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Biography

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Peter of Morrone, known in Italian as Pietro da Morrone and later as Pope Celestine V, was born Pietro Angelerio around 1215 at Sant'Angelo Limosano in Molise, then in the Kingdom of Sicily. He came from a peasant family and was one of several children. After his father's death, his mother encouraged a religious vocation. In youth he entered the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria in Faifoli in the diocese of Benevento and was later ordained a priest. Seeking a stricter life, he withdrew as a hermit to Monte Morrone in the Abruzzi, from which he took the name by which he became known, and afterward lived in still greater solitude on Monte Maiella.

His reputation for holiness and severe asceticism drew disciples, and a community formed around him that followed the Rule of Saint Benedict with added fasts and austerities. This congregation, later called the Celestines, received papal approval in the thirteenth century, including confirmation of its observance under Pope Gregory X. Peter founded or inspired hermitages and monasteries in the mountains of central Italy and became one of the most renowned holy men of the region, sought out by clergy and laity. He remained personally attached to eremitical life even as the order grew.

In 1294, after a conclave lasting more than two years following the death of Pope Nicholas IV, the cardinals elected the elderly hermit as pope, in part as a compromise and under the influence of Charles II of Naples. He took the name Celestine V and was crowned at L'Aquila in the basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio. Untrained in curial administration and ill at ease with the political demands of the office, he relied heavily on the Angevin court. During a pontificate of about five months he created cardinals, granted privileges to his order, and issued a constitution affirming that a pope might resign. On 13 December 1294 he abdicated.

His successor, Boniface VIII, fearing that the former pope might become a rival or a tool of opponents, had him detained. Celestine was held at the castle of Fumone in the Papal States and died there on 19 May 1296. He was buried first at Ferentino and later translated to Santa Maria di Collemaggio in L'Aquila, where his relics remain. Pope Clement V canonized him in 1313. His feast is kept on 19 May. He is venerated especially at L'Aquila and remembered as a model of eremitical holiness whose brief, reluctant papacy became a lasting reference point for the possibility of papal resignation.

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