Pope John XXIII
John XXIII was elected pope at seventy-six as a caretaker and summoned the council that changed the Catholic Church. Born Angelo Roncalli in 1881 to a family of sharecroppers in Bergamo province, one of thirteen children, he was ordained in 1904 and served as a stretcher-bearer and chaplain in the First World War. He spent most of his career in the diplomatic service in places the Vatican considered marginal — apostolic visitor to Bulgaria for ten years, then Turkey and Greece. In Istanbul during the Second World War he used his position to help Jews escape, issuing transit documents and baptismal certificates, and intervening with the Bulgarian king. The numbers are disputed and run into the thousands. He was sent to Paris as nuncio in 1944 to handle the delicate business of bishops who had collaborated with Vichy, and did it with far fewer dismissals than de Gaulle demanded. He was made Patriarch of Venice in 1953 and expected to end there. Elected in October 1958 after eleven ballots, he announced within three months that he would convene an ecumenical council — the first in ninety years, and taken by the curia as a shock. The Second Vatican Council opened in 1962 and produced the vernacular liturgy, a new relationship with other Christian churches, religious liberty, and the repudiation of the charge of deicide against the Jews. His encyclical Pacem in Terris, issued after the Cuban Missile Crisis, was addressed to all people of good will. He died of cancer in 1963.
- Lived: 1881 CE – 1963 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: pope, head_of_state
