A sharecropper's son opened the Church to Vatican II
Angelo Roncalli, born 25 November 1881 to Bergamo sharecroppers, became Pope John XXIII on 28 October 1958 and died 3 June 1963. He convened the Second Vatican Council to refresh pastoral life, raised the cardinalate past seventy to eighty-five, and named the first cardinals from Africa, Japan, and the Philippines.
Ordained 10 August 1904, he served as nuncio and in other posts before the surprising conclave. Speeches stressed human equality in the image of God. Ecumenical outreach and involvement with affairs of state marked a modernizing agenda that still kept him from seeing Vatican II finished.
Stomach cancer diagnosed in September 1962 ended the brief reign; Paul VI opened his cause in 1965. Beatification and later canonization sealed popular affection for Good Pope John.
By breaking the old seventy-cardinal ceiling and inviting a council, a rural Italian pastor yanked a global church toward dialogue faster than many expected from an elderly caretaker pope.
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli came into the world in Sotto il Monte, a Lombard village near Bergamo, on 25 November 1881, the eldest son of a sharecropping family, a far humbler start than his predecessor Pius XII, whose relatives held senior Vatican posts. After finishing a theology doctorate he became secretary to Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, until the bishop died in 1914. In World War I he served in the army medical corps as a sergeant, stretcher-bearer and chaplain. Diplomacy followed: Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria from 1925 to 1935, then Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece, where locals nicknamed him the Turcophile Pope. During the Holocaust he helped refugees, mostly Jews, escape the Nazis, sending immigration certificates for Palestine by diplomatic courier and supplying priests with baptismal certificates of convenience.
Source: Pope John XXIII
