CHAPTER EIGHT

The First Year (January–December 1959)

Pope John XXIII wasted no time. Though not known as a frenetic doer, the newly elected and crowned pontiff entered the first year of his reign with a full agenda.

The story, as John later told it, was that he and his secretary of state, Cardinal Domenico Tardini, met on the afternoon of January 20, 1959, three months after John had been elected pope, to discuss certain matters concerning the direction in which John wished his papacy to proceed, particularly in light of the fact that the world “was plunged into so many grave anxieties and troubles.” Suddenly, as John later expressed to group of Venetian pilgrims to the Vatican in May 1962, “an inspiration sprang up within us as a flower that blooms in an unexpected springtime. Our soul was illuminated by a great idea. . . . A word, solemn and binding, rose to our lips. Our voice expressed it for the first time—a council.”

This anecdote shows that even popes are human and can be prone, like the rest of us, to embellishment. John’s diary, written on the evening of the day in question, is more matter-of-fact:

 

In conversation with Tardini, Secretary of State, I wanted to test his reaction to my idea of proposing the project of an Ecumenical Council to the [cardinals] of the Sacred College when they met at Saint Paul’s on the 25th of this month. . . . I was rather hesitant and uncertain. Tardini’s immediate response was the most gratifying surprise that I could have expected: “Oh, that really is an idea, an enlightening and holy idea. It comes straight from heaven, Holy Father.”

 

Tardini himself noted, in a shorthand memo written that night, that the pope had mentioned three initiatives to him: “Roman Synod. Ecumenical Council. Aggiornamento [updating] of the Code of Canon Law.”

There is obviously a great difference between being struck by divine lightning and “testing” Tardini’s reaction—as there also is between “splendid initiatives” and an idea that comes “straight from heaven.” But this disparity in stories—with the initial recountings no doubt being the correct ones—only underscores how controversial an idea the ecumenical council really was. Not only was John cautious in bringing the council up in front of the crusty and conservative Tardini, but, even after three years of preparation, as Vatican II was only months away, he was already mythologizing its inception for the world at large.

And John was right to be cautious. On Sunday, January 25, five days after he told Tardini of his decision, he spoke to a group of seventeen influential cardinals after attending Mass at the Basilica of Saint Paul’s-Outside-the-Walls during the final day of the celebration of Christian Unity. Tardini had told some of the cardinals what was coming; others were unaware. John began by telling the group that he had come to a momentous decision. There were periods in Church history, he said, when the Church sought “greater clarity of thinking,” as well as “a strengthening of the bond of unity, and greater spiritual fervor.” With these three goals in mind, he then said to the cardinals, “Trembling with emotion and yet with humble resolution, we put before you the proposal of a double celebration: diocesan synod for Rome and an ecumenical council for the universal Church.”

John then looked at the assembled and said, “I would like to have your advice.” The cardinals simply stared at him, without a word. John was sorely disappointed. As he wrote later, “Humanly, we could have expected that the cardinals, after hearing our pronouncement, would have crowded around to express approval and good wishes.” Instead, his grand plans met with a lengthy, stony silence. There were any number of reasons for this. Some of the cardinals were shocked that a pope whom many saw as merely a “transitional” figure, holding down the fort, as it were, until a more dynamic Church leader might come along, was proposing something so monumental. After all, there were only twenty such councils in Church history; the last had been the First Vatican Council (so-called because it took place within the Vatican) in 1870.

But the main reason that the cardinals withheld their approval was that they were members of the Roman Curia. Withholding approval was, in a sense, what they did best. The Curia—curia from the Latin word for “court”—is the administrative arm of the Holy See. They quite literally run the departments, or congregations, of the Church on behalf of the pope. Pontiffs came and pontiffs went, but the Curia lived on. The cardinals had a vested interest in protecting the status quo.

John was acting in an entirely unexpected way—at least to them.

From the very beginning of his papacy, John had given signals that he saw himself as a pastoral pope, a benevolent father figure to the Universal Church. Many of his admirers used the term collegial to describe him. Without giving up his traditional authority as pope, he sought consensus. And his was always an ecumenical reach—as his pre-papal relations with the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican churches, and with the Jewish faith, had proven.

One other thing unsettled the cardinals. In the past, the great councils had been called to condemn apostasy. The Council of Nicea in 325, for instance, was called to put an end to Arian heresy. The Council of Constance, held between 1414 and 1418, dealt with the Avignon popes and the papal schism. The Council of Trent, which continued on and off for eighteen years during the late 1500s, condemned the Protestant Reformation. And the yearlong Vatican I, called by Pope Pius IX in 1869, declared the infallibility of the pope in matters of faith and morals—a pronouncement designed to reassert the Church’s authority in a world awash in rationalism and Modernism. (Vatican I was cut short when the Franco-Prussian War broke out and the kingdom of Italy captured Rome, forcing Pius to suspend the council. It was never reopened.)

The Curia knew the history of the Church councils well. And they saw that what John was proposing was a pastoral council, a council in which no heresy would be expunged, no dogma reasserted. While the direction the council might take was unclear, on that cold January day, it was clear that anything could happen. And the Curia, as well as other cardinals of the Church, did not like that at all. Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York said, in public, “I do not believe that the pope wanted to convoke a council, but he was pushed into it by people who . . . misconstrued what he said.”

Spellman’s critique fell far from the mark—and it reflected the error that so many of John’s colleagues and superiors had made over many years: underestimating the peasant-born cleric. Also, it was not immediately apparent to most that a turning point in the history of the Church had been reached. A new dynamic, inspired by the Holy Spirit (according to the faithful), was at work in the old Church, a spirit of reform and renewal.

Archbishop Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna went further: “How could he have dared to convoke a new council after one hundred years and within less than three months after his election? . . . Either Pope John has been rash and impulsive, with a lack of breeding and experience . . . or else in actuality Pope John has done this with calculated audacity, though obviously not capable of foreseeing all the details. . . .”

Even Giovanni Montini, friend and counselor of John, whom the pope had made a cardinal less than three weeks after his election, shook his head as he memorably told a friend, “This holy old boy doesn’t seem to realize what a hornet’s nest he’s stirring up.” The council, Montini warned, would unleash “expectations, dreams, curiosity, utopias, velleities of every kind and countless fantasies.”

Yet Montini of Milan, who had received the red hat and the title of SS. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti on December 18, 1958, as the first new cardinal created by John—and who would inherit the Second Vatican Council as Pope Paul VI—knew the pope’s heart. As the council was announced, “a flame of enthusiasm swept over the whole Church,” the cardinal later wrote. “[Pope John] understood immediately, perhaps by inspiration, that by calling a council he would release unparalleled vital forces in the Church.”

Perhaps John wasn’t really embellishing at all when he wrote of his conversation with Tardini that day. His was an inspiration, born of the Holy Spirit, that illuminated not only his whole soul, but the Church as well.

Before the council started, however, there was a good deal of work to do.

 

Issued on June 29, 1959, the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, Pope John’s first encyclical, Ad Petri cathedram (To the Chair of Peter) was devoted to truth, unity, and peace, the three-legged program of his papacy. Seen in the context of its time, the encyclical is part of John’s history of meeting the secular world head on.

At its heart, it is three things: a promotional piece for the forthcoming ecumenical council, a protective encouragement for the Church behind the Iron Curtain, and an extended hand, if not a proffered embrace, to the estranged churches of Christendom.

John previewed his encyclical at a vespers service at Saint Peter’s Basilica on the eve of the Memorial of Saints Peter and Paul. The occasion made sense. Peter had been martyred under Rome’s Nero and Paul was the Church’s proto-missionary supreme, and the pope was concerned with Cardinal József Mindszenty of Hungary and Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac of Yugoslavia, who were up against communist pressure. He spoke to a crowd of several thousand from the place below which tradition holds Peter is buried and lamented that officials in some communist countries, such as in Hungary, were fostering discord in the Church.

The vespers service drew eighteen cardinals, underscoring the importance of the pope’s preview of his encyclical. The text of his address was made public through the United Nations, which designated the year in an attempt to alleviate the suffering of 15 million refugees worldwide. This in itself can be deemed significant. It came a day after a similar appeal by the World Council of Churches. In these actions and with this timing, one can see the kernel of the universal and urgent embrace we find later in Pacem in terris. In the pope’s message on refugees, he spoke words that would resonate throughout his pontificate:

 

What kind-hearted man could remain indifferent to that sight: so many men, women and even children deprived, without any fault of their own, of some of the fundamental rights of the human person: families divided up in spite of their own wishes, husbands separated from their wives, children kept away from their parents.

What a sorrowful anomaly in modern society, so proud of its technical and social progress! Everybody has the duty to take this matter to heart and to do whatever is in his power in order to bring this sad situation to an end.

 

In some circles, this aspect of the pope’s public comments drew even more attention than the letter itself. In a story headlined “Pope Says Reds Martyr Church,” the New York Times centered its coverage on the pope’s remarks during a sermon on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, not at all on the encyclical. Speaking to 10,000 people in Saint Peter’s and separately to 20,000 in the square, Pope John had brought up the Church of Silence, behind the Iron Curtain, twice in a little more than twelve hours, according to one account.

But what did Ad Petri cathedram itself have to say on this subject? It devotes several impassioned paragraphs to the topic but certainly does not lead with this issue. “Many of these sublime words apply in a special way to those who are members of the ‘Church of Silence,’ for whom we are all especially bound to pray to God,” the pontiff declared, recalling even more pronouncements he had made on the subject weeks earlier, on Pentecost Sunday and on the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But a more detailed, and more nuanced, discussion is found earlier in the encyclical, under the subheading “The Church Persecuted” in the Vatican’s rendering:

137. We have exhorted all our children in Christ to avoid the deadly errors which threaten to destroy religion and even human society itself. In writing these words our thoughts have turned to the bishops, priests, and laymen who have been driven into exile or held under restraint or in prison because they have refused to abandon the work entrusted to them as bishops and priests and to forsake their Catholic faith.

138. We do not want to offend anyone. On the contrary, We are ready to forgive all freely and to beg this forgiveness of God.

139. But We are conscious of our sacred duty to do all that We can to defend the rights of our sons and brethren. Time and time again, therefore, we have asked that all be granted the lawful freedom to which all, including God’s Church, are entitled.

Typical of the style and substance of John, even early in his pontificate, here he is always eager to extend an olive branch, even as he steadfastly affirms rights and principles of the Church.

What of the rest of Ad Petri cathedram? To our ears, its language may seem stiff and formal. But even in this inaugural circular letter we hear some of the paternal voice that would become more characteristic of the Good Pope. He uses the royal “we,” but he cannot seem to hide his gentle, personal demeanor. Indeed, TIME magazine noted the document’s “kindly” and “fatherly” approach.

Yet some critics saw John as a writer still trying to find his voice, as someone too overshadowed by the voices of Tardini and others. Indeed, some observers found the use of terms like return, calling other Christians back to Rome, offensive and condescending.

Quite explicitly and didactically, the pope says his writing is about truth, unity, and peace. Then, as a lecturing professor might, he proceeds to explicate on each of these focal points. As for truth, he defends the Roman Catholic Church, decrying the view that “one religion is just as good as another.” He also devotes significant attention to the rights and responsibilities of mass media, quoting Leo XIII, which he does often in this encyclical, to condemn works that “mock virtue and exalt depravity.” As an unintended but striking coincidence, on this same day, June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a New York State ban on the movie version of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover—a landmark decision that arguably changed American culture. And in what was an almost expected reaction, the pope praises advances in modern science but cautions to what end and purpose. “But why do we not devote as much energy, ingenuity, and enthusiasm to the sure and safe attainment of that learning which concerns not this earthly, mortal life but the life which lies ahead of us in heaven?”

In the tradition of popes before him, in particular Leo XIII, the pontiff links social justice to unity and peace. He goes so far as to reassert Leo’s and Pius XII’s view of classes as a structure commanded by God to rebuff Marxist tenets. But when it comes to peace, John’s words ring with a new sense of ardor, passion, and mercy. “God created men as brothers, not foes,” he says. “We are called brothers. We actually are brothers.” Foreshadowing Paul VI’s famous declaration, “No more war; war never again,” before the United Nations, he pleads, “There has already been enough warfare among men! Too many youths in the flower of life have shed their blood already! Legions of the dead, all fallen in battle, dwell within this earth of ours. Their stern voices urge us all to return at once to harmony, unity, and a just peace.”

In many ways, the heart of John’s message is unity: unity of and within the Catholic Church, unity with separated Christian brethren, and the unity of the human race. He aligns these goals with the ecumenical council that will follow. Regarding the Church, he speaks of three types of unity within it: unity of doctrine, unity of organization, and unity of worship.

In making a passionate invitation to Christian unity, John offers a powerful quote from Saint Augustine: “Whether they wish it or not, they are our brethren. They cease to be our brethren only when they stop saying ‘Our Father.’ ” And even more tenderly and ardently, he says to all who are separated from the Chair of Peter, “I am . . . Joseph, your brother,” recalling the touching Genesis story of exile and reunification.

Remarkably, he cites Cardinal John Henry Newman to make a case for doubt and uncertainty—something his successors in the twenty-first century would be unlikely to do. He even quotes what he calls a common saying from Saint Augustine: “In essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.” It’s pure John, and not seen since.

In twenty or so paragraphs, John offers encouragement, guidance, and love specifically to ranks within the Church: bishops, clergy, religious men and women, missionaries (“ambassadors of Christ,” about whom he promises to say more—which he did later with Princeps pastorum—Prince of the Shepherds, or of the Pastors), and laypeople, especially Catholic Action.

Still, one cannot ignore the prodding and advocating and fostering of the Vatican Council espoused in his first encyclical. This man of deep faith showed that characteristic when he said, “The outcome of the approaching Ecumenical Council will depend more on a crusade of fervent prayer than on human effort and diligent application.”

 

Issued only two months after John’s first encyclical, Sacerdotii nostri primordia (The Beginning of Our Priesthood) uses the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint John Marie Baptist Vianney, the Curé of Ars, to guide, inspire, and even challenge Roman Catholic priests.

Saint John Vianney (1786–1859) was a country priest from the Lyon area, in the Rhone Valley of France. John had a special affection for the Curé of Ars because, as noted in Sacerdotii nostri primordia, the saint’s life intersected at many points with John’s own spiritual journey. Vianney was declared Blessed on January 8, 1905, just months after John’s ordination on August 10, 1904. Pope John and Saint John Vianney shared other milestones as well. John learned that his own patron and mentor, Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, was appointed a bishop on the same day John Vianney was named Blessed, that is, beatified. Shortly thereafter, Father Roncalli became Radini-Tedeschi’s assistant, and early in 1905, the young Roncalli made a pilgrimage to the tiny village of Ars, in France, to pay homage to the subject of his future encyclical. Then, in March 1925, Father Roncalli became a bishop, just a few months before the Curé of Ars was named a saint and the patron of priests of the Roman Catholic Church.

In terms of its substance, the encyclical easily could have been written by Pope Benedict XV, or any pope before John. As a matter of pure speculation, what would this encyclical have looked like if John had outlived Vatican Council II? Would it not have a different tone and substance? What might have been the impact on this encyclical of a key by-product of the council, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, or De Ecclesia? John’s encyclical focuses on priestly virtue, making no mention of “the royal priesthood,” the Church’s baptized lay members on which Vatican II cast a spotlight, rather than focusing exclusively on the Church’s clergy and hierarchical structure. This paragraph from the encyclical would seem out of place, almost insulting, if it were written in, say, 1965:

 

If there were no priests or if they were not doing their daily work, what use would all these apostolic undertakings be, even those which seem best suited to the present age? Of what use would be the laymen who work so zealously and generously to help in the activities of the apostolate? [Emphasis added.]

 

To make a broader and more extreme leap, imagine, in light of his tender guidance of his priests, how disheartened the Good Pope would be to learn of the abuse scandal that rocked the Church in the 1990s and beyond. A naïve and simplistic conclusion would be: This would have never happened if priests took this letter as seriously as it was intended to be.

Picture John’s words from this encyclical imparted to priests and bishops in the context of the abuse scandal:

 

And so We do not hesitate to speak to all of these sacred ministers, whom We love so much and in whom the Church rests such great hopes—these priests—and urge them in the name of Jesus Christ from the depths of a father’s heart to be faithful in doing and giving all that the seriousness of their ecclesiastical dignity requires of them.

 

Dated August 1, 1959, the 10,000-word document has three main parts. After the introduction recalling his fond personal remembrances of Saint John Vianney, the first section of the encyclical letter discusses Vianney’s legendary asceticism. Vianney was known for fasting and self-denial in the extreme. He ate and slept little. When he did sleep, it was often on the floor. He was, as Pope John recalled, “hard on himself, and gentle with others.” In painting a portrait of Saint John Vianney, the pope discourses on the so-called evangelical virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience, which typically govern those in religious orders. Despite noting that diocesan priests are not formally bound by these vows, John remarks that “these counsels offer them [churchmen] and all of the faithful the surest road to the desired goal of Christian perfection.”

Much is made of Vianney’s personal, Franciscan-style poverty and compassion for the poor. John frequently cites the curate’s own words, for example: “My secret is easy to learn. It can be summed up in these few words: give everything away and keep nothing for yourself.” One can already begin to see a consistent strain of thought in John’s papal pronouncements: here we see him extolling the parish priest who freely accepted beggars—and later we see this expanded to a macro scale in encyclicals such as Mater et magistra (Mother and teacher) and Pacem in terris (Peace on earth).

As the pontiff holds up Vianney as a paragon of chastity, today’s readers might find it curious that the word celibacy never enters the discussion. This was not in the least unusual in 1959, and yet how much the winds of change that John himself set in motion would alter the conversation in just a few short years, owing to the debates of the ecumenical council.

He also celebrates Vianney as an exemplar of priestly obedience, especially to his religious superiors. The pope recalls that Vianney had always wanted to lead a more monastic and solitary life—he pined for it—and yet Vianney obeyed his superiors and remained a curate, serving his country parish in France. His wish was never granted; he obeyed. Naturally, as the supreme pontiff, it made organizational sense for Pope John to reinforce this tenet. Yet if we read it today, and after decades of sometimes fractious debate within the Church, one can only surmise: Is this the hallmark of an era never to be seen again in the Church, despite the rigorous efforts of recent popes? Or is it a model that is increasingly embraced again as a path to priestly holiness? And what role did, or could have, obedience played—to good or ill effect—in the scandals that have plagued the Church?

The encyclical’s second segment focuses on Saint John Vianney as a model of priestly holiness, chiefly through prayer—constant prayer. The pope underscores the necessity of a priest’s prayer life, listing prayerful practices as diverse as recitation of the Rosary, praying the Holy Office, meditation, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, examinations of conscience, and most important, devotion to the Eucharist and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Regarding the Mass, Vianney—and hence, Pope John—goes so far as to see external and internal attentiveness and piety in celebrating Mass as keys to a holy priesthood, warding off flat and stale vocations.

The third part of Sacerdotii nostri primordia gets up close and personal, if you will, taking a close look at the pastoral zeal of this good shepherd of souls. Undoubtedly drawing parallels to his own secular era—and ours, if we read the encyclical today—John noted that Vianney had his own parish challenges. In an era after the French Revolution, his flock was in sore need of conversion. Nowhere was Vianney’s pastoral passion embodied and shown more than in the confessional. It is said he heard confessions daily for thirty years. The pope rattled off stupefying statistics, saying that Vianney was known to have heard confessions fifteen hours a day, from early morning into the night, to the tune of 80,000 confessions a year! This ministry of mercy surely was not merely numerical but rather a stunning example of mercy and anguish for sinners and limitless compassion for his flock. It was said that Vianney’s penances were light; he’d bear the burden, essentially, for the poor sinners whose confessions he heard. “I impose only a small penance on those who confess their sins properly; the rest I perform in their place.”

Other priestly virtues that John inventories are preacher, catechist, teacher, and learner. Regarding the role of catechism, John hearkens back to the Council of Trent, saying that the council “pronounced this [the priest’s role of catechist] to be a parish priest’s first and greatest duty.” And as for preaching, John declares that “even Saint Francis de Sales would have been struck with admiration” for Vianney’s preaching. Here again, John may have even unwittingly seen parallels with himself: not the world’s most polished speaker, but one who won souls by his humility, honesty, and personal holiness.

In John’s last major verse in his hymn to priestly excellence, he asks that the faithful pray for priests and that families support vocations to the priesthood. “We have complete confidence that the young people of our time will be as quick as those of times past to give a generous answer to the invitation of the Divine Master to provide for this vital need. . . . So let Christian families consider it one of their most sublime privileges to give priests to the Church; and so let them offer their sons to the sacred ministry with joy and gratitude.”

We can only speculate how the pope might have recast his message today to address critical priest shortages.

What seems unmistakable in all this is the influence that Saint John Vianney had on Pope John’s spiritual formation: his personal holiness, his priesthood—and his pontificate. We have every right to conclude that Pope John took Saint John Vianney’s words and practices to heart and embraced them in his own ministry, a ministry that ultimately embraced the world.

 

In Princeps pastorum, published November 28, 1959, John XXIII envisioned the growth of the Church in formerly colonial lands that were awakening to independence, often in volatile fashion. He intuitively understood where population numbers would increase and where the Church’s most fertile grounds would be: not in the Europe of old but instead in the developing nation-states of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. It is noteworthy that the encyclical’s publication coincided with the creation of eight archdioceses with twenty-nine suffragan, or subordinate, dioceses in West Africa (Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Burundi). And of the new bishops named, five of them were native Africans.

Issued on November 28, 1959, thirteen months to the day after John’s election, Princeps pastorum is Pope John’s encyclical letter on the Church’s missions. As with many papal encyclicals, his fourth encyclical commemorates an earlier letter, in this case Maximum illud (On the Propagation of the Catholic Faith Throughout the World), from Pope Benedict XV, in 1919, forty years earlier almost to the day. In Maximum illud, Benedict, who was writing just after World War I, asserted the importance of native clergy in mission lands and underscored the importance of evangelization.

Princeps pastorum gets its name, as is customary, from its opening words in Latin. In this case, John borrows from a biblical exhortation found in the first letter of Peter in the context of Church leaders being urged to tend to the flock of the Good Shepherd: “And when the chief Shepherd is revealed, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4).

Among highlights of the text are the following: a call for not only a native clergy but also local hierarchies, which he did on that day for West Africa; the need for personal sanctification, a comment likely intended to thwart local customs that flouted conventional Western morals; native teachers in seminaries; adaptation to local customs and cultures; promotion of social welfare and material improvement projects; condemnation of ultranationalism; establishment of missiology as part of the curriculum of seminaries in mission lands; call for lay help and from the Church at large; and encouragement for public defense of Christian life and against persecution.

Perhaps drawing battle lines for the liberation theology debate decades later, he declared:

 

Therefore, in mission territories, the Church takes the most generous measures to encourage social welfare projects, to support welfare work for the poor, and to assist Christian communities and the peoples concerned. Care must be taken, however, not to clutter and obstruct the apostolic work of the missions with an excessive quantity of secular projects. Economic assistance must be limited to necessary undertakings which can be easily maintained and utilized, and to projects whose organization and administration can be easily transferred to the lay men and women of the particular nation, thus allowing the missionaries to devote themselves to their task of propagating the faith, and to other pursuits aimed directly at personal sanctification and eternal salvation.

 

At the outset of Princeps pastorum, John refers to his own early experience.

 

Our zeal for the Pontifical Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, a function which we most willingly performed during four years of our priestly life. We happily recall Whitsunday in 1922, the third centenary of the foundation of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which is especially entrusted with the task of carrying the beneficial light of the Gospel, and heavenly grace, to the farthest reaches of the earth. It was with great joy that we participated in the Congregation’s centennial festivities on that day.

 

His experience in this role shaped his thinking and provided an emotional attachment and zeal for this element of his pontificate. Furthermore, his postings in Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and France added to his deep recognition of the Church’s universal outreach and dedication to missiology.

During the Cold War, the Church often confronted opposition, or outright persecution, in communist nations. In fact, on the day of the encyclical’s publication, Fidel Castro in Cuba openly criticized the National Catholic Congress meeting in Havana as an attack on the Cuban revolution. The Church also faced harsh opposition in eastern bloc Soviet satellite countries and in China. The encyclical’s several pointed references to the Church’s challenges likely were not-too-veiled references to these conditions.

 

There appear before our eyes other regions of the world where bountiful crops grow, thrive, and ripen, or regions where the labors of the toilers in God’s vineyard are very arduous, or regions where the enemies of God and Jesus Christ are harassing and threatening to destroy Christian communities by violence and persecutions, and are striving to smother and crush the seed of God’s word. We are everywhere confronted by appeals to us to ensure the eternal salvation of souls in the best way we can, and a cry seems to reach our ears: “Help us!’’ Innumerable regions have already been made fruitful by the sweat and blood of messengers of the Gospel.

 

In the encyclical, John notes that on October 10, 1959, he had received more than 400 missionaries at Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, giving each one a crucifix “before leaving for distant parts of the world to illumine them with the light of Christianity.” He termed it one of the happiest events of his pontificate thus far.

We can view John’s exhortation as a significant part of a long continuum of the Church’s mission work, part of a long tradition of teaching on missiology. Of course, reaching back, we have great examples in Peter as shepherd and Paul of Tarsus as the foremost evangelist of the Gospels. Over the centuries Francis Xavier, Matthew Ricci, and others stood out as missionary exemplars. (The pope even singled out Ricci as a model missioner, educating native citizens of mission lands.)

As for papal documents, Princeps pastorum is part of a series of pronouncements. These include, as noted earlier, Maximum illud in 1919, but also Rerum Ecclesia (On Catholic Missions) by Pius XI in 1926; Evangelii praecones (On Promotion of Catholic Missions) by Pius XII in June 1951; Fidei donum (The Gift of Faith), again by Pius XII, in April 1957; Evangelii nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World) by Pope Paul VI in December 1975; and Redemptoris missio (Mission of the Redeemer) by Pope John Paul II in December 1990. And many of these concepts came to full flowering in Vatican II documents such as Lumen gentium (Light of Nations) and Ad gentes (To the Nations), which showed respect for local customs and cultures in mission lands.

This impulse had a rich history in the Church. Pope Gregory the Great (590–604), writing to Abbot Mellitus, fellow missionary of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, asked Augustine to purify pagan temples with holy water and to place relics of saints in altars, but not to destroy the local temples. And in 1659, the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith gave the following instruction to vicars apostolic of foreign missions:

 

Do not in any way attempt, and do not on any pretext persuade these people to change their rites, habits and customs, unless they are openly opposed to religion and good morals. For what could be more absurd than to bring France, Spain, Italy or any other European country to China?

 

Pope Pius XII’s Evangelii praecones forcefully advocated retaining local culture as part of missionary work:

 

Another end remains to be achieved, and we desire that all should fully understand it. The Church from the beginning down to our time has always followed this wise practice: let not the Gospel, in being introduced into any new land, destroy or extinguish whatever its people possess that is naturally good, just or beautiful. For the church, when she calls people to a higher culture and a better way of life under the inspiration of the Christian religion, does not act like one who recklessly cuts down and uproots a thriving forest. No, she grafts a good scion upon the wild stock that it may bear a crop of more delicious fruit.

 

Although some consider Pope Benedict XV’s Maximum illud as the “Magna Carta of modern Catholic missiology,” John built upon this and modernized it, as it were, and put it into action in Africa, for example. John also broke from the past in his viewpoint and language. Gone, for the most part, were the Eurocentric perspectives and the use of condescending terms such as “savages,” “uncivilized,” “barbarous peoples,” “heathens,” “infidels,” “pagans,” and “pagan nations” found in earlier papal documents.

In fact, one can say that we were just beginning to see glimpses of the universal embrace that would find fruition in Pacem in terris. In this encyclical, we find this perspective—explicit in ways that previous papal language tended to avoid—in this passage in which the pope quotes an address of his own in the summer of 1959 to participants of the Second World Congress of Negro Writers and Artists:

 

We ourselves have already expressed our thoughts on this matter as follows: “Wherever artistic and philosophical values exist which are capable of enriching the culture of the human race, the Church fosters and supports these labors of the spirit. On the other hand, the Church, as you know, does not identify itself with any one culture, not even with European and Western civilization, although the history of the Church is closely intertwined with it; for the mission entrusted to the Church pertains chiefly to other matters, that is, to matters which are concerned with religion and the eternal salvation of men. The Church, however, which is so full of youthful vigor and is constantly renewed by the breath of the Holy Spirit, is willing, at all times, to recognize, welcome, and even assimilate anything that redounds to the honor of the human mind and heart, whether or not it originates in parts of the world washed by the Mediterranean Sea, which, from the beginning of time, had been destined by God’s Providence to be the cradle of the Church.”

 

Princeps pastorum certainly did not get the sort of media attention afforded the later landmark encyclicals Mater et magistra and Pacem in terris. Although the New York Times gave front-page coverage, it did not provide a complete text, as it did with Pacem. The U.S. Jesuit periodical America devoted only three paragraphs in its December 12, 1959, issue, saying, “It is a fact of great significance for the future of the Church that the areas of its greatest missionary concern happen to be also the most crucial areas in contemporary world politics.” America went on to assert that “the large space given to the role of the laity is perhaps the distinctive aspect of Princeps pastorum. . . . The new encyclical seems to have conferred new stature and importance on the lay apostolate not only in the missions but everywhere.”

This encyclical garnered little or no comment from National Review, Commonweal, and American weekly newsmagazines like TIME and Newsweek.

Within the first year of his reign, in these three papal documents, Pope John articulated the themes of his papal ministry and of the council to come: engagement with the secular world, understanding the ordained priesthood as a pillar of the Catholic faith, and evangelizing—spreading the ancient faith—everywhere on earth. The still-new pope had staked out the landscape upon which he would begin to erect his dreamed-of edifice: the Vatican Council.