hostel of the 'Santissima Trinita', mainly for pilgrims, especially  in the Holy Year of 1550. These eighteen early years of praying and drawing people to God were all spent as a layman. Always humble, Philip had no ambition to be ordained. His confessor Fr. Persiano Rosa realised that as a priest Philip could do still more for souls,  through the confessional and at the altar.

       Before becoming a priest, Philip had already gathered round him a sizeable group of companions and disciples. Now as a priest, from 1551, this number was to grow, and from it two distinct but related bodies were to emerge. Philip moved to live with Fr. Persiano Rosa and some other priests who were leading an informal community life together at the church of  San Girolamo della Carita. Here, with his friends, he began to hold meetings in a spare room of the house where he and others gave spiritual talks, and sang simple vernacular hymns. Despite persecutions by those who were jealous of his success, the number of those coming to these informal services grew, as did those who came to him for confession. By 1557, the format of this 'secular Oratory' (as we now call it) was well developed, beginning with mental prayer, followed by three talks, all interspersed with vernacular hymns.

         Although this lay movement preceded the community of priests, Philip's own priesthood was of central importance for the growth of the secular Oratory. The priests with whom he lived, even if not of his own followers, were all holy men and must have been a great support to him, particularly during the first persecution. Still unsure of where he should go, in 1557 Philip made a momentous decision. He and his followers, after reading many inspiring letters from the Jesuit missions, had thought of going to India, to shed their blood for the faith. After consulting with a  Cistercian monk, Philip was told that Rome was to be his Indies. His  thirst for souls was to be realized in Rome, and was to help bring about such a spiritual reformation of that city that he came to be called the second Apostle of Rome.

       From San Girolamo della Carita the story of the Oratory is one of steady growth and solidification, but  little change. Philip declared that he did not wish to found a religious order and indeed he did not found one. Instead,  he gathered round himself a group of likeminded secular priests to help him in his work. The moves that Philip and his new community made between 1564 and 1583 show how much the community of priests depended upon him. In 1558  extra rooms  had been built at San Girolamo for holding the exercises of the secular Oratory. In 1564 he took charge of the newly established Florentine church of San Giovanni, at the insistence of the pope. Philip sent his recently ordained confreres to live there - Fathers Baronius,  Bordini and Fedeli.

      Ten years later the exercises of the Oratory were moved from San Girolamo to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. After only a year some slight  tensions with the Florentines meant that a new place had to be found for the community. Philip himself remained living at San Girolamo all this time, and did not move until actually ordered to do so in 1583, by the pope. While he remained somewhat distant from the communal life of his community, he realised that they needed a secure context in which to pray, to preach and to administer the sacraments. This context was to be the community life of the Congregation of the Oratory which he had been led to bring about under the guidance of the Blessed Virgin, Whom he always asserted was the Oratory's true foundress. 

       The dynamic of St Philip's spiritual life was rather different from that of many other great figures and holy men of this period. His was a very deeply lived interior experience of the abiding presence of God the Holy Spirit. With little success Philip tried to hide his profound spirituality, the sensible warmth of divine love that he always felt, his frequent communications with the Madonna. Philip tried very hard not to be taken for a saint. This explains the 'foolish'  things that we read he did: having only one half of his beard shaved off;  making deliberate mistakes in his Latin;  wearing large white clownish slippers in the sanctuary, and many other absurd antics. Not only did he do such things to make people laugh at him, he also had to try and dampen his own exceptional fervour and devotion in order to get through Mass;  reading aloud from books of jokes before Mass began; playing around with his dog; stopping the Mass just before the canon in order to distract himself with yet more jokes. Despite such attempts to make himself look foolish and unspiritual, people who knew anything saw through his antics and realized that behind the self-deprecating clown was one of the holiest men in Rome.

     St Philip's deliberate humbling of himself, and his penitents, by doing things that seemed foolish in the eyes of the world was an indication of his realisation that the pride and excessive confidence of 'Renaissance man' needed to be cut down to size. This he sought to do by mortification, concentrating more on mortification of the mind than of the body. Renaissance man had to be taught not only to spurn the world but also 'to spurn being spurned' as he was wont to say. The message of joy that Philip preached was an injunction to rejoice in the Lord and not in worldly comforts or rewards.  For Philip, to be dishonoured in the eyes of the world while yet remaining in the love of God, was his greatest joy.

       It was Philip's spirit of joy that attracted to him men and women of all conditions and from all walks of life. It drew nobles from the court. It drew  popes and cardinals. It drew workers from the shops and beggars from street corners. It made our English martyrs go to him for his blessing before returning here as priests to certain martyrdom.  When Philip Neri  died in Rome on 26th May 1595, the city could not contain its joy at having a new patron saint in heaven. The many priests who tried to say a Mass of Requiem for him found themselves including  in it the recitation of the Gloria in excelsis,  by mistake perhaps, but also by instinct. The instinct of all who knew him during his years in Rome was that he was a most remarkable and most lovable saint, albeit a touch eccentric in the eyes of the world. In 1622, after due canonical process, the founder of the Oratory and the second Apostle of Rome, was raised to the altars of the universal Church. 

        After Philip's death, one of his most distinguished sons, Cardinal Baronius, composed the following prayer, which is still frequently said in all the Oratories around the world:

Look down from heaven, Holy Father, from the loftiness of that mountain to the lowliness of this valley; from that harbour of quietness and tranquillity to this calamitous sea. And now that the darkness of this world hinders no more those benignant eyes of thine from looking clearly into all things, look down and visit, O most diligent keeper, that vineyard which thy right hand planted with so much labour, anxiety and peril. To thee, then, we fly; from thee we seek for aid; to thee we give our whole selves unreservedly; thee we adopt for our patron and defender. Undertake the cause of our salvation, protect thy clients; to thee we appeal as our leader, rule thine army fighting against the assaults of the devil; to thee, kindest of rulers, we give up the rudder of our lives; steer this little ship of thine, and, placed as thou art on high, keep us off all the rocks of evil desires, that with thee for our Pilot and our Guide we may safely come to the port of eternal bliss. Amen.