Pope St. Pius V, The Battle of Lepanto And The Rosary

Sounds like a great movie in the making......ah...but in this PC infected world we live in, it'll probably never happen.

Culminating the RCIA program at the Saturday Night Vigil, the night when converts are accepted into the Catholic church, one needs to choose a famous biblical name, preferably a saint, to be confirmed under. I chose Pope St. Pius V.

I chose Pope St. Pius V because of his leadership in the fight against the Ottoman Empire, which helped prevent Christians from becoming Muslim slaves in the great Battle of Lepanto in the 16th century. He created the Holy League which was an alliance formed in Europe to prevent the spread of the Protestant movement, but more importantly, the spread of Islam by the Turks and the Ottoman Empire.

The Battle of Lepanto was the greatest naval battle in history at the time, defeating the Ottoman Empire and severly crippling the Turks' strength in a future war that saw the crushing defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the Gates of Vienna in 1683.

Pope Pius V, in the last year of his papacy in 1571, tried to rally the nations of Europe to join in a Holy League to stop and roll back the Muslim enemy which threatened the entire continent. Spain, whose King Philip II was also King of Austria, responded favorably. The Muslims were then engaged in the conquest of Cyprus, an island belonging to the Republic of Venice.

Leading Venetian officials would have preferred to have worked out some peaceful-coexistence agreement with the Sultan, but under the crusading influence of Saint Pius V, they decided to join the Holy League along with the republics of Genoa and Lucca and the dukes of Savory, Parma, Ferrara and Urbino.

The Papal fleet was of course part of the Holy Alliance. Pius V asked Philip to appoint Don Juan of Austria, the 25-year old son of Emperor Charles V, as commander-in-chief of a planned expedition against the Muslims. After receiving the banner of the Holy League from the Pope, through Cardinal Granvalla, Don Juan's fleet set sail from Genoa for Naples on June 26, 1571.

Few historians mention that just before the departure, Philip II presented Don Juan with a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe which she had caused to be miraculously imprinted on the cloak of the Indian peasant Juan Diego in Mexico 40 years before. Don Juan placed the picture in the chapel of the admiral-vessel, the Genoese John Andrew Doria, asking for Mary's protection of his expedition.

On September 16, the Christian fleet put to sea. Don Juan anchored off of Corfu where he learned that the Muslims had leveled entire towns and villages and then retreated to the coast of Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth.

At dawn on October 7, at the entrance to the Gulf of Patras, the Christian and Muslim fleets finally came face to face for the battle of Lepanto.

The wind and all military factors favored the Muslims, but Don Juan was confident. He boarded a fast ship for a final review of his fleet. He shouted encouraging words to the men and they shouted back. After Don Juan returned to his own position, the wind mysteriously changed to the advantage of the Christian fleet. First-hand witnesses wrote about this moment as a most dramatic turn-of-events resulting from an "unknown factor".

At that very moment, at dawn on October 7, 1571-- as Vatican Archives later revealed--Pope Pius V, accompanied by many faithful, was praying the Rosary in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. From dawn to dusk the prayers continued in Rome as the Christians and the Muslims battled at Lepanto. When it was all over the Muslims had been defeated. Of some 270 Muslim ships, at least 200 were destroyed. The Turks also lost 30,000 men while Christian casualties numbered between 4,000 and 5,000.

The Rosary had won a great military victory. Like all truly great military leaders who hate war and love peace, Don Juan retired after his victory at Lepanto. He died a few years later at the age of 31. Another who took part in the great battle of Lepanto, Miguel de Cervantes, lived longer to write his famous tribute to Christian chivalry, Don Quixote.

Also among St. Pope Pius V's contributions that were the most important works to the church were his restoration of the Roman Missal to the ancient rite usage in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and promotion of St. Dominic’s devotion to the Rosary with the pious recitation of the fifteen mysteries as well as living his life serving and helping the poverty stricken and the ill/severly ill.

Read more about the Battle of Lepanto here.......