Saint Pius X, Pope

Giuseppe Sarto was born in 1835 at Riese in the Veneto, the son of a village postman. He served as a curate and parish priest, then became bishop of Mantua and in 1893 patriarch of Venice. Elected pope in 1903, he took the motto “to restore all things in Christ”. He encouraged frequent communion and allowed children to receive it from the age of reason, about seven; he reformed church music, began the first code of canon law and reorganized the Roman Curia. In 1907 he condemned the movement called Modernism, and the measures against it were harsh. He died on 20 August 1914, weeks after the outbreak of the First World War. He was canonized in 1954.