Top photo caption: Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano, Italy, near Rome, Sept. 7, 2026, the eve of the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. CNS photo/Stefano Spaziani, pool
By Courtney Mares, OSV News
ROME OSV News — Pope Leo XIV celebrated his 71st birthday on Sept. 14, but in Vatican City the more significant celebration comes three days later. Sept. 17 marks the Pope’s “name day,” the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine.
Born Robert Prevost, the Pope shares his given name with the 17th-century saint, a Jesuit cardinal and Doctor of the Church who died on Sept. 17, 1621. In southern Italy, it is common to celebrate one’s “onomastico,” or name day, in addition to one’s birthday.
For Pope Leo XIV, the coincidence of a birthday and a name day falling in the same week offers a moment of double celebration, as well as some surprisingly relevant lessons on Church governance, administration, and holiness for a Pope from the saint whose name he has borne for 71 years.
Sept. 17 is and will be an official holiday of Vatican City State for the duration of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate, following a pattern set by his predecessors. The feast of St. George, April 23, was observed as a holiday under Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, while the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, held that place during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger.
St. Bellarmine, canonized in 1930 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1931, was one of the towering theological figures of the Counter-Reformation. Born in 1542 into a prominent Tuscan family and a nephew of a Pope, he entered the Society of Jesus shortly before his 18th birthday. He studied philosophy and theology in Padua and Louvain, focusing on the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church Fathers, and was ordained a priest in 1570.
As the first Jesuit to teach at Louvain, he lectured for seven years before returning to Rome in 1576. There he taught at the Roman College, now known as the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he produced a three-volume defense of Catholic teaching against the Protestant heresies of the era, work that shaped Catholic thought in the years following the Council of Trent.
St. Bellarmine went on to serve as spiritual director to Jesuit students at the Roman College, where he guided St. Aloysius Gonzaga, before becoming Jesuit provincial and cardinal-archbishop of Capua.
Pope Clement VIII named him papal theologian, a consultor to the Holy Office and rector of the College of Confessors at St. Peter’s Basilica, later appointing him Examiner of Bishops. He also mediated theological disputes over grace and was drawn into the controversy surrounding Galileo’s teaching that the Earth was not the center of the universe. In his later years, he turned to devotional writing, producing works including “On the Art of Dying Well.”
Pope Benedict XVI devoted a 2011 general audience to St. Bellarmine, praising how the saint balanced administrative duties with personal holiness, lessons that Pope Leo XIV would likely find applicable to the administrative challenges of the highest office of the Church.
“The burdensome offices of governance did not prevent (Bellarmine) from striving daily for holiness, faithful to the demands of his own state as a religious, priest and bishop,” Pope Benedict said, noting that this fidelity drove St. Bellarmine to preach “assiduously” across Flanders, Rome, Naples and Capua.
Pope Benedict also pointed to a lesson in St. Bellarmine’s life applicable to governance of the Church today, “There can be no true reform of the Church unless there is first our own personal reform and the conversion of our own heart.”
St. Bellarmine’s own writings reflect that same conviction. “Whoever finds God finds everything, whoever loses God loses everything,” he wrote, urging readers to seek the glory of God above wealth, honor or health.
He died in Rome on Sept. 17, 1621. Today his tomb can be visited at the Church of St. Ignatius near the Pantheon, near the remains of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the student he once guided.
“If you have wisdom, may you understand that you have been created for the glory of God and for your eternal salvation. This is your goal, this is the centre of your soul, this the treasure of your heart,” St. Bellarmine wrote. “Therefore consider as truly good for you what leads you to your goal, and truly evil what causes you to miss it.”
Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
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