John XXIII

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born November 25, 1881, in Sotto il Monte, a small farming village in the Diocese of Bergamo, Lombardy, the fourth of thirteen children in a sharecropping family. He was ordained a priest on August 10, 1904, in Rome.

After military service as a chaplain in World War I and years teaching at Bergamo seminary, he joined the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome. In 1925 Pope Pius XI appointed him Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria, launching three decades of diplomatic service. He served as Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece from 1934 to 1944, working discreetly to assist Jewish refugees fleeing persecution. In 1944 he was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to France, navigating the charged post-war reorganization of the French hierarchy with characteristic patience and warmth. In 1953 Pope Pius XII named him a cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, a pastoral role he embraced with evident joy.

At seventy-six, Roncalli was elected pope on October 28, 1958, choosing the name John XXIII. Many expected a caretaker pontificate. Instead, within three months he announced the Second Vatican Council — the first ecumenical council in nearly a century. The Council opened October 11, 1962, and fundamentally reshaped the Church's liturgy, ecumenical posture, and engagement with the modern world, though John XXIII would not live to see its close.

In October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his personal appeal broadcast over Vatican Radio to both Kennedy and Khrushchev was credited with helping open channels for de-escalation. In April 1963, weeks before his death, he issued Pacem in Terris — the first papal encyclical addressed not only to Catholics but to all people of goodwill, grounding its argument for peace in the dignity of every human person.

He died June 3, 1963, of gastric cancer. His pastoral simplicity and genuine warmth earned him the enduring nickname il Papa Buono — "the Good Pope." When his body was exhumed in 2001 for the beatification process, it was found remarkably preserved after 38 years, though he had been embalmed at death as is customary for popes. He was beatified September 3, 2000, by John Paul II, and canonized April 27, 2014, by Pope Francis alongside John Paul II on Divine Mercy Sunday.