John XXIII

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on 25 November 1881 in Sotto il Monte, a rural village in the province of Bergamo in Lombardy, then part of the Kingdom of Italy. He was the fourth of thirteen children of Giovanni Battista Roncalli and Marianna Giulia Mazzola, a family of sharecroppers of modest means. He received his early education locally and entered the Bergamo seminary, later studying at the Pontifical Roman Seminary in Rome, where he earned a doctorate in theology. He was ordained a priest on 10 August 1904. Returning to Bergamo, he served as secretary to Bishop Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, taught church history and apologetics at the seminary, and was involved in Catholic Action and social work among workers. During the First World War he served in the Royal Italian Army as a sergeant in the medical corps and as a military chaplain.

In 1921 Pope Benedict XV appointed Roncalli as the Italian president of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. In 1925 Pope Pius XI consecrated him a bishop and sent him as apostolic visitor, later apostolic delegate, to Bulgaria, a difficult diplomatic posting in a predominantly Orthodox country. In 1934 he was transferred as apostolic delegate to Turkey and Greece, residing in Istanbul. During the Second World War he used his diplomatic position to aid Jewish refugees and others fleeing Nazi persecution, intervening with transit visas, working with the Red Cross, and helping to save thousands of lives, particularly in 1943–1944 as Jews were deported from Hungary and elsewhere. In December 1944 Pope Pius XII appointed him apostolic nuncio to France, where he navigated the sensitive postwar purge of clergy accused of collaboration with the Vichy regime and represented the Holy See in a secular republic.

Created a cardinal in January 1953, Roncalli was simultaneously appointed Patriarch of Venice, a pastoral rather than purely diplomatic role that he exercised with notable simplicity and closeness to the people. After the death of Pius XII, the conclave of October 1958 elected him pope on 28 October; he took the name John XXIII. At seventy-six he was widely regarded as a transitional figure, yet within months he announced his intention to convene an ecumenical council. The Second Vatican Council opened on 11 October 1962, aiming at aggiornamento, or updating, of the Church and at promoting Christian unity. As pope he issued the social encyclical Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963), the latter addressed not only to Catholics but to all people of good will, calling for peace, human rights, and nuclear disarmament. His informal, humorous, and paternal manner earned him the popular title Il Papa Buono.

John XXIII died of stomach cancer on 3 June 1963 in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City, after the first session of the Council. His successor, Paul VI, continued and concluded Vatican II. John XXIII was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 3 September 2000 and canonized by Pope Francis on 27 April 2014, together with John Paul II. His liturgical feast is observed on 11 October, the anniversary of the Council’s opening. He remains widely remembered for his pastoral warmth, his diplomatic work on behalf of refugees, and for launching the most significant Catholic reform council of the modern era.