29

John XXIII: Peace and Reconciliation

On October 9, 1958, Pius XII died at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence a few miles outside Rome, whose status as Vatican territory the Lateran Agreements guaranteed. Bouts of serious illness had plagued the pope in recent years, but for the world at large his death came suddenly at the end. That world was spared some of the gruesome details of the next days. Badly embalmed by Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who had been dismissed as official papal physician in 1956 but still managed to be present in the final days at Castel Gandolfo, the body had begun to ferment. Although hastily embalmed two more times, it still gave off a bad stench as it lay in state in Saint Peter’s. The doctor then sold to the popular French weekly Paris Match photos he had taken of the pope in his nightclothes on his deathbed, gave a press conference in which he described in detail the embalming process, and tried to publish a diary he kept of the pope’s last four days. Just before the cardinals entered into conclave they dismissed Galeazzi-Lisi on the spot and banned him from Vatican precincts for life.

This sordid and sensationalist ending to the life of a pope of such dignified bearing created a heavy atmosphere when the conclave met. Pius had allowed the number of cardinals to dwindle, and now nearly half were in their late seventies or early eighties. The person some cardinals wanted to support was Giovanni Battista Montini, archbishop of Milan, but since he was not a cardinal he was effectively out of the running. The precedent of electing somebody within the college had become an unwritten law. But among the cardinals there were no particularly strong candidates. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, prepared biographies of twenty-five possible popes so that it would be sure to have copy ready when the name was announced. The field was open.

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, age 77, was among the twenty-five but was by no means considered the most likely. Nonetheless, after a conclave of three days he was elected on the twelfth ballot, October 28. When he appeared on the balcony of Saint Peter’s, the contrast with his predecessor was striking. Pius was austere, slender, and never photographed smiling. John, in contrast, appeared smiling and was notably rotund. In fact none of the white cassocks prepared ahead of time for the new pope fit him. The one he wore had to be rapidly cut and stitched so that he could get into it and appear on the balcony in good time.

It soon became known that he liked to tell jokes and that, unlike Pius who was shy and ever more reclusive, he enjoyed being with people and was a good conversationalist. As these traits became known, some felt he was too undignified to be pope, but his spontaneous manner and warm humanity began to win a quiet affection for him that soon overrode reservations. People almost immediately realized that this “transitional” papacy, however long or short it might be, was going to have a style different from Pius XII’s.

That he chose the name John was significant. It broke the Pius-pattern that had prevailed since the late eighteenth century. He chose it, he said, because it was his father’s name and the name of “the humble church” in which he was baptized, and now it was the name of his cathedral, Saint John Lateran. He did not, as so many popes had done, choose it to honor some previous pontiff but took a name for more personal reasons that looked to pastoral service.

Papa Roncalli was born on November 25, 1881, into a large family of peasant origin in a village near Bergamo in northern Italy and grew up in a household where the ground floor was occupied by six cows. He entered the seminary when he was twelve, never seems to have looked back or have entertained any ecclesiastical ambitions. He wrote in his diary that he became a priest only to help the poor in as many ways as possible. But his superiors recognized the talent of this good-natured yet astute young man and in 1901 sent him to Rome for his theological studies.

The next year he was drafted into the Italian army. Although he hated army life and the interruption of his road to the priesthood, he rose to the rank of sergeant. Honorably discharged in December 1902, he returned to his studies and was ordained in Rome in 1904. No members of his family were present for the occasion because they were too poor to make the trip. He became secretary to Bishop Radini-Tedeschi of Bergamo, whom he much revered, and at the same time he taught church history at the local seminary. At the outbreak of World War I he was again conscripted and became first a medical orderly and then a chaplain. This experience once again thrust him into a life altogether different from the sheltered world of the seminary and the bishop’s office.

In 1921 he was called to Rome to act as a fund-raiser in Italy for the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. In 1925 Pius XI made him an archbishop and sent him as apostolic delegate to Bulgaria, whose Christian population was predominantly Orthodox, and after nine years sent him in the same capacity to Muslim Istanbul for Greece and Turkey, where he remained until 1944. He thus spent almost twenty years outside the Roman Catholic sphere. Received coolly in both places when he first arrived, he had won esteem and affection by the time he departed. During World War II he worked quietly but effectively during the Nazi occupation of the Balkans to save Jews from deportation to concentration camps.

During his time in Istanbul he published the first volume of a five-volume edition of the records of Saint Charles Borromeo’s pastoral visit to the diocese of Bergamo in 1575. He continued to work on this scholarly edition in his spare time for the next twenty-two years, until the final volume was published the year before he became pope. Roncalli was, therefore, a scholar in his own right, a fact often overlooked in assessments of him. His edition was published by a highly respected Florentine firm, Olschki, not by an ecclesiastical press.

It is plausible that Roncalli’s fascination with Borromeo, who saw the bishop as the primary interpreter and implementer of the Council of Trent and who therefore convoked a number of diocesan and provincial councils to do so, played a role in John’s “inspiration” to call a council. At any rate, John had through his almost lifelong study of Borromeo a perspective on the history of the church that was not exclusively Rome-centric.

In 1944 Pius XII named Roncalli nuncio to Paris, the Vatican’s most prestigious diplomatic post, at an extremely difficult moment for the church there after the city had been liberated by the Allies. He replaced Bishop Valerio Valeri, whose removal General Charles de Gaulle demanded because of Valeri’s compromising relationship with the Nazi puppet state in southern France, the hated Vichy regime. A relatively large number of French bishops had tarnished reputations because of allegedly similar sympathies, and de Gaulle, devout Catholic though he was, was on the warpath against them. The next year seven prelates quietly left office. Although Roncalli cannot get credit for the solution, he acquitted himself well in this potentially explosive situation. In 1953 Pius named him patriarch of Venice, which pleased him immensely because it meant that he could give himself to the direct pastoral service that he had wanted since his ordination.

He was faithful to his diary all his life, and it is now being published in Italy in a magnificent multivolume edition. Shortly after he died portions of it were published entitled, in the English-language edition, The Journal of a Soul. This is the first time in history, if we make a very qualified exception for the diary of Pius II in the fifteenth century, that a pope has left us such a record of his thoughts, reactions, and spiritual values. The diary is an incomparable help in understanding this complex yet also simple man.

Cardinal Roncalli made an important, typical, and prescient diary entry when he heard of the death of Pius XII: “One of my favorite phrases brings me great comfort. We are not on earth to be museum-keepers but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life and to prepare a glorious future. The pope is dead. Long live the pope!” Within a few weeks he found himself in a position where he could “cultivate a flourishing garden of life” with a new and greatly enhanced authority. No pope had ever had life-experiences in any way comparable to his before his election.

At his coronation ceremony he introduced himself by using an image dear to him, the one in which the youngest son of Jacob reveals himself to his brothers who have come begging to Egypt, “I am Joseph, your brother.” Unlike his predecessors he made clear that his pastoral responsibilities to his diocese of Rome were a priority. He began to visit Roman parishes. Two months after his election, he revised the old custom of visiting the Roman jail, Regina Coeli, on Christmas Eve and on the next day Roman hospitals. After he celebrated mass at the jail, instead of immediately going back to the Vatican he stayed to chat with the prisoners (see fig. 29.1). His first words shocked and delighted them when he said he remembered when his uncle was in jail.

In the Vatican itself he reestablished regular work audiences for the offices of different sectors of the curia, a procedure that had completely disappeared under Pius. This greatly facilitated simple and direct communication between the pope and his coworkers. He almost immediately began to name new cardinals to rejuvenate the College of Cardinals and internationalize it even more. Giovanni Battista Montini, with whom he had had a warm working relationship when he was in Venice, was among the first named. By 1962, the eve of Vatican Council II, he had raised the number to eighty-seven, the largest ever.

In 1961 Italy celebrated the centenary of its unification, which had been accomplished though the seizure of the Papal States. John signaled that he looked upon the Lateran Agreements as something more than a grudging concession to a status quo that was not going to change. On the occasion he received the Italian prime minister Amin-tore Fanfani in audience and in his official greeting said to him, “The celebration this year of the hundredth anniversary of Italian unification is a cause of great joy for Italy, and both of us, on the two sides of the Tiber, share the same feeling of gratitude toward providence for it.” The trauma of the Risorgimento had been fully overcome.

29.1: John XXIII with prisoners

Kneeling prisoners applaud as Pope John XXIII visits the Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) Prison, Rome’s largest, Dec. 26th. The Pontiff spent an hour and ten minutes with the 11,300 male prisoners in the jail, as he personally carried the Christmas spirit into the bleak cells. The visit revived a custom of Pope Pius IX, who visited the prisoners every Christmas.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

John disappointed the Italian episcopacy because of his policy, clear from the beginning, of staying aloof from Italian politics, which meant not displaying overt support for the policies of the Christian Democratic Party. There were many political parties in Italy that held seats in parliament, but the great recurring contest in every election was between the Christian Democrats and the Communists. By his distancing himself John seemed to be giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When the Communists gained votes in the election in the spring of 1963, John was blamed. The brilliant and disreputable movie director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, a prominent Communist, in 1964 dedicated to John’s memory his film, The Gospel according to Saint Matthew.

From the beginning John hoped to ease the tensions of the Cold War, and he believed he saw signs from Russia that looked promising. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 gave him an opportunity, during which his speech calling on Russia and the United States to back off their confrontational stance helped in some measure to diffuse the situation. The pope and the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev exchanged Christmas greetings that year, something unheard of, and early the next year the Soviets released from prison Bishop Slipyj of the Ukraine, whose long imprisonment had been a major source of friction between the Vatican and Moscow. The next month John received in audience Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Alexis Adzhubei. The event created a sensation. It could never have happened with Pius XII, and it sent a striking message of policy shift. The American theologian Joseph Clifford Fenton reflected a widespread assessment in conservative circles when in his diary he described John as “definitely a lefty.”

A month later the pope published his last encyclical Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), addressed not just to Catholics but to all humanity, in which he developed the theme of collaboration among the peoples of the earth and calling for “reconciliations and meetings of a practical order” that now were needed more desperately than ever with the nuclear threat hanging over the world. The development of nuclear weapons, he maintained, made a just war no longer possible. If there was a single theme for John’s pontificate, it was reconciliation.

He is best remembered for convoking on January 25, 1959, the Second Vatican Council, which in a number of ways transformed the church. When he announced it he said that the council would reaffirm doctrine and discipline, but he then went on to indicate two special purposes. The first was to promote “the enlightenment, edification, and joy of the entire Christian people,” and the second was to extend “a renewed cordial invitation to the faithful of the separated communities to participate with us in this quest for unity and grace, for which so many souls long in all parts of the world.” The reconciliation theme was up-front. The council was to be a word of friendship.

He made the word practical. In 1960 he received in audience Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first Anglican archbishop ever to be received by a pope. In 1961 he sent special envoys to greet Athenagoras I, the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople (now called Istanbul). Most important, he created for the council the Secretariat for Christian Unity under Cardinal Augustin Bea. The purpose of the Secretariat was to establish communication with other Christian bodies to facilitate their participation in the council. The result was the presence of anywhere from fifty to one hundred fifty or more “observers” or “guests” from other Christian churches or denominations, including the Orthodox, at every session of the council. Once the council opened, the observers/guests were almost overwhelmed by the warmth and courtesy with which they were received and the welcome with which their comments on issues before the council were heard.

The announcement of the council came as a total surprise and left some people stunned. After the definitions of primacy and infallibility at Vatican I, theologians had predicted there would never be another council because the pope could, and would, solve all problems. But would this council be a continuation of Vatican I, which, after all, had never been formally closed, only adjourned? On July 14 John laid all doubts to rest when he informed his secretary of state, Cardinal Domenico Tardini, that the council would be called Vatican II.

With that John set in motion a process that would lead to the holding of what was, when all features are taken into consideration, the biggest meeting in the history of the world. It was not the biggest gathering but biggest meeting in the sense of an assembly called together to make decisions. In the spring of 1959 Tardini sent letters to almost 2,600 cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and other prelates asking them to send in, “with complete freedom and honesty,” items for the agenda. He received almost two thousand responses. He sent similar letters to others, such as the Congregations of the Curia and universities around the world that held papal charters. The materials received were then reviewed and reworked into draft documents to be considered by the council. The responses and the drafts, published after the council, fill nineteen large-format volumes, each of which runs to at least five hundred pages.

The council met in four ten-week periods from the fall of 1962 to the fall of 1965. On average about 2,300 bishops, coming from 116 countries, were present at the different periods. Only thirty-six percent were from Europe, a striking contrast with every council since Lateran I in the twelfth century. Besides the observers/guests, hundreds of theologians were present, plus a large staff to keep things moving smoothly. On a given day probably three thousand or more persons were present in Saint Peter’s. The Communist governments of China, North Korea, and North Vietnam prohibited their entire episcopates from attending, and governments behind the Iron Curtain made participation difficult or impossible for their bishops.

As the council approached, a basic question surfaced. Would the council be a confirmation of the status quo and perhaps a tightening of it? Or was it intended to move beyond it in some way? Cardinal Giovanni Urbani, who had succeeded John in Venice, anticipated that the bishops had not come to the council merely “to sprinkle holy water,” whereas others expected just that and did their best to ensure it. John’s address opening the council on October 11, 1962, was therefore looked forward to with great anticipation. Its opening words were “Mother church rejoices” (Gaudet Mater Ecclesia), and hence that is the name the address bears. John wrote it himself, revising it many times. Although the words were carefully chosen, to those untrained in the language of papal discourse the speech sounded unexceptional.

In gentle but unmistakable terms, however, it answered the question. The council was to be “predominantly pastoral in character.” It was to “make use of the medicine of mercy rather than of severity,” so that the church “show herself to be the loving mother of all, benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the children separated from her.” The church must of course remain true to itself, but at the same time it must make “appropriate changes.” Although the full import of Pope John’s message was not grasped by everybody who heard it, it was properly taken as encouragement by those at the council who wanted to do something more than sprinkle holy water on the status quo.

Once the council settled down to business, John kept to a hands-off policy except when a stalemate occurred that required action. In November 1962, that is precisely what happened when the council rejected a document prepared for it by the Doctrinal Commission under the chairmanship of the conservative Cardinal Ottaviani. The vote fell slightly short, however, of the two-thirds required for such an action. John not only intervened to validate the majority vote but curtailed the authority of the Doctrinal Commission that was trying to dictate the course of the council.

By the end of the first period it was clear that drastic action was needed to speed the council along. John acted decisively by setting up a Coordinating Commission to which he entrusted almost plenipotentiary powers to expedite the work of the commissions entrusted with the preparation and revision of the documents. He chose as members of the Coordinating Commission cardinals who were leading the council beyond the status quo, members with whom he increasingly began to identify himself, as is clear from his diary. The diary also reveals how uncomfortable John felt in the company of Cardinal Ottaviani and how confident he grew of the leadership of the forward-looking Belgian, Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens. As things turned out, many of the most influential theologians at the council tended to be, as mentioned, those disciplined by the Holy Office during the last years of Pius XII, such as Congar and de Lubac.

John died of stomach cancer on June 3, 1963, after the council had met for just one of its four periods. His successor, Paul VI, presided over the remaining three. In many persons’ minds, nonetheless, the council was and remained, as contemporaries termed it, “Pope John’s council.” He put his stamp on it as much by who he was as by what he said. His death evoked an outpouring of grief worldwide that had never occurred for any other pope. People saw in his death the loss of a great world leader, but many also felt the death almost as the loss of a personal friend, of somebody who understood them, who could tell jokes, and whose heart was warm. He was himself, as he said of the church, “benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness.”