20th century
Feast: May 29
The pope who inherited Vatican II, implemented its reforms against fierce resistance from both sides, and became the loneliest man in Rome.
Giovanni Battista Montini was the intellectual, introverted counterpart to John XXIII's warm spontaneity. Where John opened the windows, Paul VI had to decide what came through them. He guided the last three sessions of Vatican II, navigating between progressives who wanted to go further and conservatives who wanted to shut the whole thing down. He reformed the Mass, reorganized the Curia, traveled more than any pope before him — he was the first pope to visit six continents — and published Evangelii Nuntiandi, which many consider the greatest document on evangelization of the twentieth century. Then came Humanae Vitae. His 1968 encyclical reaffirming the Church's ban on artificial contraception caused a firestorm that never fully died down. He was attacked from the left for being rigid and from the right for being weak. The controversy wounded him deeply. His last decade as pope was marked by a visible sadness — he spoke openly about the difficulties of his office and the 'smoke of Satan' that he feared had entered the Church. He never wrote another encyclical after Humanae Vitae. He died on August 6, 1978, the feast of the Transfiguration, having served for fifteen years. His canonization came forty years later.