Saint Philip Neri, Priest

Philip Neri was born in Florence in 1515 and at eighteen went to Rome, where for years he lived as a layman, tutoring and teaching himself, visiting the sick and speaking with young men in the streets and shops. He led pilgrimages to the seven great churches of Rome that became a kind of joyful procession. Tradition holds that one night in 1544, praying in the catacomb of San Sebastiano, he felt his heart filled with a ball of fire.

Ordained in 1551, he gathered people in a room above a church for prayer, Bible reading, talks and music; from this “oratory” came the Congregation of the Oratory, approved in 1575, and the musical form named after it. He was famous for his humor. He died on 26 May 1595 and was canonized in 1622.