Pope St. Leo IX

Pope St. Leo IX was born Bruno of Egisheim on 21 June 1002, of a noble family of Alsace, and served as bishop of Toul before being chosen pope in 1049. He is reckoned the first of the great reforming popes whose labors prepared and launched the movement later called the Gregorian Reform, aimed at freeing the Church from corruption and from the domination of secular lords.

Rather than governing from Rome alone, Leo traveled tirelessly across Italy, Germany, and France, presiding at synods that condemned the two great evils of the age: simony, the buying and selling of church offices, and the marriage and concubinage of the clergy, and deposing unworthy bishops. He gathered around him a circle of gifted reformers, including the future Pope Gregory VII, who would carry on his work. His pontificate was clouded at its close by the conflict with the patriarch of Constantinople that led, in 1054, to the tragic and lasting schism between the Churches of East and West. He died in Rome on 19 April 1054 and is venerated as a saint, his memory kept on that day.