by Wyatt North
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© Wyatt North Publishing, LLC 2014
Publishing by Wyatt North Publishing, LLC. A Boutique Publishing Company.
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Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition© 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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Foreword
John XXIII was nicknamed “The Good Pope” because of his humble, loving, and open character and his gracious sense of humor. In possessing those attributes, he is viewed by many to be similar to Pope Francis today.
Like Pope Francis, Pope John was wont to stroll about Rome by night and make pastoral visits to sick children and prison inmates. John’s secretary, the Italian prelate Loris Capovilla, heard the news from Pope Francis himself and remarked how appropriate it was for the step to be taken by “the successor most similar” to John.
Shortly before Pope John’s death, the International Balzan Foundation, which is headquartered in Milan and Zurich, awarded Pope John its Peace Prize. Then, in December 1963, President Lyndon Johnson posthumously awarded him the United States’ Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.
The canonization of Pope John XXIII was announced by Pope Francis shortly after the fiftieth anniversary of John’s death. The date for canonization has been set for April 27, 2014, Divine Mercy Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter.
Table of Contents
About Wyatt North Publishing
Foreword
An Introduction
Background
The Young Priest
Leaving Italy
Electing a New Pope
The New Pope
The Second Vatican Council
Other Bold Steps
Additional Measures
Pope John’s Message
Pope John and the Liturgy
Pope John and Women
Pope John and the Jews
Death
Legacy
The Rosary
“I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.”
An Introduction
The year was 1958. Pope Pius XII, who had ascended the papal throne on the eve of WWII and had continued to lead the Church through the beginnings of the Cold War, was dead. As though unsure of which direction to take in an uncertain world, the College of Cardinals opted for an interim pope. Nearly 77 years old, Cardinal Roncalli was aged even by papal standards.
In some ways, the recently deceased pope and the newly announced one could not have been more different. Whereas Pope Pius had come from an aristocratic lineage long tied to the papacy, Roncalli was of undistinguished peasant stock. Nevertheless, Roncalli had acquitted himself admirably in difficult positions of responsibility and would make an acceptable caretaker pope, one who could be counted on for a quietist attitude of maintaining the status quo. That was not what happened.
The papacy of Pope John XXIII lasted a brief four years and seven months, yet in that time, Pope John succeeded in bringing about a sea change in how the Church interacted with the modern world and its inhabitants. A great-hearted man of profound compassion, Pope John wanted the Church to meet the changing needs of the people that comprised his global flock and, perhaps even more importantly, to act with higher regard for those that were not a part of his Church. The most remarkable thing about Angelo Roncalli was how open his heart was to all people. This was no affectation; he genuinely liked people, and they, in turn, would find that they loved him.
Background
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on November 25, 1881, the fourth of fourteen children, several of whom died in childhood. He was the eldest son of Giovanni Battista Roncalli and Marianna Mazzola Roncalli, who were poor tenant farmers. The family resided, as it had for hundreds of years, in the tiny farming village of Sotto il Monte (“Under the Mountain”), seven miles from the city of Bergamo in the Italian Alps. As Angelo would later put it, the family was poor in material goods but rich in faith.
They lived meagerly in an extended-family household that included a large host of cousins—twenty-eight people altogether at the time Angelo was born. The bachelor great-uncle Zavario Roncalli presided as patriarch over the family, conducting nightly rosary and pious readings. The family was too poor for meat or bread and so usually subsisted on polenta. The two-story, 300-year-old farmhouse where they all lived had no running water or fireplaces. In winter, the farm animals were kept on the first floor, making their rising body warmth available to the people living in the upper story as had been done throughout the Mediterranean regions since biblical times.
When Angelo was nine, they moved to a much larger, better farmhouse with eighteen rooms. Eventually, after many years, the family would rise from abject poverty to purchase that house and the small bit of land they farmed.
Young Angelo, known at that age as Angelino, began his education at a one-room village schoolhouse with three benches, one for each grade. School was taught by the parish priest, Don (Father) Francesco Rebuzzini. One of the younger Roncalli brothers would later marvel in recollection that Angelo actually wanted to go to school. That difference between them, the brother surmised, was why he himself remained illiterate, while his brother had gone on to become pope.
In this first stage of his education, Angelo so sufficiently distinguished himself that it cost him a beating. On one occasion, a visiting district supervisor of schools posed a trick question to the children: Which weighed more—a measure of iron or a measure of straw? Angelo was the only child to realize that there was no difference in the measurement, so “we beat him up,” recalled his childhood classmate. It was an environment in which excellence was viewed with suspicion and standing out provoked petty jealousies.
When Angelo had gone as far as he could in the local school, Don Francesco convinced Giovanni to send his son to a nearby parish for Latin training from the priest there. The boy was taught Latin using Caesar’s Gallic Wars. He later jokingly estimated that for each page he learned, he earned one clout from the priest. Angelo was nearly ten when Don Francesco coaxed Giovanni into allowing his son to progress to a secondary school about five miles distant.
Times were changing, the priest told the father; a boy with ability
needed an education. At first, Angelo stayed near the school with other relatives, but his mother soon fetched him away from that squabbling environment, and he then had to walk the five miles over a mountain to school each day. He was so exhausted from the long walk each way that he was not able to learn well. In addition, the other students made fun of the country boy with his poor clothes and funny speech.
Despite the boy’s poor performance at the secondary school, Don Francesco continued to champion him and won Angelo admission to the junior seminary in Bergamo, which had been founded by Saint Charles Borromeo. The year was 1892, and Angelo was not yet eleven years old. He struggled with math and some other subjects in Bergamo, but over time, he began to excel in his studies, particularly showing a predilection for history and theology.
He was barely fourteen in 1895, when, probably at the behest of his teachers, he began to keep a spiritual journal, which he would continue throughout his lifetime. In it he chronicled his inward struggle for sanctity, and in reading his journals, one can discern his intellectual, spiritual, and emotional development over time. The first entry was piously entitled, “Rules of life to be observed by young men who wish to make progress in the life of piety and study.” It was followed by such categories as resolutions, spiritual notes, maxims, and reflections. The lifetime collection was later published as Journal of a Soul, and it affords us a unique chronicle of the spiritual journey of a young seminarian up through his priesthood and on to the papacy.
Although he loved his family and remained quite close with them throughout his life, young Angelo would feel less at home in Sotto il Monte as time passed. His education at the seminary in Bergamo was gradually setting him apart. At the age of fourteen, he received the tonsure, creating a further distinction from those around him. Villagers treated the youth with increased respect and distance. And then, with so many people living together at home, it was only natural that quarrels would emerge. Angelo found the petty bickering to be a trial, particularly as he was working to elevate his own soul. As a result, his cousins felt he put on airs, and some found him arrogant.
When Angelo became aware of their hostile sentiments, he began a spiritual battle to suppress these traits. Nevertheless, at this point in his life, visits home were challenging for him. It was difficult both for the boy and the family to balance his youth with his ascending status.
The Young Priest
In 1901 Angelo and two other promising young men from the Bergamo seminary received scholarships for further study at the Pontifical Seminary, known as the Apollinaire, in Rome. Because of his youth, he was required to begin his study of theology again from the beginning. Angelo was in his element surrounded by history and the pilgrimage sites of his faith. He immersed himself in his studies and the rarified atmosphere of Rome. Clergy, however, were not exempt from the Italian military at that time, and after only one year of study in Rome, he was drafted and had to return to Bergamo to serve in the infantry. For a year he exchanged his cassock for a different type of uniform.
Life in the barracks was jarring after his insular life in the seminary, but the earthy and sometimes vulgar interests of his military companions broadened his life experience. His outgoing nature won him many friends, and he found that most of the men he encountered respected his clerical status. (He would later be recalled to active duty, and in that second military experience, he had to cope with more disapproving officers.) He was promoted to the rank of corporal and became a sergeant shortly before his discharge.
Having completed his military service in November 1902, Angelo returned to his studies and achieved a doctorate in sacred theology. In August 1904, when he was not quite the required age of twenty-three, Angelo Roncalli was ordained in Rome. He said his first Mass the following day in St. Peter’s Basilica and was later presented in audience to Pope Pius X, who blessed his good intentions. He then returned home to Sotto il Monte so that he could say Mass in the presence of his proud family. Following theses joyful events, he resumed his studies at the Seminario Romano, working towards an additional doctorate in canon law.
In January 1905 Pope Pius X asked the young priest from Bergamo to assist in the consecration ceremony for Bishop Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, who was about to assume leadership of the Bergamo diocese. The new bishop was impressed with Father Angelo and appointed him to be his secretary. Father Angelo served as the bishop’s secretary for nearly ten years until the vigorous bishop’s premature death at the age of fifty-seven. During that time, at the bishop’s suggestion, he also assumed a post in the Bergamo seminary as a theology professor. He taught classes in patrology, apologetics, and Church history, and he was a popular teacher. In addition, he began research on an ambitious multi-volume work on Saint Charles Borromeo, the last volume of which was not published until after he became pope. With this multitude of roles, Father Angelo began to flex his pastoral muscles, and he did so under the socially progressive tutelage of Monsignor Radini-Tedeschi.
Father Angelo was utterly devoted to his bishop, later calling him his “polar star.” Monsignor Radini was from an aristocratic family and had served as a Vatican diplomat. He moved comfortably among the higher echelons of the Church, and wherever he went, he was accompanied by his young shadow. With Monsignor Radini, Father Angelo traveled for the first time outside of Italy: to pilgrimage sites in France and then to countries throughout Europe and, in 1906, to the Holy Land. He also visited every parish in the diocese of Bergamo because Monsignor Radini was not one to sit idly—he was a leader of the Catholic Action movement in Italy and was especially concerned about the rights of workers, which had been recently articulated in Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor). Monsignor Radini believed in an activist Church that pursued the earthly fight for social justice, and he regularly met with like-minded people.
Father Angelo had earlier been attracted to such ideas, but now he was exposed to the foremost activist thinkers of the Church, and he had the opportunity to witness how their ideas could be practically applied. Among the other programs Monsignor Radini put in place was an office for assisting poor Italian émigrés seeking employment outside the country. During a contentious strike at the large iron foundry in Ranica, Monsignor Radini’s involvement prompted complaints to the Vatican. He and Father Angelo opened soup kitchens and provided money to the strikers’ relief fund among their other support for the workers.
Following the bishop’s untimely death from colon cancer in 1914, mere days after the death of Pope Pius X and only months after the outbreak of WWI, Father Angelo moved out of the bishop’s palace. The loss of “my bishop” was extremely difficult for him. By now he had grown close with his family again and often sought consolation in visits with them. He continued to teach in the Bergamo seminary and to serve as a pastor.
This activity was interrupted when he was recalled to active military duty upon Italy’s entry into WWI in 1915. He served first as a sergeant in the medical corps. Bergamo was a receiving station for the wounded coming from the front lines. As a medical orderly, Sergeant Roncalli saw a tremendous amount of human suffering. When he could no longer physically help a wounded soldier, he came to the soldier’s aid as a priest, comforting and administering last rites. A year later priests in the Italian military were finally made chaplains, and he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Having trained at the side of Monsignor Radini, Lieutenant Roncalli energetically took spiritual charge of the diverse hospitals and schools that were housing the wounded. He established an association to aid the female relatives of deceased soldiers and a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.
The decision to enter the war was catastrophic for Italy. By war’s end, some 600,000 Italians would be killed and nearly one million wounded. In the Roncalli family, Angelo’s four brothers also served in the military, leaving the women and the aged males to farm the land. Angelo was naturally worried about his brothers at the front. In the rare moments when he was able to be alone, the wasteful destruction of life s
ometimes brought him to tears. A cousin on the Mazzola (maternal) side of the family died of wounds from an Austrian grenade. And following the disastrous battle at Caporetto—one of the worst defeats in all military history—Angelo’s youngest brother, Giuseppe, was reported missing in action. His family feared the worst. Giuseppe would eventually reappear as a prisoner-of-war held by Austria and live to return home, but one of the daughters of the family, Enrica, died of cancer at the tragic age of twenty-five, only a few weeks before the end of the war.
When the war finally did end, Father Angelo opened a Student House at the behest of the now-bishop of Bergamo, Monsignor Marelli. It was intended to serve the spiritual needs of young people. Since the bishop was low on funds because of the war, Father Angelo used his own discharge pay and money borrowed from his father to set up the facility, which provided meals, housing, a quiet place for study, and a recreational area. He brought two of his sisters, Ancilla and Maria, to be housekeepers and help run the hostel. Father Angelo had become accustomed to helping his family in whatever ways he could, often using his meager salary to pay for doctors, food, and other necessities. In particular, he took responsibility for the upkeep of these two unmarried sisters.