Before becoming pope, St. Gregory worked closely with five other popes. His name was Hildebrand, and he was born in Tuscany in about 1021. He then went to Rome, where he became a monk, probably at Santa Maria on the Aventine. When Pope Gregory VI (1045–46) was forced into exile (1046), Hildebrand accompanied him to Germany. When Pope Leo IX (1049–54) was elected, he called Hildebrand to Rome and made him treasurer of the Roman Church. Pope Leo and his successor Pope Victor II (1055–57) both used Hildebrand for special papal missions. Hildebrand subsequently worked closely with Pope Nicholas II (1058–61) and Pope Alexander II (1061–73), and after Alexander’s death, he himself was elected pope on April 22, 1073, by popular acclaim. Pope Gregory was a man of exceptional ability and sought to promote reform within the Church by renewing decrees against clerical marriage and simony, and to abolish lay investiture, that is, secular control over the appointment of bishops and abbots. When Emperor Henry IV of Germany (reigned 1056–1106) ignored the pope’s orders and appointed bishops, Gregory excommunicated (1076) him and forbade him to exercise royal powers. Gregory reconciled him to the Church only after the emperor had submitted at Canossa (January 1077). When Henry later (March 1084) seized Rome, Gregory was forced to go south to Salerno, where he died on May 25, 1085. Today’s prayer speaks of the courage and the love of justice that distinguished Pope Gregory, and thus it recalls what are said to be the pope’s final words: “I have loved justice and despised iniquity, and because of this I die in exile.”
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