Pope John XXIII: The Good Pope

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John XXIII was nicknamed “The Good Pope” because of his humble, loving, and open character and his gracious sense of humor. In possessing those attributes, he is viewed by many to be similar to Pope Francis today.

Like Pope Francis, Pope John was wont to stroll about Rome by night and make pastoral visits to sick children and prison inmates. John’s secretary, the Italian prelate Loris Capovilla, heard the news from Pope Francis himself and remarked how appropriate it was for the step to be taken by “the successor most similar” to John.

Shortly before Pope John’s death, the International Balzan Foundation, which is headquartered in Milan and Zurich, awarded Pope John its Peace Prize. Then, in December 1963, President Lyndon Johnson posthumously awarded him the United States’ Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

The canonization of Pope John XXIII was announced by Pope Francis shortly after the fiftieth anniversary of John’s death. The date for canonization has been set for April 27, 2014, Divine Mercy Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter.

“I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.”

The year was 1958. Pope Pius XII, who had ascended the papal throne on the eve of WWII and had continued to lead the Church through the beginnings of the Cold War, was dead. As though unsure of which direction to take in an uncertain world, the College of Cardinals opted for an interim pope. Nearly 77 years old, Cardinal Roncalli was aged even by papal standards.

In some ways, the recently deceased pope and the newly announced one could not have been more different. Whereas Pope Pius had come from an aristocratic lineage long tied to the papacy, Roncalli was of undistinguished peasant stock. Nevertheless, Roncalli had acquitted himself admirably in difficult positions of responsibility and would make an acceptable caretaker pope, one who could be counted on for a quietist attitude of maintaining the status quo. That was not what happened.

The papacy of Pope John XXIII lasted a brief four years and seven months, yet in that time, Pope John succeeded in bringing about a sea change in how the Church interacted with the modern world and its inhabitants. A great-hearted man of profound compassion, Pope John wanted the Church to meet the changing needs of the people that comprised his global flock and, perhaps even more importantly, to act with higher regard for those that were not a part of his Church. The most remarkable thing about Angelo Roncalli was how open his heart was to all people. This was no affectation; he genuinely liked people, and they, in turn, would find that they loved him.

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on November 25, 1881, the fourth of fourteen children, several of whom died in childhood. He was the eldest son of Giovanni Battista Roncalli and Marianna Mazzola Roncalli, who were poor tenant farmers. The family resided, as it had for hundreds of years, in the tiny farming village of Sotto il Monte (“Under the Mountain”), seven miles from the city of Bergamo in the Italian Alps. As Angelo would later put it, the family was poor in material goods but rich in faith.

They lived meagerly in an extended-family household that included a large host of cousins—twenty-eight people altogether at the time Angelo was born. The bachelor great-uncle Zavario Roncalli presided as patriarch over the family, conducting nightly rosary and pious readings. The family was too poor for meat or bread and so usually subsisted on polenta. The two-story, 300-year-old farmhouse where they all lived had no running water or fireplaces. In winter, the farm animals were kept on the first floor, making their rising body warmth available to the people living in the upper story as had been done throughout the Mediterranean regions since biblical times.

When Angelo was nine, they moved to a much larger, better farmhouse with eighteen rooms. Eventually, after many years, the family would rise from abject poverty to purchase that house and the small bit of land they farmed.

Young Angelo, known at that age as Angelino, began his education at a one-room village schoolhouse with three benches, one for each grade. School was taught by the parish priest, Don (Father) Francesco Rebuzzini. One of the younger Roncalli brothers would later marvel in recollection that Angelo actually wanted to go to school. That difference between them, the brother surmised, was why he himself remained illiterate, while his brother had gone on to become pope.

In this first stage of his education, Angelo so sufficiently distinguished himself that it cost him a beating. On one occasion, a visiting district supervisor of schools posed a trick question to the children: Which weighed more—a measure of iron or a measure of straw? Angelo was the only child to realize that there was no difference in the measurement, so “we beat him up,” recalled his childhood classmate. It was an environment in which excellence was viewed with suspicion and standing out provoked petty jealousies.

When Angelo had gone as far as he could in the local school, Don Francesco convinced Giovanni to send his son to a nearby parish for Latin training from the priest there. The boy was taught Latin using Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
. He later jokingly estimated that for each page he learned, he earned one clout from the priest. Angelo was nearly ten when Don Francesco coaxed Giovanni into allowing his son to progress to a secondary school about five miles distant.

Times were changing, the priest told the father; a boy with ability needed an education. At first, Angelo stayed near the school with other relatives, but his mother soon fetched him away from that squabbling environment, and he then had to walk the five miles over a mountain to school each day. He was so exhausted from the long walk each way that he was not able to learn well. In addition, the other students made fun of the country boy with his poor clothes and funny speech.

Despite the boy’s poor performance at the secondary school, Don Francesco continued to champion him and won Angelo admission to the junior seminary in Bergamo, which had been founded by Saint Charles Borromeo. The year was 1892, and Angelo was not yet eleven years old. He struggled with math and some other subjects in Bergamo, but over time, he began to excel in his studies, particularly showing a predilection for history and theology.

He was barely fourteen in 1895, when, probably at the behest of his teachers, he began to keep a spiritual journal, which he would continue throughout his lifetime. In it he chronicled his inward struggle for sanctity, and in reading his journals, one can discern his intellectual, spiritual, and emotional development over time. The first entry was piously entitled, “Rules of life to be observed by young men who wish to make progress in the life of piety and study.” It was followed by such categories as resolutions, spiritual notes, maxims, and reflections. The lifetime collection was later published as
Journal of a Soul,
and it affords us a unique chronicle of the spiritual journey of a young seminarian up through his priesthood and on to the papacy.

Although he loved his family and remained quite close with them throughout his life, young Angelo would feel less at home in Sotto il Monte as time passed. His education at the seminary in Bergamo was gradually setting him apart. At the age of fourteen, he received the tonsure, creating a further distinction from those around him. Villagers treated the youth with increased respect and distance. And then, with so many people living together at home, it was only natural that quarrels would emerge. Angelo found the petty bickering to be a trial, particularly as he was working to elevate his own soul. As a result, his cousins felt he put on airs, and some found him arrogant.

When Angelo became aware of their hostile sentiments, he began a spiritual battle to suppress these traits. Nevertheless, at this point in his life, visits home were challenging for him. It was difficult both for the boy and the family to balance his youth with his ascending status.

In 1901 Angelo and two other promising young men from the Bergamo seminary received scholarships for further study at the Pontifical Seminary, known as the Apollinaire, in Rome. Because of his youth, he was required to begin his study of theology again from the beginning. Angelo was in his element surrounded by history and the pilgrimage sites of his faith. He immersed himself in his studies and the rarified atmosphere of Rome. Clergy, however, were not exempt from the Italian military at that time, and after only one year of study in Rome, he was drafted and had to return to Bergamo to serve in the infantry. For a year he exchanged his cassock for a different type of uniform.