While Pope John Paul II is well known, John XXIII is less well remembered. I decided to learn more about the man and his life when it was announced he would be made a saint alongside Pope John Paul II.
He was born before the start of the US Civil War to poor farmers. He did wonderful things in a quiet way as a priest in keeping with his motto, Obedience and Peace.
Beginning in March of 1925, as an archbishop, he served as a papal diplomat in Bulgaria and assisted the Orthodox churches in rebuilding after an earthquake, During his time as a papal diplomat in Greece and Turkey he worked with Germany's ambassador to assist Jews escaping Nazi rule in Europe. Because of this, he is considered a Righteous Gentile.
When asked after the war, he reasoned: "We are conscious today that many, many centuries of blindness have cloaked our eyes so that we can no longer see the beauty of Thy chosen people nor recognize in their faces the features of our privileged brethren. We realize that the mark of Cain stands upon our foreheads. Across the centuries our brother Abel has lain in blood which we drew, or shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love. Forgive us for the curse we falsely attached to their name as Jews. Forgive us for crucifying Thee a second time in their flesh. For we know not what we did."
He was made Nuncio in France at the end of 1944 and retired all the bishops that helped the Nazi occupiers.In 1953 he was elevated to cardinal by Pius XII, and served in Venice. He believed this would be his last elevation so when he was elected pope, he was surprised- having bought a ticket for his return to Venice after the elections were completed.
His papal achievements are discussed by John Cogley, Ed.:
Perhaps a younger pontiff would have
been less daring and innovative than John XXIII turned out to be. Soon after
his coronation, he announced almost casually that he was summoning an ecumenical council—a general meeting of the bishops of the
church—the first in almost a century. He said the idea came to him in a sudden
inspiration. His purpose was to “bring the church up to date” (aggiornaménto)
and to work for its spiritual regeneration. He was the first pope since the
Reformation who acknowledged frankly that Catholicism stood in need of
reinvigoration and reform.
It was long a truism among church
historians that councils are followed by upheaval and disorder in the church.
The pope’s decision, consequently, was received coolly by his conservative
Curia, who were convinced that the church had prospered under Pius XII’s
leadership and who saw no good reason for the changes John envisioned. Some of
the Vatican cardinals in fact did everything in their power to delay the
council until the old man had passed from the scene and the project could be
quietly dropped. But the pope pushed on with his plan and lived long enough to
preside over the first session of the Second Vatican Council in the fall of
1962.
In keeping with his wishes, the
council fathers pledged that they would be consistently positive. No
condemnations or anathemas were to be made; political hostilities were to be
ignored; and the church above all was to recognize that it was not the master
but the servant of humanity. The pope made it clear that the Second Vatican Council was convened as a pastoral
council. No new dogmas were to be pronounced, though old doctrines and
disciplines were to be reexamined. What John sought, he said, was a “New
Pentecost,” a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
The council, according to John’s
design, would make a new start toward achieving Christian unity by putting aside the hostilities
of the past and acknowledging the Catholics’ share of responsibility for the
scandal of a divided Christianity. With his long experiences among the Eastern
Orthodox, John’s interest in Christian ecumenism seemed natural enough, but no
one in Rome was quite prepared for the extent of his openness. He received
Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant religious leaders with extreme
cordiality and made sure they were invited to send observers to the Vatican
Council. He removed certain words offensive to Jews from the official liturgy of the church. On
one notable occasion, he introduced himself to a group of Jewish visitors with
the biblical words, “I am Joseph your brother,” referring to the Old Testament
story of the meeting of the sons of the patriarch Jacob at the court of Egypt.
John traveled around Rome freely,
breaking with the tradition that the pope, deprived of his former temporal
power, was a “prisoner of the Vatican.” In an attempt to depoliticize the
church, he played down his position as ruler of the Vatican and emphasized his
role as “servant of the servants of God,” a traditional title of the pope. In
that spirit he called on the president of Italy and cordially received the
son-in-law of the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev,
in private audience. Among his other visitors were the archbishop of Canterbury—the first such meeting
since the 14th century—the moderator of the Scottish Kirk, and a Shintō (the
indigenous religion of Japan) high priest—the first such official in history to
be received at the Vatican.
During the Cuban missile crisis of
1962, the pope publicly urged both the United States and the Soviet Union to
exercise caution and restraint and won the appreciation of both President John F. Kennedy and
Premier Khrushchev.
His major encyclical, Pacem in Terris (“Peace on
Earth”), addressed to all humankind, was received warmly throughout the world
and praised by politicians as well as churchmen. Straightforward and frankly
optimistic, it avoided the language of diplomacy and set forth the requirements
for world peace in profoundly human terms. Distinguishing between the
philosophy of Marxism and actual governments to which it gave birth, John
suggested that peaceful coexistence between the West and the communist East was
not only desirable but actually necessary if humankind was to survive. He
thereby diluted the religious energy that had been poured into the Cold War as
a result of the militant policies shaped by his predecessor.
John saw himself as a reconciler. In
statement after statement he emphasized the church’s significance as a
suprapolitical spiritual force in the world. His greatest claim on the world’s
affection, however, rested on the warmth of his personality rather than on any
of his formal statements. He remained simple and unaffected, in spite of the
baroque setting in which he found himself, and instinctively appealed directly
to human values that everyone could understand. “Since you could not come to
me, I came to you,” he told the inmates of a Roman prison. When Jacqueline Kennedy,
the wife of the president of the United States, came to call, he rehearsed
“Mrs. Kennedy, Madame Kennedy” in his poor English. Then, when she appeared, he
spontaneously spread open his arms and cried out, “Jacqueline!” He once told a
communist diplomat, “I know you are an atheist, but won’t you accept an old
man’s blessing?” When a shabby peasant woman reached up to touch him as he was
being carried through St. Peter’s, he stopped to clasp her hand. “There is no reason
why you shouldn’t get as close as the king of Jordan did,” he said. The
roly-poly pontiff—he was short of stature and never overcame a tendency toward
corpulence—gradually became a kind of father figure for the world. When he died
in 1963, it was generally recognized that he had become one of the best-loved
men in the world.
Pope John XXIII was a good and holy man. A saint and a gift from God.
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