Editor's Note: Mary Lou Gibson writes about saints for the West Texas Angelus. Her first column appears in the May 2014 issue.
By Mary Lou Gibson
Cardinal Angelo Roncalli never got to use his return train ticket from Rome to Venice in November 1958. Instead he was making plans for his first Mass as the new pope. He was in Rome with the other cardinals who had convened to elect a new pope after Pope Pius XII had died after a long papacy (1939-1958). To his absolute surprise, the cardinals chose Cardinal Roncalli to be the next pope. Biographer Paul Burns writes in “Butler’s Lives of the Saints” that the cardinals regarded Roncalli as a “transitional” or “short term” pope because of his age at 77. He chose the name John because he wanted to imitate the Baptist who made straight the path of the Lord.
The new Pope John XXIII came from humble beginnings. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was the fourth of 14 children born to sharecroppers in Sotto il Monte, a village in the foothills of Piedmont on November 25, 1881. His early education was at the village school, followed by the diocesan seminary and finally at San Apollinare Institute in Rome where he earned a doctorate in theology. After his ordination in 1904, he served as a hospital orderly in World War I and then as a military chaplain.
When World War I ended, he worked at the library of the Ambrosiaum in Rome where he met Cardinal Ratti, who later became Pope Pius XI in 1922 and appointed Roncalli archbishop. The new archbishop took on many different diplomatic assignments in the next several years. He was appointed Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria in 1925 and to Turkey and Greece in 1935. He lived in Istanbul during World War II.
Pope Pius XII sent Archbishop Roncalli to France as Papal Nuncio in 1944. One of the most difficult problems he faced as the Pope’s representative there was to negotiate the retirement of bishops who had collaborated with the German occupying power. Roncalli was also involved in various efforts during the Holocaust to save refugees, mostly Jewish people, from the Nazis. These included Slovakian children, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian Jews as well as the orphaned children of Transnistria on board a refugee ship (http://wn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII). Then in 1953, Archbishop Roncalli was made Cardinal Patriarch of Venice.
Pope John XXIII began his papacy by being very visible in Rome. He walked about freely and visited the sick and prisoners. These actions earned him the nickname of “Good Pope John.” Unlike many previous popes, Pope John had many years of experience of the world outside the Vatican and continued his custom of traveling outside Rome.
The Pope was receiving reports on problems of the Church around the world and he began planning for “a council.” His intention, according to Burns, was to address the historic splits in Christianity between East and West, between Catholic and Reformed traditions. To start this process, Pope John approved the establishment of a Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity in 1960. He followed this by calling for the immediate consecration of 13 indigenous bishops in the Church in Africa in 1960. He also removed the age-old charge of “deicide people” against the Jews in the Good Friday prayers.
Pope John went ahead with plans for the Second Vatican Council knowing there was opposition to the idea from his own advisers in the Roman Curia. Up to this time, there had been 21 general “ecumenical” councils in the history of the Catholic Church, according to author George Weigel. Pope John wanted his Council to be pastoral and evangelical rather than juridical and dogmatic, Weigel wrote in “Witness to Hope.” In the Pope’s mind, the Second Vatican Council would renew Christian faith as a vibrant way of life.
When the Council convened in September 1962, Pope John thought it would last a few months, but instead it continued for over four years. He lived only to see the first of the council’s four sessions completed. Many important reforms came from the Second Vatican Council such as the Mass said in the vernacular rather than in Latin. The Council brought a stronger emphasis on ecumenism and a new approach to the world. Burns wrote that Pope John saw the Church as inward rather than outward-looking when he began his papacy. He wanted to make the message of the church acceptable to the whole world. His intention was “Let us come together. Let us make an end of our divisions.”
In his encyclicals, Mater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher)and Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), Pope John wanted to break down barriers to show the relevance of Christ to the world. The Pope’s health declined in the first half of 1963 and he died on June 3, 1963. Rosemary Guiley writes in “The Encyclopedia of Saints” that some at the Second Vatican Council wanted to canonize Pope John by acclamation as had been the practice in the early centuries of the Church. Instead, Pope Paul VI ruled that the canonization process for Pope John XXIII and Pius XII would begin for both. Pope John XXIII was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2000, the first pope since Pius X to receive this honor. The cause for Pius XII has been dropped. Woodward reported that there have been more than 20 unexplained healings credited to Pope John XXIII’s intercession.
Author Desmond O’Grady wrote about Pope John XXIII’s involvement in world affairs. He stated that during the Cuban missile crisis (1962), Pope John managed to ease the tension between the Kennedy administration and the Khrushchev regime. He traveled widely outside Rome and broke the tradition of the pope as “prisoner of the Vatican.” (http://www.americancatholic.org/messenger/Nov1996/feature1.asp)
Mary Lou Gibson is an Austin-based writer. Her columns also appear in the Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the Diocese of Austin.