St. John XXIII

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli · 1958 – 1963

Called the Second Vatican Council to open the Church's windows to the modern world, changing Catholicism more than any pope in four centuries.

Angelo Roncalli was elected as a caretaker pope at seventy-six. Nobody expected much. Within three months he announced the Second Vatican Council, shocking the Roman Curia and launching the most sweeping reform of the Catholic Church since Trent. He wanted to update the Church's language and methods without changing its core teachings, a process he called aggiornamento. He was warm, funny, and approachable in ways that broke papal protocol. He visited prisons and hospitals. He told jokes. He issued Pacem in Terris, an encyclical on peace addressed not just to Catholics but to "all people of good will," the first time a pope had done that. He also issued Mater et Magistra, updating Catholic social teaching for the postwar world. He died of stomach cancer in June 1963, between the first and second sessions of the Council, never seeing the revolution he started through to completion. Romans called him "il Papa buono," the good pope.

Opening the Windows

John XXIII famously said he wanted to open the windows of the Church and let in fresh air. The Council he called produced sixteen documents that reformed the liturgy, redefined the Church's relationship with other religions, affirmed religious freedom, and gave laypeople a more active role. Whether you think Vatican II went too far or not far enough, there is no understanding modern Catholicism without it.

A Different Kind of Pope

After centuries of distant, formal pontiffs, John XXIII was disarmingly human. He snuck out of the Vatican at night to walk Rome's streets. He made self-deprecating jokes about his weight. He treated everyone, from heads of state to janitors, with the same direct kindness. He made the papacy feel accessible in a way it hadn't been.