His mother called him Angelino, little angel, but the world knows him by the name he chose when he was elevated to highest position in the Roman Catholic church: Pope John XXIII. His choice of name was odd. The previous Pope named John was an anti-pope (not to mention a pirate and a murderer), and the last legitimate pope named John was a “wealthy fool, and a heretic” (167). John XXIII broke the mold by choosing to redeem an inglorious name. He would break many other traditions in his short time as Supreme Pontiff.

John inherited a papacy that had withdrawn from the world. While John (then Angelo) was in his twenties, Pope Pius X waged war on Modernism, issuing mean-spirited encyclicals such as Pascendi Dominici gregis which condemned the “poisonous doctrines” and “boundless effrontery” of the Modernists (90). John would take a different route. Rather than retreating into the Vatican and rebelling against society, he engaged the world by calling Vatican II. This council introduced major reforms into the Roman church. Many things we now take for granted such as hearing the mass in a language other than Latin were accomplished at this council.

The bureaucracy of the Vatican tried to derail John’s desires for the council, with some success. But John was a wily opponent! Just months before the council, John took a ruler to one of the schemata and declared, “[s]even inches of condemnations and one of praise: is that any way to talk to the modern world” (185)? The conservatives lost full control of the council, causing one to utter, “I pray God, that I may die before the council’s end. That way I can die a Catholic” (185).

Unfortunately it was John who would die before the council’s end. On June 3, 1963, John succumbed to stomach cancer. His successor, Pope Paul VI, opened his cause for canonization during the final session of the council that John called.

Thomas Cahill’s biography of Pope John XXIII is a masterful piece of historical writing. He begins his book with an engaging survey of the papacy from the Apostle Peter until the Twentieth Century. This alone is worth reading for anyone interested in the history of Christianity. His portrait of John is carefully nuanced, interweaving politics and religion.

Cahill is distant enough to see clearly without becoming dispassionate. He recognizes that the papacy is “a Christian invention that evolved under the pressure of historical events” (234). Despite this, he can still stare at Saint Peter’s Basilica and consider the dove of Pentecost.

As at Pentecost in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, as at the council convoked by John more than forty years ago, the Spirit will descend again, the foundations will tremble and the statues come to life. (237)

Cahill, Thomas. Pope John XXIII: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2002.