Pope John XXIII was the head of the Catholic Church from 28 October 1958 to his death in 1963.
Background
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on 25 November 1881 in Sotto il Monte, a small country village in the Bergamo province of the Lombardy region of Italy. He was the eldest son of Giovanni Battista Roncalli (1854 – July 1935) and his wife Marianna Giulia Mazzolla (1855 – 20 February 1939), and fourth in a family of 13.
Education
He went to primary school, mentored by a cleric of Carvico, and at twelve years old entered the theological college at Bergamo. A grant from the Cerasoli Foundation (1901) empowered him to go ahead to the Apollinaris in Rome where he concentrated on under (among others) Umberto Benigni, the Church history specialist.
In 1904, he completed his doctorate in Canon Law.
Career
He was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church of Santa Maria in Monte Santo in Piazza del Popolo in Rome on 10 August, 1904. Shortly after that, while still in Rome, Roncalli was taken to Saint Peter's Basilica to meet Pope Pius X.
In 1905, he was made the secretary of Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, the new Bishop of Bergamo. He worked at this post till the religious administrator's passing in 1914. Amid this period he additionally taught rational theology, church history, and patrology in the diocesan theological school. During this period Roncalli was also a lecturer in the diocesan seminary in Bergamo.
When Italy entered the World War I in 1915 and Roncalli was drafted into the Royal Italian Army as a sergeant and later served as a cleric. He was released from the armed force in 1919 whereupon he was named otherworldly chief of the theological college. He was named the Italian president of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith by Pope Benedict XV in 1921. Assigned main ecclesiastical overseer of Aeropolis and missional visitator to Bulgaria (1925), he quickly fretted about the issues of the Eastern Churches. Moved in 1934 to Turkey and Greece as biblical agent, he set up an office in Istanbul for finding detainees of war. In 1944 he was named nuncio to Paris to help with the Church's post-war endeavors in France, and turned into the primary perpetual eyewitness of the Holy See at UNESCO, tending to its 6th and seventh general congregations in 1951 and 1952.
In 1953 he got to be cardinal-patriarch of Venice, and raised to the rank of Cardinal-Priest of Santa Prisca by Pope Pius XII. After his election as a Pope, he confided in Cardinal Maurice Feltin that he had chosen the name "in memory of France and in the memory of John XXII who continued the history of the papacy in France". His coronation took place on 4 November 1958, on the feast of Saint Charles Borromeo, and it occurred on the central loggia of the Vatican. On 25 December 1958, he became the first pope since 1870 to make pastoral visits in his Diocese of Rome, when he visited children infected with polio at the Bambino Gesù Hospital and then visited Santo Spirito Hospital.
When Pope John XXIII was diagnosed with stomach cancer, the diagnosis was kept from the public. Later the decease reduced the pontiff's appearances, but he continued to work. Namely, Pope John XXIII offered to mediate between US President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Both men applauded the pope for his deep commitment to peace. John XXIII died of peritonitis caused by a perforated stomach on 3 June 1963 at the age of 81.
Views
John XXIII was an advocate for human rights which included the unborn and the elderly. In regards to the topic of divorce, John XXIII said that human life is transmitted through the family which is founded on the sacrament of marriage and is both one and indissoluble as a union in God, therefore, it is against the teachings of the church for a married couple to divorce.
Quotations:
"We were all made in God's image, and thus, we are all Godly alike."
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
He was a tall, fat, and fair-complexioned man. Pope John XXIII's own glow, agreeability and graciousness caught the world's affections in a way his forerunner, for all his awesome learning and individual sacredness, had neglected to do.
Quotes from others about the person
US President Lyndon B. Johnson said: "His Holiness, Pope John XXIII was a man of simple origins, of simple faith, of simple charity. In this exalted office he was still the gentle pastor. He believed in discussion and persuasion. He profoundly respected the dignity of man. He gave the world immortal statements of the rights of man, of the obligations of men to each other, of their duty to strive for a world community in which all can live in peace and fraternal friendship. His goodness reached across temporal boundaries to warm the hearts of men of all nations and of all faiths".