St. Joseph Calasanctius

St. Joseph Calasanctius, more commonly known today as Joseph Calasanz, was born in 1557 at Peralta de la Sal in the Aragon region of Spain, the youngest son of a local nobleman. Educated in law and theology at Spanish universities, he was ordained a priest in 1583 and served ably in several Spanish dioceses, but in 1592 he left promising prospects at home and went to Rome, where he joined confraternities devoted to catechesis and to the care of the sick and poor. Walking Rome's poorest quarters, Calasanz was struck by crowds of children left in ignorance and idleness because their families could not pay for schooling. When existing institutions declined to take on their education, he acted himself: in 1597, at the church of Santa Dorotea in Trastevere, he opened what is widely regarded as the first free public school in modern Europe. Enrollment grew explosively, and to staff the schools he gathered a community of priests, which in 1617 became a religious congregation and in 1621 a religious order, the Clerks Regular of the Pious Schools, known as the Piarists. His final years were shadowed by heavy trials. Ambitious men within the order intrigued against him, he was briefly summoned before the Inquisition, and in 1646 the Holy See, misled by accusations, reduced the order to a mere association of priests. Calasanz, then nearly ninety, bore the apparent ruin of his life's work with a patience contemporaries compared to Job's, confident that God would restore it. He was also a man of broad learning who maintained a respectful friendship with Galileo, sending Piarists to study with him. He died in Rome on August 25, 1648; the order was fully restored within a decade of his death and flourishes today in the education of the young. Joseph Calasanz was beatified in 1748 and canonized in 1767 by Pope Clement XIII. In 1948 Pope Pius XII declared him the heavenly patron of all Christian popular schools. His feast is celebrated on August 25, and his relics are venerated at the church of San Pantaleo in Rome, the motherhouse of the Piarist order.