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(Feast day May 19th) 
(also known as Peter Celestine V) Born at Isernia in the Abruzzi, Italy, c. 1210-1214; died near Anagni, on May 19, 1296; canonized in 1313 by Pope Clement V. Peter was the 11th of 12 children of a peasant family. He became a hermit at age 20, but left his cell to study for the priesthood and was ordained in Rome. Later he professed himself as a Benedictine monk at Faizola in 1246. Then, in 1251, he was permitted to return to the solitary life on Monte Morrone in the Abruzzi hills near Sulmona. His holiness attracted large crowds around him. After five years, he retired with two companions to Monte Majella in quest of greater solitude but was persuaded to go back to Monte Morrone, where he lived for many years as the head of a group of hermits that he organized first into a community and later into a monastery with a strict rule. In 1274, he received approval of his order of monks, the Celestines. In 1287, Morone began the construction of Santa Maria di Collemaggio Basilica in Aquila. After the death of Pope Nicholas IV over two years passed without any agreement on a successor, until on July 5, 1294, the cardinals gathered in Perugia despairingly sought to end the deadlock by electing a 'stop-gap': their choice fell on the 84-year-old Peter of Morrone. (One source says that Peter reputedly threatened the cardinals with the wrath of God if they did not elect a new pope at once.) Peter was shocked by the cardinals' choice. Despite his grave misgivings he submitted, taking the name of Celestine, and was consecrated bishop of Rome at Aquila on August 29, 1294. The results were disastrous because Celestine was unfitted for the papal office in every respect except his holiness. In his simplicity, otherworldliness, and naivete he made the most elementary blunders; he became the innocent tool of the politics of King Charles II of Naples. Heartbroken at his failure, miserable in his new surroundings, and overwhelmed by the burden of the office he had not sought and was incapable of filling, he abdicated his office before a consistory of cardinals at Naples on December 13 the same year. He had been pope for less than five months. A few days later the stern and rigid Cardinal Gaetani was elected as Boniface VIII in his place. Boniface feared that the popularity of his holy predecessor might lead some plotters to attempt to use Celestine for their own ends, put him back on the papal throne, and cause a further split in Christendom. The old man tried to slip away to the mountains or across the seas, but he was found and at Boniface's orders shut up in narrow quarters at the castle of Fumone, near Anagni. Saint Celestine said, "I wanted nothing in the world but a cell, and a cell they have given me." Ten months later he died, and was buried at Aquila, the most pathetic figure in the history of the papacy (Attwater, Ayscough, Benedictines, Delaney). In art, Saint Peter Celestine is depicted as a pope with a dove at his ear and the devil trying to disturb him. He is the patron of bookbinders For the Most Forgotten Soul O Lord God Almighty, I beseech Thee by the Precious Body and Blood of Thy divine Son Jesus, which He Himself on the night before His Passion gave as meat and drink to His beloved Apostles and bequeathed to His Holy Church to be the perpetual Sacrifice and life-giving nourishment of His faithful people, deliver the souls in purgatory, but most of all, that soul which was most devoted to this Mystery of infinite love, in order that it may praise Thee therefor, together with Thy Divine Son and the Holy Spirit in Thy glory for ever. Amen.
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