† St. Joseph Mary Tomasi † (January 1)

† Saint of the Day †

(January 1)

✠ St. Joseph Mary Tomasi ✠

Scholar, Reformer, and Cardinal:

Born: September 12, 1649

Licata, Kingdom of Sicily, Crown of Aragon

Died: January 1, 1713 (Aged 63)

Rome, Lazio, Papal States

Venerated in: Roman Catholic Church

Beatified: September 29, 1803

Pope Pius VII

Canonized: October 12, 1986

Pope John Paul II

Feast day: January 1

Patronage: Catholic liturgy

Saint Joseph Mary Tomasi, was an Italian Theatine Catholic priest, scholar, reformer and cardinal. His scholarship was a significant source of the reforms in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church during the 20th century. He was beatified by Pope Pius VII in 1803 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1986.

In Renaissance times Cardinals were usually accustomed to living rather splendidly. Not all of them were worldly, however. St. Joseph Tomasi, for instance, was a model of the simple life.

If any man was justified in courtly bearing, it was Tomasi. His father was the Duke of Palermo, Sicily. But this Duke and his Duchess Maria were also unusually devout Christians. The Duke founded a Benedictine convent, in which his four daughters became nuns, and he and his wife eventually parted to become tertiaries in a religious order.

Joseph, well-educated and a good Greek scholar, entered the Theatine order of priests in 1664. Because he was frail of the constitution, he was delegated to a career of study. After ordination to the priesthood in 1673, he was assigned to the Theatine house in Rome, and there he was to spend the next three decades.

As Fr. Joseph’s reputation for scholarship spread, he became particularly noted as an expert on church music and liturgy. Impressed by this mounting fame, his nun-sister Isabella, with whom he was very close, is said to have predicted that he would end up a down-to-earth cardinal. But Isabella added, “Of course a horse is still a horse, however fine its trappings.”

Joseph would then have waved aside any such prediction. But he certainly was a workhorse in his spiritual and intellectual life. To his heavy schedule of prayer, he added a disciplined career of study. His skill at Greek led him into a profound analysis of Greek philosophy. Finding Hebrew a key language for bible studies, he studied Hebrew under a Jewish rabbi (who through his example was led to become a Christian). Gradually Tomasi began to issue important tracts on ancient Christian liturgy. Out of modesty, he published one of these tracts, on the Book of Psalms, under the pen name Giuseppe Caro. But when Pope Innocent XII became aware of the book and the identify of its author, he called him to the Vatican in 1704, naming him the official theologian of the Congregation in charge of religious orders. Cardinal Francis Albani chose him as his personal confessor. When Albani was elected pope as Clement XI (1700), he fulfilled Joseph’s sister’s prediction by naming him to the cardinalate, despite his protestations of unworthiness.

Now his official duties in the Vatican Curia multiplied. But Cardinal Tomasi still remained a workhorse despite the cardinality trappings. He continued his modest lifestyle. In the church assigned to him, he devoted himself to its liturgical life, replacing figured music with the Gregorian chant, and he personally taught the children catechism. Despite his declining health, he continued his own policy of self-denial, yet he was the most commonsense of spiritual counselors. The people loved him and flocked to him. Seeing him sometime in an ecstasy of prayer, they called him a saint while he yet lived, and there were reports that those who touched his clothing had been cured.

Cardinal Joseph Tomasi died in January 1713. Now the reports multiplied of miracles granted through his intercession. Beatified in 1803, he was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1986. A liturgical scholar long in advance of his time, “Thomasius” is venerated by Anglicans as well as Catholics as “the prince of liturgists.”

~ Father Robert F. McNamara