St. Charles Borromeo, bishop (November 4th)

 

Of the Saints and Feast Days celebrated this week:

Nov. 3rd - St. Martin de Porres, Religious

Nov. 4th - St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop

Nov. 9th - Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran

I’ve decided to write this week about  St. Charles Borromeo.

The future St. Charles Borromeo was born on October 2, 1538 at the Borromeo Castle by Lake Maggiore in Arona, Italy to one of the most ancient and wealthiest families in Lombardy (in northwestern Italy).  

His father was Count Gilbert Borromeo, his mother was Margaret Medici (yes of the famous / infamous Medici family of Florence), her brother was Giovanni Angelo Medici who became Pope Pius IV.  

After the future St. Charles Borromeo as the second son of the family was designated by his family to be its family’s priest, his uncle, the Pope…, made him Cardinal.

The early life of the future St. Charles Borromeo was thus very, very comfortable.

In fact, it is worth noting that Pope St. John XXIII, who walked this earth four centuries later and about whom I wrote about a month ago was also from the same part of northern Italy as St. Charles Borromeo but was born into entirely different circumstances.  

As I wrote then, while the future Pope St. John XXIII was born into a poor family. And yet being born in the 19th century, was able to receive the education needed to become eligible to be considered for admission into the seminary, and then the rest followed … In centuries past, the priesthood was reserved largely to the middle class, and the bishopics to say nothing of the papacy were reserved to the upper classes / aristocracy.

AND YET, there is a link … Much of what the future St. Charles Borromeo did in his life, including radically reforming and improving the seminary system for the formation of priests, helped make the born to a poor family, but merit based ascendancy of the future Pope St. John XXIII possible.

But back to the future St. Charles Borromeo: 

He could have lived a very comfortable life, and many of his contemporaries born into similar circumstances and populating the various prestigious bishopics of his time did.  The future St. Charles Borromeo, however, chose, and repeatedly, a different path.

His first break with expectation came when his older brother Federico unexpectedly died.  The family begged him to petition for laisation – to step down from the clerical state – so that he could get married, have children and continue the family name.  

He refused, thus ending his line of the House of Borromeo.

Then after he was appointed as the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan (to this day one of Italy’s foremost cities) during a famine / plague from which the civil authorities _ran_, he _stayed_ with the sick of the city, and with his family’s fortune he fed 50,000-70,000 people a day, bankrupting his inheritance, nearly bankrupting the diocese, but kept the city’s people alive.

Many will know that he also became a very important figure in the Council of Trent’s reforms, notably of the education of the priesthood.  

At the time, he was doing for the sake of the Church: In face of challenges by Protestant Reformers who had given up on the Catholic Church, he became convinced that the Church could not continue its evangelical and ministerial functions without a better formed, indeed professional, clergy.  

But with the education of the clergy came, eventually, the education also of the laity, producing as I already wrote above the future Pope St. John XXIII, but really helping to produce the world that we know today.  

Again, it would have been _so easy_ for the future  St. Charles Borromeo to choose to live a comfortable life.   But he did choose to take to heart Jesus’ words to “choose the narrow path” … and because of this we have both a great saint, and a better world, to this day, as a result.

And what a legacy he left us and the Church ...