Pope John XXIII

Life and work

Angelo Roncalli was born to a farming family near Bergamo, Italy, and spent much of his earlier career as a Vatican diplomat, serving in posts including Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece, and as papal nuncio to France after World War II, gaining a reputation for pastoral warmth and quiet diplomatic effectiveness, including efforts to help Jewish refugees during the Holocaust while serving in wartime Turkey.

Elected pope in 1958 at age 76, largely expected by cardinals to be a transitional, low-impact pontificate, Roncalli took the name John XXIII and quickly confounded expectations, announcing in January 1959 his intention to convene an ecumenical council — the first since Vatican I nearly a century earlier — to bring about aggiornamento, an "updating" of the church's engagement with the modern world.

The Second Vatican Council opened in October 1962 with over 2,000 bishops from around the world in attendance, and would go on, across four sessions (the last three after John's death, under Pope Paul VI), to produce sweeping reforms including the use of vernacular languages in the Mass, a renewed emphasis on scripture, new statements on religious liberty and relations with other Christian denominations and non-Christian religions, and a redefined understanding of the church as "the people of God."

John XXIII died in June 1963, only months into the Council's proceedings, but his decision to convene it is widely regarded as the single most consequential act of any twentieth-century pope; he was canonized by Pope Francis in 2014.

In their own words

Spoke of wanting to "throw open the windows" of the church to let in fresh air.attributed, on opening the Council

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Saint John XXIII