Robert Bellarmine

Who they were

Robert Bellarmine was born at Montepulciano on 4 October 1542, went to the new Jesuit school there, and in 1560, overcoming his father's resistance, joined the Society of Jesus. He studied at the Roman College, taught at Florence and Mondovì, studied theology at Padua and Louvain, and was ordained on 25 March 1570.

After seven years teaching at Louvain he was called to Rome in 1576. His Controversies, first published in 1586, set out the biblical and patristic foundations of every truth the Protestants denied, and were reprinted twenty times in thirty years. He became cardinal and bishop, and died on 17 September 1621, the feast of St Francis's stigmata, having been born on St Francis's day.

The miracles

His cause opened in 1622; he was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1931. The miracles examined are not described in the sources we have used.

Why that counted as sanctity

Bellarmine gave his great learning to setting out the foundations of the Catholic faith, and taught that we cannot begin to live in God without first dying to the world.