570 he excommunicated Queen Elizabeth of England and absolved English Catholics from the oath of allegiance. The difficulties with Emperor Maximilian II were particularly caused by this ruler’s unclear religious stance towards Protestantism and his leniency towards the Protestant Austrians. The Emperor protested against the Pope’s ratification of Cosimo I’s appointment as Grand Duke of Tuscany (5 March 1570). The greatest political achievement of Pius V was the formation of the Holy League against the Turks with Venice and Spain, whose fleet, under the command of Don John of Austria and Marcantonio Colonna, won a naval victory at Lepanto on 7 Oct. 1571, which broke the preponderance of the Turkish fleet in the Mediterranean. The Pope, of whom Carlo Borromeo said that for a long time the Church had not had a better or holier head, died on 19 May 1572. He was first buried in the chapel of St Andrew in St Peter’s, from where his remains were transferred on 9 Jan. 1588, under Sixtus V, to the chapel of the Nativity in Santa Maria Maggiore. On 19 May 1672 he was beatified by Clement X and on 22 May 1712 Clement XI canonized him. His feast is celebrated on 5 May.