Even the moon hurried to watch, the Pope told Rome

VATICAN CITY, October 11, 1962 AD — Thousands of people filled St. Peter’s Square on the night of October 11, 1962 AD. Many of them were carrying torches or candles. Pope John XXIII came to a window of the Apostolic Palace to speak to them. He was eighty years old, and he had no speech written down.

St. John XXIII was seventy-six when the cardinals elected him Pope on October 28, 1958 AD. His age took everyone by surprise. Because he was so old, many people expected him to be Pope for only a short time. Three months later, he told the cardinals he meant to call an ecumenical council.

Two thousand bishops and one chair

The Pope opened the Second Vatican Council on the morning of October 11, 1962 AD, in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Council began with a long walk.

At about 8:30 that morning, the bishops came out through the Bronze Doors. They crossed St. Peter’s Square between two lines of priests and members of religious orders. A hymn to Our Lady from the fifth century was sung as they walked.

About two thousand bishops were there, and the walk took about an hour. The Pope came at the very end, carried on the sedia gestatoria.

Inside the basilica, St. John XXIII spoke to the bishops in Latin for thirty-seven minutes. In the past, he told them, the Church had always stood against wrong teachings. It had often condemned them very harshly. Now, he said, the Church would use “the medicine of mercy, rather than take up the weapons of severity.” Near the end he told them, in Latin, “Tantum aurora est” (It is only the dawn).

A speech with no paper

That night at the window, the Pope called the crowd “figliuoli di Roma” (children of Rome). He began: “Dear children, I hear your voices.” Then he said: “You could say that even the moon has hurried here tonight — look at it up there — to watch this sight”. The crowd laughed and clapped as soon as he mentioned the moon.

“My own person counts for nothing; it is a brother speaking to you, who has become a father by the will of Our Lord,” St. John XXIII told them.

Then he spoke about the children they would find at home. The Pope said: “When you go home you will find your children.” He asked the crowd to give their children a caress and tell them: “This is the Pope’s caress”. He went on: “You will find some tears to dry. Do something; say a kind word.” “The Pope is with us especially in hours of sadness and bitterness,” he said.

He gave the crowd his blessing and sent everyone home, he said, “because the evening is lingering over us, and the good night must be made holy too”.

In his journal for that day, St. John XXIII thanked God for letting him open “this beginning of great graces for his holy Church”. He wrote that he would be content if God kept him working as Pope for the rest of his life. He would be content, too, if God stopped him at any moment. Then the job of carrying the Council on and finishing it would pass “to my successor”, the next Pope.

Within weeks, it became clear that he had stomach cancer. It killed him the following June.