St. Philip Neri

Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595), affectionately called the Apostle of Rome, was a priest whose cheerfulness, humility, and personal warmth helped renew the spiritual life of the city in the era of the Catholic Reformation. Born in Florence on July 21, 1515, he received his early formation from the Dominicans of San Marco. After briefly working for a merchant relative, he abandoned the prospect of a business career and went to Rome around 1533, where he lived simply as a tutor, studied philosophy and theology, and spent long nights in prayer. For years Philip served God as a layman, visiting the sick in hospitals, talking with ordinary Romans in the streets and shops, and drawing them gently toward prayer and the sacraments. Tradition relates that while praying in the catacomb of San Sebastiano on the vigil of Pentecost in 1544, he experienced an extraordinary infusion of the Holy Spirit that left a lasting physical effect on his heart, an experience that marked his intense and joyful devotion for the rest of his life. In 1548 he helped found a confraternity to care for poor pilgrims and convalescents, work that flourished in the Holy Year of 1550. At the urging of his confessor, Philip was ordained a priest in 1551. He became a tireless confessor, spending hours each day in the confessional, and gathered laymen and clerics for informal afternoon meetings of prayer, Scripture, discussion, and music. These gatherings, held in a room called the oratory, grew into the Congregation of the Oratory, a community of secular priests living without vows, which received papal approval in 1575. The musical settings composed for its devotions gave the world the name of the oratorio. Philip's sanctity was clothed in humor and deliberate self-mockery; he distrusted solemnity in himself and used jokes and odd behavior to deflect admiration and to teach humility. Beneath the playfulness lay deep mystical prayer, love of the Eucharist, and shrewd spiritual direction that made him the counselor of popes, cardinals, and the poor alike. He died in Rome on May 26, 1595, after a full day of hearing confessions. Philip Neri was beatified in 1615 and canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, in the same ceremony as Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Isidore the Farmer. His feast is kept on May 26, and he is honored as a patron of Rome and of Christian joy and humor. His body rests in the Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Vallicella) in Rome, the church of the Oratory, where pilgrims still visit his chapel and rooms.