Saint of the Day, May 26

Saint Philip Neri (1515–1595), 'the Apostle of Rome,' walked the streets of the eternal city for sixty years with a joke on his lips, a saint to almost every great figure of the Counter-Reformation. He founded the Oratory — communities of secular priests living in common without vows — and revolutionized the spiritual direction of laymen through informal evening gatherings of music, scripture and conversation that gave the world the musical form called the oratorio. His humility was so radical and his hilarity so contagious that he was called pazzo per Cristo, 'a fool for Christ.' Goethe judged him 'the humorous saint.'