Saint Who?
Saints Who Promoted Marian Devotion
Saint Robert Bellarmine
Bishop and Doctor of the Church († 1621)Feast: September 17
“Every great man in the Church has been most devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary.” Robert Bellarmine was born in 1542 to a noble but impoverished family. He joined the Jesuits at eighteen and was ordained a priest ten years later. He served as a bishop and cardinal, and is best remembered as a major force in the Counter-Reformation. The Holy See dubbed him “the prince of apologists.”
Bellarmine was deeply Marian. A keen proponent of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, he preached about it and urged the Holy Father to formally define it as dogma. As a cardinal, he had his entire household go to confession and receive Holy Communion on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, as well as those of the Annunciation and Assumption. He wrote a twenty-stanza poem in Mary’s honor: “Virgin most innocent of any stain or fault, make me more worthy of God.”
Bellarmine’s devotion to the rosary should come as no surprise. A biographer notes that “the beads were…his constant companion,” and he found in them a source of refreshment. He prayed the rosary with such intensity that during his final illness the doctor forbad him from doing so. Only when Bellarmine pleaded did he relent. He died in 1621 and was canonized in 1930.
Beloved Father, through the intercession of Saint Robert Bellarmine, may we find refreshment in the rosary.
