July 5 is the feast of St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria (1502-1539), the founder of the Barnabites — the Clerks Regular of St. Paul — and a reformer of 16th-century Milan. Born at Cremona, he studied medicine at the University of Padua and worked as a physician among the poor of his city before being ordained priest in 1528. He founded the Congregation of the Clerks Regular of St. Paul in 1530, with two companions, at Milan.
The Barnabites — named after their mother church of San Barnaba at Milan — were a new form of religious life: priests living in common without vows, dedicated to preaching, the sacraments, and the education of the young. With the Angelic Sisters of St. Paul, the women's branch he founded with the Countess Ludovica Torelli, and the Laity of St. Paul, the married branch, he gave the Catholic Reformation of Milan its structure. He died at Cremona on July 5, 1539, at the age of thirty-seven.
Anthony was canonized in 1897 by Pope Leo XIII. His body lies in the Church of San Paolo at Cremona, in the chapel of the Barnabites. From Milan, where he founded the order, to Cremona, where he died, the July 5 feast is the feast of the physician who became the priest and the reformer.
