Pope Pius V
Michele Ghislieri was born to a poor family at Bosco in Piedmont in 1504 and entered the Dominican order at fourteen. He spent most of his career as an inquisitor, in Como and Bergamo and then in Rome, where Paul IV made him cardinal in 1557 and Grand Inquisitor in 1558. He was elected pope in January 1566.
As pope he lived like a friar and governed like an inquisitor. He issued the Roman Catechism (1566), the reformed Breviary (1568), and the Roman Missal (1570), which governed Catholic worship for four centuries. Under him the Italian evangelicals Pietro Carnesecchi and Aonio Paleario were executed. He urged the French crown to make no peace with the Huguenots, and he sent troops to fight them.1
On February 25, 1570, Pius issued the bull Regnans in excelsis, declaring Queen Elizabeth I of England a heretic, excommunicating her, and releasing her subjects from their allegiance. Loraine Boettner called it an attempt to “uncrown” her; it failed, but it made every English Catholic a suspected traitor for a generation. Pius organized the Holy League that defeated the Turks at Lepanto on October 7, 1571, and died on May 1, 1572. Rome canonized him in 1712.
