POPE ST PIUS V’S STRICTLY "VEGAN" LIFESTYLE

POPE ST PIUS V’S STRICTLY "VEGAN" LIFESTYLE

Saint Pius was a man of sterling quality: he was a person who was serious, methodical and very rigorous. The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church understood this immediately, when the newly elected Pope brusquely refused the proposal of organising a party for his rise to the Papal throne.

THE FOOD OF THE DOMINICAN MONKS THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES

Also his food was very simple: at the Pontifical Court, the food which the new Pope wanted to be put on the table, day after day, was connected to his being part of the Dominican Order, which adopted a strict and prohibitive diet: no meat, no dairy products, no eggs, and this was for three hundred and sixty five days of the year!

REFUSING TO BE DOMINATED BY THE HUMAN PALATE

He himself was reluctant to eat all those foods which were too agreeable or elaborate. One of his favourite dishes was bread cooked with olive oil. This was made of stale bread, garlic, oil, salt and pepper.

FOR 55 YEARS

During his final illness, St Pius V, notwithstanding physical weakness, wanted to observe the Lent in its entirety. One of his domestics, seeing him so debilitated, had the wild chicory he habitually ate, seasoned with some meat sauce. As soon as the Pope had noticed this he showed himself very displeased: ‘Do you wish, my friend,’ he said ‘that for the few days I have left of my life, I will transgress the law of abstinence which I have observed inviolably during the course of 55 years?'”

(This article was published in “De Vita Contemplativa” Year VII, Number 5, May 2013. [Headings added.])

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