Angelo Roncalli was the third of 13 children, born in 1881 to sharecroppers in a tiny north-Italian village. He attended seminary on scholarship, but interrupted his schooling to briefly serve in the Italian army. After returning and being ordained a priest in 1904, Angelo continued his studies while serving the poor and working class as secretary for the Bishop of Bergamo. He re-entered military service as a chaplain during World War I, then worked in spiritual direction for the Bergamo seminary. Angelo later served in Turkey and Greece as a papal legate, helped with post-war efforts in Paris in 1944, and was made cardinal-patriarch of Venice in 1952, where he expected to live out his days as a humble pastor.

 

Elected at the young age of 76, Pope John XXIII became the first “Pope John” in over 500 years, putting to rest any confusion about whether now-Antipope John XXIII was to be considered legit. John started his papacy by eliminating the 70-member maximum in the College of Cardinals, boosting the number to 87 and creating the largest international contingent of red hats to date. Other than that, John made clear that he was no “transition pope,” proposing a diocesan synod for Rome, a new ecumenical council for the Universal Church, and a revised Code of Canon Law. Child’s play. 

On the writing front, John XXIII commemorated, like Pope Pius XI had done 30 years earlier, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on Catholic social teaching, Rerum Novarum, with the encyclical Mater et Magistra (“Mother and teacher”, 1961). He also wrote the document Pacem in terris (“Peace on earth”) on human dignity and world unity in 1963, just months after talking America and the Soviet Union off a Cold-War-shaped ledge. After his death from stomach cancer in June 1963, John XXIII’s cause for canonization moved quickly. It was opened by Paul VI in 1965, pushed forward by his 2000 beatification by John Paul II, and culminated in his canonization on the Day of Four Popes, April 27, 2014. 

Though his most notable act was convening the Second Vatican Council, “Good Pope John” was perhaps better known for being a pastor and humble father to every citizen of the world, Catholic or not. He was the first pope in nearly a century to make pastoral visits in the Diocese of Rome, he made a habit of visiting children’s hospitals and prisons, and frequently avoided formal language when interacting with the faithful. John XXIII even earned the nickname “Johnny Walker” for his tendency to sneak out of the Vatican at night to walk the streets of Rome. A newspaper cartoon after Pope John XXIII’s death depicted a grieving earth and a caption reading, “A Death in the Family.”