St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria

St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria was born in 1502 at Cremona in Lombardy and died there on 5 July 1539, only thirty-six years old. He first trained as a physician, earning his degree at Padua, but soon felt called to heal souls as well as bodies and was ordained a priest. He threw himself into the spiritual renewal of a Church weighed down by corruption on the eve of the Catholic Reformation.

In 1530 he founded the Clerics Regular of St. Paul — known as the Barnabites after their church of St. Barnabas in Milan — together with the Angelic Sisters of St. Paul and a lay association, so that clergy, religious women, and lay people might work together for reform. He promoted frequent Communion, devotion to the Eucharist and to the Crucified Christ, and is credited with spreading the Forty Hours devotion and the custom of ringing church bells at three o'clock on Fridays in memory of the Passion. Worn out by his labors and penances, he died young and was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1897.