"...on thy way to Mantua"

The beautiful city of Mantua, in Lombardy, was honored to have as its bishop in the late 19th century none other than Monsignor Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto. As we retrace the steps which led to the struggle against Modernism in this centennial year of Pascendi Dominici Gregis, how much of Saint Pius X's own view of the great war within the Church was shaped by his years in the lacustrine city of the Gonzagas?

As Sarto arrived in Mantua, the diocese was agitated by years of tense relations with the civil government. The state of the diocesan seminary was disastrous, and Bishop Sarto himself filled the most relevant teaching positions in the institution, turning it into (so far as local conditions allowed) a Thomist powerhouse.

It was also in Mantua that Sarto first met Father Gaetano de Lai, then an official in the Roman Curia, whose help would be invaluable in the fight for orthodoxy.

For his efforts in Mantua, Sarto was created Cardinal (and, a few days later, named to the most important ecclesiastical position in his native Veneto). Mantua has had some good bishops since then, as well as some unpleasant ones (and God only knows if it will have fine bishops in the future), but never one so holy and dedicated as the great Sarto.