Saint John XXIII

St. John XXIII was born at a quarter past ten in the morning, in a poor farmhouse in the hamlet of Brusicco. He was the first son, after three daughters, of Giovanni Battista Roncalli and Marianna Mazzola, who farmed land owned by the Morlani counts. That evening the parish priest, Father Francesco Rebuzzini, baptised him, and his great-uncle and godfather, Zaverio, consecrated him to the Sacred Heart at the font.

At the bishop's college of Celana, among older boys from better-off homes, he fell behind for the first time and in July 1892 AD did not sit his final examinations. After a summer of hard study with Father Rebuzzini, he entered the diocesan seminary of Bergamo at eleven. In June 1895 AD, not yet fourteen, he received the cassock of a cleric. That November, at fourteen, he began the spiritual notes later published as the Journal of a Soul.

In September 1900 AD, on his way home from the Jubilee in Rome, the young seminarian received Communion at Loreto and prayed there for a long time. Sixty-two years later, back at Loreto as Pope, he told Our Lady that his heart had not changed since that first visit.

In November 1900 AD his superiors chose him to finish his studies at the Pontifical Roman Seminary, and in 1901 AD he volunteered for a year in the army so that his brother, also named Zaverio, could keep working the family's fields. He left the army a sergeant in 1902 AD and went back to Rome, where he was ordained a priest on August 10, 1904 AD, in Santa Maria in Monte Santo. The next day he said his first Mass in the Vatican Grottoes, beside the tomb of St. Peter.

In February 1905 AD the new Bishop of Bergamo, Giacomo Maria Radini Tedeschi, chose St. John XXIII as his secretary. The appointment cut short the young priest's study of canon law in Rome. From 1909 AD the young priest also planned and edited the diocesan paper, La Vita Diocesana. From 1910 AD the bishop gave him the pastoral care of Bergamo's Catholic women.

Bishop Radini Tedeschi died in August 1914 AD, and his secretary's post ended with him. St. John XXIII stayed in Bergamo, teaching in the seminary and serving as spiritual adviser to several Church associations.

On May 23, 1915 AD, as Italy entered the First World War, St. John XXIII was recalled to the army as a sergeant in the medical corps. The next day he reported to the depot of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan and was posted to Bergamo. From March 28, 1916 AD he served as a military chaplain with the rank of lieutenant.

He never served at the front. Until 1918 AD he was chaplain to wounded soldiers in the military hospitals behind the lines, among them the reserve hospital of Bergamo called the Ricovero nuovo.

From 1919 AD St. John XXIII was spiritual director of the Bergamo seminary until Pope Benedict XV called him to Rome in 1921 AD to lead the Propagation of the Faith in Italy. In February 1925 AD, without warning, he was asked to go to Bulgaria for a visit of a few months. Pope Pius XI made him a bishop and the Holy See's Apostolic Visitor there, and he entered Sofia on April 25, 1925 AD.

He stayed in Bulgaria until 1934 AD, and when an earthquake struck the country in 1928 AD he was there in person and gave the victims help at once. As the Holy See's delegate to Turkey and Greece he then lived at Istanbul, where he set up an office to trace prisoners of war. In December 1944 AD a telegram called him to France as Pope Pius XII's nuncio, and he reached Paris on December 30.

Pope Pius XII made St. John XXIII a cardinal on January 12, 1953 AD, and in the same year named him Patriarch of Venice. Three days after the consistory, on January 15, 1953 AD, the President of France, Vincent Auriol, used a right long held by French heads of state and placed the cardinal's red biretta on him at the Élysée Palace. He arrived in Venice on March 15, 1953 AD, and formally took charge of the diocese.

After Pope Pius XII died, a large crowd went with the cardinal to Venice station on October 12, 1958 AD, as he left for the conclave. On October 28 the cardinals elected him Pope, a month short of his seventy-seventh birthday. His age surprised everyone, and many expected a pontificate of transition.

Accepting the election, St. John XXIII told the cardinals in Latin that he would be called John. At his first Christmas as Pope he visited sick children in the hospitals of Santo Spirito and the Bambino Gesù, and the next day the prisoners of Regina Coeli. On January 25, 1959 AD, to general surprise, he announced to the cardinals at St. Paul Outside the Walls an ecumenical council of the whole Church.

On October 11, 1962 AD, he opened the Second Vatican Council in St. Peter's before about two thousand bishops, and told them its main purpose was not to debate this or that doctrine but to guard the Church's teaching and present it in a way that met the needs of the time. That night a torchlit crowd filled the square, and from his window, without a text, he told them the basilica had never seen a sight like that morning's in four centuries. Two weeks later, at the height of the crisis over Cuba, he broadcast a radio appeal to those who govern nations to keep the peace.

The stomach cancer that killed St. John XXIII came to light in November 1962 AD. He died in the Apostolic Palace at 7.45 on the evening of June 3, 1963 AD, while a great crowd prayed for him in St. Peter's Square below. A Mass was being said for him in the square, and he died at its closing words, *Ite missa est* (*Go, the Mass is ended*).

In 1966 AD a Daughter of Charity, Sister Caterina Capitani, was suddenly healed at Naples, and Pope St. John Paul II later approved the healing as a miracle. Pope St. John Paul II beatified St. John XXIII on September 3, 2000 AD. Pope Francis canonized him in St. Peter's Square on April 27, 2014 AD, together with Pope St. John Paul II.