Blessed Urban V

Blessed Urban V (born c. 1310, Languedoc, Fr.—died Dec. 19, 1370, Avignon, Provence; beatified March 10, 1870) ; feast day December 19) was the pope from 1362 to 1370.

Of noble birth, he joined the Benedictines, later teaching law at Avignon. He became abbot of Saint-Germain, Auxerre, in 1352 and of Saint-Victor, Marseille, in 1361. On Sept. 28, 1362, he was elected successor to Innocent VI and was crowned at Avignon, seat of the papacy from 1309 to 1377.

As pope he helped to restore peace in Italy and began to reform the Avignonese Curia, which in 1365 he planned to reestablish at Rome, despite French opposition. In the same year, the Holy Roman emperor Charles IV visited Urban at Avignon and undertook to escort him to Rome; on June 4 the Pope crowned him king of Burgundy. Urban also felt the reunion of the Eastern and Western churches was urgently important and that negotiations with the patriarch of Constantinople would be facilitated if the papacy were back in Rome. Thus, on April 30, 1367, he left Avignon, arriving at Rome on the following October 15. He installed himself at the Vatican but was destined not to remain there long. Finding most of the churches in ruin, he initiated a program of restoration.

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In October 1369 the Byzantine emperor John V Palaeologus met Urban at Rome, where he confessed the Roman faith and offered to submit the Byzantine Church to Roman supremacy. John’s clergy and people, however, refused to support him, and so the Greek and Latin churches remained separated. Urban failed to achieve a compromise and refused to convoke an Eastern–Western council.

Meanwhile, the Anglo-French war resumed in 1369, and renewed strife in Rome and the Papal States led Urban to decide to return in September 1370 to Avignon.

Urban V was a man of austere life and great piety. As a patron of learning, he founded new universities at Orange, Kraków, and Vienna.