St. John XXIII

Farm Family, Priesthood, and War Service

St. John XXIII was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on November 25, 1881, in Sotto il Monte, a village near Bergamo in northern Italy, the fourth of fourteen children in a family of sharecropping farmers. Ordained a priest in 1904, he served as secretary to the bishop of Bergamo and as a seminary professor, and during the First World War he was drafted into the Italian army, serving in the medical corps and as a chaplain.

Diplomat and Patriarch of Venice

Much of his career was spent in the Church's diplomatic service. As apostolic delegate in Bulgaria, and then in Turkey and Greece during the Second World War, he came to know and respect Eastern Christianity and used his position to help Jewish refugees escape the Holocaust. He later served as nuncio to newly liberated France and, in 1953, was named cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, where his pastoral warmth endeared him to the city.

Calling the Second Vatican Council

Elected pope on October 28, 1958, at the age of seventy-six, Roncalli was widely expected to be a brief, caretaker pontiff. Instead, in January 1959 he stunned the world by announcing an ecumenical council. The Second Vatican Council opened on October 11, 1962, setting in motion a far-reaching renewal of Catholic life. His encyclicals Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963), the latter addressed to all people of good will at the height of the Cold War, remain landmarks of Catholic social teaching, and his spiritual journal was published after his death as Journal of a Soul. His simplicity, humor, and fatherly kindness earned him the affectionate title of the Good Pope.

Death, Canonization, and Feast Day

He died of stomach cancer on June 3, 1963, mourned far beyond the Catholic Church. Beatified by John Paul II in 2000, he was canonized together with St. John Paul II by Pope Francis on April 27, 2014. His feast is celebrated on October 11, the anniversary of the Council's opening, and his body rests in St. Peter's Basilica, where pilgrims venerate him as a model of pastoral charity and trust in God.

Significance

Elected at an age when many expected little of him, John XXIII surprised the world by opening the Church to deep renewal through the Second Vatican Council. His warmth, humor, and trust in God showed that kindness and conviction belong together, and his help for refugees and his appeal for peace reached people far beyond the Church. He reminds Catholics that it is never too late for God to do something new through a willing heart.