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JOHN XXIII
(1958-1963)
Angelo Roncalli was born at Sotto il Monte near Bergamo on 25 November
1881, the third of 13 children in a family of peasant farmers.
He was ordained a priest in 1904 and became secretary to his bishop in
Bergamo, lecturing at the same time on church history at the diocesan
seminary. During World War I, Angelo served first as a conscripted
hospital orderly and then as a military chaplain. Because of his
interest in history, especially in St Charles Borromeo (+1584) and his
research at the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Fr. Roncalli came to the
attention of its librarian, Achille Ratti, the future Pius XI
(+1929). It was Ratti, after being elected pope, who launched Angelo
Roncalli on a diplomatic career in the Church, appointing him titular
archbishop of Areopolis and Apostolic Visitor (1925) and then Apostolic
Delegate (1931) to Bulgaria and Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and
Greece (1934). In Turkey he established friendly relations not only
with the government but also with the Orthodox Churches. During the
German occupation of Greece (1941-44), he did what he could to relieve the
distress of the people and, in particular, to prevent the deportation of
Jews. He was appointed Nuncio to France in December 1944, where he
dealt tactfully with a number of difficult problems. While in France,
he also served as the Vatican's first permanent observer at UNESCO. In
1953, Roncalli was named a cardinal with the title of St. Prisca and the
Patriarch of Venice. Upon the death of Pius XII
in October 1958, there were 51 cardinals who gathered for the conclave which
would elect a successor. Only a month short of his 77th
birthday, the affable and jovial Cardinal Roncalli was elected pope on 28
October 1958. He took the name John XXIII, John
being the most frequently used name by popes throughout history. This
elderly pontiff turned out to be anything but a transitional pope. He
left on the Church the mark of a new way of being. He drew near to
people, showing real interest in their problems and suffering. He left
Vatican City to visit the sick and the imprisoned without observing all the
rules and formalities. He would stop and talk to workers and ordinary
people and was fond of saying that work offered to God was in itself a
prayer. In exchange, people immediately gave him such affection and
enthusiasm that is rarely seen. John XXIII took
up and developed the Church's teaching on social policy, while calling the
attention of the nations to the urgency of creating a world climate of
peace. To everyone's great surprise, in 1962, he called Vatican
Council II as a response to the grave problems that
the world was experiencing at that time together with those within the
Church. He was present at the first session of the council but died of
cancer only a few months later (3 June 1963). He was buried in the
crypt of the Vatican Basilica. On 3 September 2000, John Paul
II beatified "good pope John". His incorrupt body was
transferred to the upper level of the Vatican Basilica and placed under the
altar of St. Jerome on Pentecost Sunday, 3 June 2001.
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