On May 31, barely a month into his new pontificate, Pope Leo XIV posted on X: “Together, we will rebuild the credibility of a wounded Church, sent to a wounded humanity, within a wounded creation. We are not yet perfect, but we must be credible: our lives must be transparent, visible, and credible!” The English language post garnered 32,000 likes. In a time of low institutional trust, this statement likely seemed to many a breath of fresh air. But the Church has been wounded before, notably during the Counter Reformation, as the Catholic Church worked to restore its credibility after an era marked by division and corruption. In this time of upheaval, a Portuguese bishop, Bartholomew of Braga, Portugal, sounded a note similar to Pope Leo’s. The sixteenth century in which he lived and worked has important parallels to our own: Many are struggling to discern between truth and error, many distrust the institutions that are supposed to protect them, and new technology is upending the way humanity understands the world and our place in it. Providentially, in 2022, St. Augustine’s Press published a short English translation of a work by this influential man, also known as St. Bartholomew of the Martyrs. Entitled Stimulus Pastorum (A Charge to Pastors), it is part commentary on the Scriptures and the early Church Fathers and part practical how-to guide for his fellow bishops. It is also a blueprint for a truly transparent, visible, and credible Catholic Church in a moment when the world is crying out for it. Translator Donald S. Prudlo has made it accessible to English-speaking Catholics for the first time.
Prudlo’s thorough introduction gives the reader context to understand the man born Bartholomew Fernandes in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1514. It is also a brief intellectual history of Stimulus Pastorum. Prudlo begins by explaining that Pope Francis canonized St. Bartholomew in 2019 via a lesser-known path to sainthood. Known as equipollent canonization, it is more or less a de facto recognition of a holy life that waives the miracle requirement. It doesn’t carry the rights and privileges of a formal canonization but nevertheless constitutes formal papal recognition that Bartholomew was “a great evangelizer and pastor of his people,” in Francis’ words. He remains relatively unknown, but as a bishop, St. Bartholomew was an influential and outspoken advocate for episcopal reform at the Council of Trent. He was eager for true pastors to take up the role of bishop at a time when the office was often held by power-hungry careerists and unqualified men from noble families. The Stimulus Pastorum began during the council as something Prudlo calls “a systematic collection of passages from significant writers,” a private work that St. Bartholomew compiled principally for himself as a source of personal direction and spiritual encouragement. Bartholomew was to serve as a crucial mentor to another great reformer, St. Charles Borromeo, to whom he gave a copy of Stimulus Pastorum when the future saint asked for advice on being a bishop. St. Charles in turn would recommend it to others. Four hundred years later during Vatican II, Pope Paul VI arranged for a copy to be given to every bishop in attendance.
Readers should view the work as something to sit with and meditate upon, as well as a work to consult and a guide for the perplexed.
The idea that a bishop should cast his lot in with those in his care is not a new one. In his first letter to the Colossians, St. Paul speaks as a pastor who is, through his own suffering, “filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” But the idea of pastors having a special charge to repair the Church takes on particular resonances in different eras. During the Counter Reformation, St. Bartholomew of Braga took it up in a way that is instructive to his own time and ours.
Certainly, lay Catholics can profit from Bartholomew’s erudition as he explicates passages from St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Gregory the Great. But Bartholomew holds pastors—and especially bishops—to a high standard. They are to strike the right balance between the contemplative and active lives, careful not to remain so lost in prayer that they retreat from the needs of their diocese. After all, he writes, “Lot was holy among the Sodomites, and yet when he found himself alone on the mountain he was incestuous.” An unsettling comparison, to be sure. Bartholomew takes his admonitions still further with a stark warning from St. Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule. “Whoever received gifts from God in order to be a pastor,” Bartholomew summarizes, “These gifts are ordinarily withdrawn from him if, when called, he refuses to come; for such gifts are not only given for themselves, but also for others.”
St. Bartholomew contends that bishops most effectively share their gifts through carrying out their primary duty: pastoral visits. He has a lot of practical advice for bishops about delegating various duties to subordinates and prudently appointing the right priests to the right jobs. And yes, of course, maintaining an active prayer life sustained by spiritual reading is vital for a bishop to stay rooted in Christ in the administration of his duties (and he is clear that bishops must be rooted in Christ). But St. Bartholomew is adamant that there is one thing that a bishop and only a bishop can do—namely, visiting the parishes in his care. “All are your sheep,” he writes. “An apostolic bishop must often visit the various parishes, to resolve cases and remedy scandals, which can only be removed by his presence.”
St. Bartholomew attributed great power to the office of bishop, which due to its apostolic nature he understood to come directly from God as a distinct calling from the priesthood. Accordingly, he approached the episcopacy with fear and trembling. Prudlo writes in his introduction that Bartholomew “marveled that anyone would even desire such an office.” If they truly understood the awesomeness of the responsibility entrusted to them, prospective bishops would shrink from the “heavy responsibility for souls” that “placed the holder in such proximate danger of damnation.” By the same token, Bartholomew was unflinching in his warnings to derelict bishops. “The blood of souls abandoned by their pastors cries out to heaven for vengeance,” he said in an address at the Council of Trent.
Although the saint deftly maneuvers between spiritual and practical advice, there is quite a lot of it. A bishop earnestly desiring to put Bartholomew’s words into action word for word might feel a little overwhelmed. However, remembering that Stimulus Pastorum is at least in part devotional in nature, readers should view the work as something to sit with and meditate upon, as well as a work to consult and a guide for the perplexed.
Prudlo does more than translate St. Bartholomew. He makes clear in his introduction that he understands clearly what the saint was all about, and he conveys to the reader with his translation the fresh urgency that would have accompanied Bartholomew’s words for his contemporaries. Part of that sense of proximity is also attributable to the reality in the Church today. Even amid a spate of trend pieces about how Catholicism is cool right now (I’ve even written one myself!), there are still many Catholics who feel let down by Church leaders, whether it’s lingering hurt from the abuse scandals, conflict in their own communities over liturgical practices, or something specific to their own individual experience. Today, many US Catholics are looking hopefully to the first of their countrymen appointed to the Chair of St. Peter. It cannot be coincidental that, for the first time, they and their leaders can read in their own language the plaintive charge of St. Bartholomew of the Martyrs. Our previous pontiff clearly thought St. Bartholomew was a saint for our times. Prudlo has made it possible for Church leadership in the anglophone world to see what generations of their predecessors considered invaluable advice for troubled times.
In a foreword by Donald A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma, Konderla likens his encounter with St. Bartholomew as making a new friend. “It is a blessing when you meet someone and in the midst of the ensuing conversation you realize that they are wise and honest and humble,” he writes, “And that you have much in common, though they are clearly your superior and mentor.” From this small volume, which speaks to us now in plain English from hundreds of years ago, Catholics of every station in life can more fully appreciate the responsibility entrusted to their bishops, who can sometimes seem like remote figures who show up from time to time to give a talk or confirm some young people. Stimulus Pastorum makes clear the dreadful, staggering stakes of the Church’s mission, which is nothing less than the fate of the world.