Saint John XXIII
Pope
(1881–1963)
Saint John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on November 25, 1881, at Sotto il Monte in the Bergamo province of Lombardy, was the fourth of thirteen children of a poor farming family. He was ordained a priest in 1904 and served as secretary to the Bishop of Bergamo, as a military chaplain and stretcher-bearer during the First World War, and as a Vatican diplomat in Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and France before being appointed Patriarch of Venice in 1953 and created a Cardinal.
When he was elected Pope in October 1958 at the age of seventy-six, he was widely expected to be a caretaker pope who would maintain continuity after the long and demanding pontificate of Pius XII. Instead he shocked and electrified the Catholic world by announcing, just three months after his election, his intention to convoke an Ecumenical Council, the first since the First Vatican Council nearly a century earlier. The Second Vatican Council, which he opened in October 1962 and which would be completed by his successor Paul VI, was the most significant event in the Catholic Church in the twentieth century.
He governed the Church with a warmth, simplicity, and pastoral accessibility that won hearts everywhere. He made pastoral visits to hospitals and prisons, received visitors from every religion and nation with equal courtesy and warmth, and communicated a profound optimism about the Church's capacity to speak to the modern world. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, he appealed personally to both President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev for restraint, and his message was credited by some with helping to defuse the crisis.
He died of stomach cancer on June 3, 1963, with the words Ut unum sint, that they may be one, on his lips, the prayer of Jesus for the unity of His disciples. He was beatified together with Pius IX by Pope John Paul II in 2000 and canonised together with John Paul II by Pope Francis in 2014. His feast is celebrated on October 11th.