November 4th. St. Charles Borromeo.

He was born in 1538 in Northern Italy in a family surrounded by favours and privileges. These included not only the revenues of the local abbey, but a whole series of honours heaped on him by his uncle, Cardinal de Medici, Pope Pius IV. At the age of 22, for example, he was a Cardinal (though not a priest), administrator of the Diocese of Milan and to all and intents and purposes Papal Secretary of State. When Pius IV convoked the final session of the ongoing Counter-Reformation Council of Trent, Charles Borromeo threw himself into its work with zeal, as if casting off all hints of the old regime. He was inspirational in the fields of doctrine and catechism, discipline, and liturgy. In 1564 he was ordained priest and in 1566 made Bishop of Milan; as a sign of how bad things had become, he was the first Bishop to live in the diocese for 80 years. He saw the need for a well-educated clergy, living properly spiritual lives, and enlisted the support of new religious Orders to help him. Equipped with special shoes, he visited remote Alpine parts of his diocese which others had ignored. His generosity to the poor and to victims of hunger and plague was so noteworthy as to cause envy and he was even the target of an assassination attempt. Never one for relaxing, he died in 1584 at the early age of 46, and was canonised as early as 1610. As the model of a committed and self-denying pastor, the present Pope has acknowledged his debt to him.