03 September - Gregoire or Gregory I, known as the Great, is the 64th Pope of the Catholic Church. Gregory was born in Rome around 540. His father, Senator Gordian, is administrator of one of the seven districts of Rome. Two of his sisters are honored saints (Tharsilla and Æmiliane), and he had Pope Felix III among his ancestors. His mother, Sylvie, is also honored as a saint.
He is educated in the climate of cultural renewal brought about in Italy by Pragmatica sanctio, and excels in the study of grammar, dialectics and rhetoric. In 572, he was appointed Prefect of the city, which allowed him to learn about public administration, and thus became the first magistrate of Rome. Around 574-575, he decided to consecrate himself more radically to God, transforming the family home on Mount Caelius into a monastery dedicated to St. Andrew and adopting monastic life as a way of life. Having inherited great wealth on the death of his father, he founded six monasteries in Sicily.
Gregory was ordained a deacon by Pope Pelagius II before being sent to Constantinople as apocrisiary (permanent representative). He goes there accompanied by a few brothers, and will reside there until the end of 585 or the beginning of 586. It was in Constantinople that he wrote his most important exegetical work, the Expositio in Job.
On his return to Rome, Gregory resumed monastic life. He also acted as secretary and adviser to Pelagius II. The latter died of the plague on February 7, 590. Gregory "was elected pope by the unanimous acclamation of the clergy and the people. He tried to escape, even appealing to the emperor, but to no avail. He was consecrated Pope in St. Peter's on September 3, 590. Throughout his pontificate, there was an important administrative reform in favor of rural populations, as well as the restructuring of the patrimony of all the churches of the West, in order to make them "witnesses of evangelical poverty and instruments of defense and protection of the agricultural world against any form of public or private injustice.
The most important gesture of Gregory I in relation to evangelization was the sending on mission in 596 of St. Augustine of Canterbury, accompanied by forty monks from the monastery of Mount Caelius, to restore Christianity in Great Britain. Indeed, under the empire, Brittany had been somewhat Christianized, but the Saxons had invaded the island and pushed the Breton Christians westward.
Gregory I died on March 12, 604 and is buried in the portico of St. Peter's Church in Rome. Fifty years later, his relics were transferred under an altar, which was dedicated to him, inside the basilica, making his holiness official.
Gregory left many writings in various fields: a large number of letters, commentaries and homilies on the Word, and a few other writings. The Registrum epistolarum is composed of 814 letters divided into 14 books, corresponding to the years of the Gregorian pontificate (590-604). The Expositio in Job or Moralia in Job is his most important exegetical work. Begun in Constantinople, first in the form of interviews intended for the brothers of his community, then continued in the form of dictation, it was reorganized and completed in Rome, around 595. It consists of 35 books. Gregory's liturgical reform is described in the Book of the Sacraments. The Pastoral Rule (Regulæ pastoralis liber), addressed to John IV, Archbishop of Ravenna, deals in four books with pastoral life, the government of souls, preaching, and the spiritual life of the pastor.
