St. Anthony Zaccaria

St. Anthony Zaccaria was born in Cremona, Italy, in 1502, and was raised by his young widowed mother, who formed him in compassion for the poor. He studied medicine at the University of Padua and returned to Cremona to practice as a physician. Caring for the sick soon convinced him that souls needed healing as much as bodies: he began teaching catechism, took up the study of theology, and was ordained a priest in 1528. According to early accounts, angels were seen surrounding the altar at his first Mass—a tradition his biographers relate as a sign of the fervor that marked his priesthood. Moving to Milan, Zaccaria threw himself into the reform of a Church badly in need of it in the years before the Council of Trent. In 1530 he founded the Clerics Regular of St. Paul, a congregation of priests dedicated to preaching, the sacraments, and the renewal of clergy and laity alike; from their motherhouse at the church of St. Barnabas in Milan they became known as the Barnabites. He also helped found the Angelic Sisters of St. Paul, a congregation of women religious, and a group of married laypeople devoted to holiness in ordinary life—a strikingly complete vision of reform touching every state of life. His spirituality centered on the Eucharist and on St. Paul, whose letters he preached constantly. He is credited with promoting the Forty Hours devotion of solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and with encouraging the ringing of church bells at three o'clock on Friday afternoons in memory of the Lord's death. Exhausted by his labors, he died on July 5, 1539, in his mother's house in Cremona, only thirty-six years old. Anthony Zaccaria was beatified in 1890 and canonized in 1897 by Pope Leo XIII. His remains are venerated in the crypt of the Church of St. Barnabas in Milan. His feast is celebrated on July 5, and he is honored as a patron of physicians, remembering his first vocation.