20th century
Feast: October 11
Elected at seventy-seven as a 'transitional pope' who wasn't expected to do much — he called the most important Catholic council in four hundred years within his first ninety days.
Angelo Roncalli was a peasant farmer's son from Bergamo who spent most of his career in the diplomatic service — Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, France — far from the centers of Vatican power. When he was elected pope in 1958 at seventy-seven, the cardinals assumed they were choosing a caretaker who would keep the chair warm for a few years. Three months later, John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council, and the Roman Curia nearly had a collective heart attack. Nobody had asked for a council. Nobody thought one was needed. John said the Church needed to open its windows and let in some fresh air. He called it 'aggiornamento' — updating. He was warm, round, funny, and completely unintimidated by the machinery of the Vatican. He visited prisons — the first pope to do so in modern history — and told the inmates, 'You could not come to see me, so I came to see you.' He published Pacem in Terris, an encyclical on peace addressed not just to Catholics but to 'all people of good will,' during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He didn't live to see the Council finish — he died of stomach cancer in June 1963, after the first session. But he had set something in motion that could not be stopped.