Pope John XIII

Pope John XXIII

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born in 1881, the third of thirteen children in a peasant family in Sotto il Monte, near Bergamo. The family was "so poor the children had no wine." "There are three ways of ruining oneself -- women, gambling and farming. My father chose the most boring."

Angelino was a bright boy and was sponsored for an education at the Bergamo seminary, which carried out a severe religious training. "I really must humble myself at my own worthlessness. If only I could do at least this! I think of myself as a seraph and instead I am only a little Lucifer in my pride, and worse."

When Roncalli was ordained, in 1904, the Church was fearful and inward-looking. In 1871, with the loss of the papal states to the modern nation of Italy and the restriction of Vatican sovereignty to its current borders, Pope Pius IX had proclaimed himself a "prisoner of the Vatican" and taken a defensive stance toward the modern world. In his decree Non expedit ("it is not expedient"), he had forbidden Italy's Catholics from taking any part in national politics. Pope Pius X (reigned 1903 - 1914) took this isolating trend further by undertaking a purge of "Modernists", especially biblical scholars who used modern textual criticism, driving many intellectuals from the Church.

Roncalli's first assignment as a priest was as secretary to the new Bishop of Bergamo, Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi. Bishop Radini-Tedeschi was a reformer who sought to re-involve the Church in the world. He was staunchly pro-labor, and founded organizations for working women (with his able secretary at the head) and sided with the union during a local iron-worker's strike. The elegant aristocratic bishop and his rotund peasant secretary ("my miserable body is growing fat and heavy") were inseparable for ten years.

In August of 1915 it was discovered that Radini-Tedeschi had cancer, and he was told that he did not have much longer to live. "I had never seen him cry that way," Roncalli wrote. Within a few months his beloved Radini-Tedeschi died, Pope Pius X died (to be succeeded by Benedict XV), and Italy declared war on Austria and Germany, entering World War I.

Roncalli was called up to serve in the medical corps. He put on the army uniform and, in what he later described as "a moment of weakness on my part", grew himself a fat bristly moustache. After the war he had a variety of assignments, including teaching patristics at the Pontifical Athenaeum of the Lateran. Something went wrong here; after only three months he was relieved of his post, consecrated a bishop, and sent as papal emissary to Bulgaria. His brilliant career was over.

Bulgaria is a mostly Orthodox country with a small minority of Catholics; the Vatican hadn't felt it necessary to send an emissary there in six hundred years. Roncalli's life there was difficult. "My ministry has brought me many trials. But, and this is strange, these are not caused by the Bulgarians for whom I work but by the central organs of ecclesiastical administration. This is a form of mortification and humiliation that I did not expect and which hurts me deeply." He made dozens of recommendations that were never followed and spent months trying to found a seminary which would never be built. The one recommendation that the Pope followed, to appoint a Bulgarian as exarch for the Byzantine-rite Catholics, left Roncalli with no pastoral duties to perform.

After ten years of frustration in Bulgaria, Roncalli got a new assignment, as delegate to Turkey, another long-neglected outpost. He was there when World War II broke out, and he devoted himself to the care of refugees, especially Jews. He obtained transit visas to Palestine for some; to others he issued baptismal certificates that would enable them to pass as Christians, with the understanding that no baptisms need be performed. Chaim Barlas of the Jewish Agency's Rescue Committee wrote: "to the few heroic deeds which were performed to rescue Jews belong the activities of the apostolic delegate, Monsignor Roncalli, who worked indefatigably on their behalf." Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Jerusalem wrote: "Through [Roncalli] thousands of Jews were rescued."

The end of World War II turned Roncalli's career around. The papal nuncio to France, Valerio Valeri, had collaborated with the Vichy government, and De Gaulle insisted that Valeri must go. The Vatican had to find a suitable replacement, and fast; if they didn't send a new nuncio in time for the traditional New Year's greeting to the President, the greeting would be given by the next-highest ranking ambassador, Aleksandr Bogomilov of the Soviet Union. Suddenly Roncalli's very obscurity was an advantage; no-one knew of anything to object to in him. He was appointed nuncio to France in time to give the New Year's greeting of 1945. Robert Schuman, the French premier, said of him: "He is the only man in Paris in whose company one feels the physical sensation of peace."

In 1953 Roncalli was made a cardinal and appointed patriarch of Venice. His address to the diocesan synod (1957) gives a glimpse of the future pope: "Authoritarianism suffocates truth, reducing everything to a rigid and empty formalism that is dependent on outside discipline. It curbs wholesome initiative, mistakes hardness for firmness, inflexibility for dignity. Paternalism is a caricature of true fatherliness. It is often accompanied by an unjustifiable proprietary attitude to one's victim, a habit of intruding, a lack of proper respect for the rights of subordinates."

Pope Pius XII died on October 9, 1958, and the conclave began two weeks later. Roncalli was elected on the twelfth ballot, taking the name John XXIII. It was rumoured that the top choice was really Giovanni Battista Montini; but he was considered unelectable because he was not yet a cardinal (John made Montini a cardinal immediately after becoming Pope.) Many believed that John had been elected as a papa di passagio, a transitional pope. He was seventy-seven years old.

His first public address was to the leaders of nations: "Look at the people entrusted to you and listen to their voices. What do they seek? What do they implore of you? Not these new monstrous instruments of war which our times have produced and which can annihilate us all -- not these, but peace." He then went to the Holy Office (charged with guarding against heresy) and looked up his own file. There was a note attached to it: "suspected of Modernism." This is why his career had been ruined thirty years before.

Pope John called the Second Vatican Council to achieve the aggiornamento ("updating") of the Church. "Though everyone said they wanted peace and harmony, unfortunately conflicts grew more acute and threats multiplied. What should the Church do? ... Instead of issuing new warnings, shouldn't she stand out as a beacon of light? What could that exemplary light be?" The first session of the Council dealt with liturgical reform and voted to allow Mass to be said in the vernacular; and proposed a reactionary, divisive schema defining the sources of revelation. When the schema was rejected by slightly less than the needed two-thirds majority of the bishops, John intervened personally to order a new commission to redraft it. By the end of the first session, he was dying of stomach cancer.

"I consider it a sign of great mercy shown me by the Lord Jesus that he continues to give me his peace, and even exterior signs of grace which, I am told, explain the imperturbable serenity that enables me to enjoy, in every hour of my day, a simplicity and meekness of soul that keep me ready to leave all at a moment's notice and depart for eternal life."

On November 27, 1961, he suffered a massive intestinal hemorrhage. The Vatican press office issued a report that he had a bad cold; rumours flew around Rome that he was already dead. But he rallied, and his tough peasant constitution enabled him to survive another six months. Pope John XXIII died June 3, 1963. He was succeeded by Cardinal Montini, who took the name Paul VI and supervised the completion of the Second Vatican Council, in 1965.