Saint John XXIII

Saint John XXIII (born November 25, 1881, Sotto il Monte, Italy—died June 3, 1963, Rome; beatified September 3, 2000canonized April 27, 2014; feast day October 11) was one of the most popular popes of all time (reigned 1958–63), who inaugurated a new era in the history of the Roman Catholic Church by his openness to change (aggiornamento), shown especially in his convoking of the Second Vatican Council. He wrote several socially important encyclicals, most notably Pacem in Terris.

Early life and career

Angelo was one of 13 children born to Giovanni Roncalli, a tenant farmer of Sotto il Monte, a tiny village 7 miles (11 km) from the Lombard city of Bergamo. The Roncallis were poor but not nearly as destitute as some later legends would have it. “We had the necessities of life,” the pope used to say testily, “and we were strong and healthy.” Though Angelo, the third child and oldest son of the family, went off to prepare for the priesthood as a child of 11, he continued to spend vacations with his family and remained close to them throughout his life.

No matter how powerful he became, however, he never helped any of the other Roncallis to advance in the world. “The world is only interested in making money…,” he wrote to his brother Xaverio after becoming pope. “A great honour has come to our family,” he acknowledged, but he urged Xaverio and the others to remain humble, seek no honours or preferments, and take no material advantage of their relationship to the pope. “At my own death,” he concluded, “I shall not be denied the praise which did so much honour to the holiness of Pius X: born poor, he died poor.” In his last will he bequeathed each of the living members of the family a legacy of less than $20—his total personal fortune.

Angelo the churchman, however, was destined to spend most of his life among the powerful and cultivated. Inevitably, that set him apart from the other Roncallis almost from the beginning. While still a seminarian, he was already beginning to feel out of place in Sotto il Monte, where he was charged with priggishness and “putting on airs.” “Only three days of the holidays have passed and already I am weary of them,” he recorded in the diary that he allowed to be published after his death. He was eager, he wrote, to return to Bergamo, with its orderly life of study, prayer, and genteel fellowship, and to escape from the petty gossip, suspicion, and jealousies of the village.

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Roncalli was not an especially brilliant student. He did well enough, however, to be sent to Rome for theological studies in 1900. After only one year at the Seminario Romano, his education was interrupted when he was drafted into military service and assigned to an infantry company conveniently stationed at Bergamo. Later, as a priest, he returned to the army during World War I. Again he served in Bergamo, first as a hospital orderly and later as a military chaplain with the rank of lieutenant.

Even with the time out for military service, he was not yet 23 when he was ordained a priest in Rome on August 10, 1904. The next day he said his first mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. After a visit to his family in Sotto il Monte, he returned to the Seminario Romano for further study. Eventually he received a doctorate in canon law.

As a graduate student in Rome, Roncalli took the first step that was to lead to the papacy a half century later. Simply because he was a priest of Bergamo, he was asked by the reigning pope, Pius X, to assist in the ceremony of consecration for a new bishop, Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, who had been appointed to take over the diocese of Bergamo. The new bishop, a member of the Italian nobility, was much taken by the young priest and asked him to serve as his secretary.

Back in Bergamo, Don Angelo, in addition to his secretarial duties, was assigned to the faculty of the diocesan seminary. For the next nine years he served as a professor of theology and spiritual director of the young men preparing for ordination. As the bishop’s right-hand man, he gained a wide range of pastoral experience.

Roncalli had great esteem for his superior, who was known as the most progressive prelate in Italy. After the bishop’s death in 1914, he wrote an appreciative biography of the prelate and sent a copy to the pope, Benedict XV, who had been one of Radini-Tedeschi’s personal friends.

With the war behind him, Roncalli was summoned to wider service in the church. In 1920 Pope Benedict, recalling Radini-Tedeschi’s biographer, named him a director of the Italian organization for the support of foreign missions. The position was not notably significant in a church top-heavy with dignitaries, but it brought him into personal contact with a number of important clerical figures throughout Europe, and his name became recognizable in ecclesiastical Rome. He also gained some attention because of his work as a part-time historian who specialized in some of the minor activities of Saint Charles Borromeo, a cardinal of Milan who played an important role in the 16th-century Counter-Reformation. It was Roncalli’s researches for this project that first brought him into contact with Monsignor Achille Ratti, the Milanese librarian who would become Pius XI.