The period was particularly rich in social workers, especially those who used Christianity as the basis by which to enable men to help themselves. One of the greatest of these, whose influence so lives on even in our own time that Cardinal Newman loved to speak of him as his beloved Father Philip, was Philip Romolo Neri (1515-1595), better known as St. Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome. He proved a rather brilliant scholar as a young man, but when a successful {182} business career was opening up for him he gave it all up and in 1533 arrived in Rome without any money, without having informed his father of the step that he was taking and after having deliberately cut himself off from the patronage of an uncle who had resolved to make him his heir. For a while he tutored and wrote poetry and Latin and Italian, and then studied philosophy at the Sapienza and theology in the school of the Augustinians. When he was about thirty he became the close friend of St. Ignatius Loyola, and many of the young men that gathered round him, because of his attractive, amiable character, found a vocation for the intellectual and spiritual life in the infant Society of Jesus. In 1548, together with his confessor, he founded the confraternity of the Most Holy Trinity for the care of pilgrims and convalescents in Rome. Its members met for communion once a month and there was exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, a practice which was introduced by Philip. He sometimes preached even as a layman, and in 1551, at the command of his confessor, for nothing short of this would have overcome his humility, he entered the priesthood. He devoted his attention particularly to men and boys and succeeded in making them close personal friends. In the midst of this work priests gathered round him, and finally Gregory XIII recognized the little community as the Congregation of the Oratory. Pope Gregory XIV, who had previously been a great personal friend of Philip's, would have made him a cardinal only for the saint's great reluctance. His little band of oratorians, among whom the most conspicuous was Baronius, the Church historian, did wonderful work in Rome and many other houses of this congregation came into existence. Few men that ever lived had so much influence over all those who came in contact with him as St. Philip Neri, and it is this personal influence that characterized the work of his congregation in the after-time. Newman and Faber and many of the distinguished converts of the Tractarian movement in England became members of the Oratory, and St. Philip's work has come down to our generation through them with very wonderful success. His career represents another example of the marvellous power of the {183} men of this time to create things of all kinds which influence all succeeding generations.