Saint John XXIII

He did not read a lofty theological address. He looked down with a father’s love at the crowd gazing up at him and spoke words so simple that they moved millions of hearts inside and outside the Church:

“Dear brothers and sisters, when you go home tonight, give your little children a hug and a caress, and tell them: This is a hug from the Pope for you!”

That speech, which the Italian press later called the “Discorso della Luna,” the moonlight speech, sums up Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, whom people of every religion still fondly call “the Good Pope,” Il Papa Buono.

When he was elected to the chair of Saint Peter at seventy-seven, observers almost all agreed that he would be only a “transitional Pope,” a safe choice that would give the cardinals more time to settle on the real successor. But moved by what he believed was the Holy Spirit, this elderly Pope made a decision that changed the face of the Catholic Church in modern times: he convened the Second Vatican Council. “Throw open all the windows of the Church,” he once said, “so that the fresh breeze of the Holy Spirit may rush in and renew the face of the Church in the heart of today’s world.”

Little Angelo grew up poor: eating corn porridge, walking barefoot in muddy fields and working beside his parents like a grown man from childhood. But the house was full of faith and family warmth. His uncle Zaverio, a devout bachelor, became his first teacher and planted in the boy a love of prayer and a deep attachment to parish life.

With the help of local benefactors (not unusual in Italy then, when noble families or local clergy often paid the school fees of gifted peasant boys), Angelo entered the minor seminary of Bergamo at eleven. He was a hardworking, humble, cheerful seminarian, so honest that his classmates found him almost naive.

At fourteen he began keeping a spiritual diary, later published as “Journal of a Soul” (Giornale dell’Anima). He kept it for nearly seventy years, right up to his last days, and it shows a steady, persistent effort to live in union with God through the simplest things of every day rather than through great achievements.

In 1901, he was sent to Rome to study theology at the Apollinare. His studies were interrupted for a year of military service as an ordinary soldier, in uniform and living in barracks. It was an unusual experience for a seminarian, and one that would come back far more harshly thirteen years later. On August 10, 1904, Angelo Roncalli was ordained a priest in the church of Santa Maria in Monte Santo, in the heart of Rome. The next morning, celebrating his first Mass in the crypt of Saint Peter’s, above what is believed to be the tomb of the chief of the Apostles, he quietly offered his whole life to the service of the Church. No one then, not even he, could imagine how far that road would lead.

In his ten years in Bulgaria, from 1925 to 1934, he patiently overcame a great deal of suspicion and slowly built a sincere, brotherly friendship with the local Orthodox bishops, work that called for tact and perseverance more than authority. In 1934 he became Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece, where most people were Muslim or Orthodox and Catholics were a tiny minority.

In 1944, just after France had been liberated from fascist occupation, he was unexpectedly appointed Apostolic Nuncio in Paris. It was an extremely delicate post in a deeply divided country, as France dealt with those who had collaborated with the Vichy regime, among them a number of bishops. With his simplicity, humility, good humor and scrupulous fairness, he quickly won the goodwill of French politicians of every persuasion.

In 1953, Pope Pius XII made him a cardinal and appointed him Patriarch of Venice. At seventy-two he must have thought he would spend his old age in peace beside the lovely canals of that famous city. He lived among the people of Venice, went by gondola to visit poor parishes and threw open the doors of his residence to anyone who wanted to see him, whoever they were.

When he stepped out onto the balcony of Saint Peter’s to greet the world for the first time as Pope, commentators almost all predicted that a Pope of seventy-seven would be a safe “transitional” choice, with a short reign in which nothing much would happen.

What followed surprised them all. Right after his coronation he began breaking one rigid custom after another that had bound the Vatican court for centuries. He went on foot to visit poor parishes in the heart of Rome. He visited the Bambino Gesù children’s hospital and sat down beside the beds to comfort each sick child. And on Christmas 1958, only two months after his election, he walked into Regina Coeli prison in Rome, something no Pope had ever done.

Standing among the stunned prisoners, the good Pope smiled and said:

“You could not come to see me, so I had to come to see you myself... I had a brother who was once in prison, so I understand very well what is in your hearts!”

Hundreds of prisoners burst into tears and fell on their knees at his feet.

He summed up the Council’s purpose in one short Italian word: “Aggiornamento,” renewal, bringing up to date. As he saw it,

• the Church must not shut itself up like an isolated fortress, afraid of the world outside;
• the Church must throw open its windows and speak with the modern world in the language of kindness and hope, instead of using harsh condemnations as it had done with many new currents of thought in the past;
• and the Church must actively promote the ecumenical movement, seeking to heal the centuries-old divisions with its Orthodox and Protestant Christian brothers and sisters.

On October 11, 1962, the Second Vatican Council solemnly opened in Saint Peter’s Basilica, with more than two thousand five hundred bishops from every continent, one of the largest gatherings of bishops in the history of Christianity. In his famous opening address, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia (“Mother Church rejoices”), John XXIII bluntly rejected the “prophets of doom,” who saw nothing in the modern world but darkness and decay. On the contrary, he said, God is leading humanity into a new order full of hope, and the Church must walk alongside it rather than stand outside and criticize.

In April 1963, already in pain from advanced stomach cancer, he issued one of the most influential encyclicals of the twentieth century, “Pacem in Terris” (Peace on Earth). It was the first encyclical addressed not only to Catholics but to “all people of good will,” a sign of the spirit of dialogue he pursued all his life. True peace, he wrote, must rest on four pillars: truth, justice, love and freedom.

By the last days of May 1963, the cancer had reached its final stage. From his sickbed in the Vatican he could look out on Saint Peter’s Square, where tens of thousands of people knelt in prayer for him day and night. He whispered his last words:

“My journey is over... But the work of the Council must go on! May all be one — Ut unum sint... Lord, You know how much I have loved You!”