SIXTUS V.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 193, 8 December 1876, Page 8

SIXTUS V.

1 1 We read in Percy's Anecdotes the following chapter in the life of Pope Sixtus V., who filled with such wisdom and courage the Chair of Peter, and who, in spite of a haughty nobility and turbulent populace, restored order throughout the States of the Church. Father Michael Angelo Selleri, a Franciscan friar, going in the beginning of February, 1531, to preach during the Lent session at Ascoli, lost his way near Le Grotte, and coming to a point where four lanes met, could not tell which, one to take. As he was looking around for somebody to direct him, a little boy, wljo was attending a herd of swine, came running forward and tendered his services. The friar cheerfully accepted them and asked him the road to Ascoli. " I'll soon show you the way thither," replied the boy, and immediately began to run before him. As they went along, the answers the urchin gave to Father Michael's questions were so smart and pertinent, and accompanied with so much good humor, that the friar was quite charmed with him, and could not conceive how a child who had no higher employment that looking after hogs should have such a share of sense and good manners. When Father Michael got into bis road again, he thanked Felix for his trouble, and would have dismissed him with a reward, but he kept running forward, without seeming to take notice of what he said, which obliged the friar to ask him in a jocose manner whether he desired to go with him to the town. " Yes," said the boy, " not only to Ascoli, but to the end of the world, with, a

great deal of pleasure;" and upon this he took occasion to tell the friar that the poor circumstances of his parents would not allow them to send him to school, as he desired ; that he earnestly wished somebody belonging to a convent would take him as a waiting-boy, and he would serve him to the utmost of his power provided he would teach him to read. To try the boy a little further, Father Michael asked him if he would take upon him the habit of the order ? Felix, for that was the boy's name, immediately answered that he would; and though the friar set forth to him in the most frightful colors all the mortifications and austerities he -would be obliged to undergo, he boldly replied, " he would willingly suffer anything, if he would make him a scholar." The priest, surprised at his courage and resolution, thought ho must be under a. superior inspiration, andresolved to take him along with him. He told him, however, first' to conduct his hogs back to his master, and come to meet him at the convent of Ascoli. " The hogs," said he, " will find theiy way home when night comes on." The friar yielding, they continued their journey, and arrived at Ascoli in the evening. The fraternity received the preacher with great civility, but were surprised to see him attended by a ragged boy. Wh^n he told by wha.t accident he picked him up, and with what extraordinary zeal he had followed him thither, the warden had the curiosity to send for and ask him several questions. The replies which young Felix made were such that he appeared even more extraordinary than Father Michael had represented him to be.Such an examination, before such a reverend community might well have disconcerted a person of riper years, but Felix answered without any hesitation, and with an air of truth and simplicity that could not be suspected of any artifice or contrivance. Everything, he said, tended to persuade them of his call, and of the ardent desire he had to become a preacher of the Gospel, if they qualified him for it. The whole brotherhood, convinced that the hand of God unmistakably appeared in the affair, conjured the warden not to overlook so remarkable an interposition of Providence when his attention to it might be the means of raising up a man that would, perhaps, prove an honor to their order. • The brotherhood argued rightly. The poor ragged boy who thus accidentally obtained an introduction into their community rose afterwards to the Papal Chair, under the title of PopeSixtua V.