A simple and substantial man: remembering St John XXIII

Angelo Roncalli, who became St John XXIII (1958–1963), was a simple man. Simple in the sense of being grounded in the soil and not in the cloud. Simple, too, in not knowing many things but in knowing a few things deeply. Simple in his tastes and his friends, and simple also in being faithful to the Gospel. But not simple in being naïve or unworldly. His wisdom did not come from books but from living close to the earth.

As the fourth of 12 children of a share farmer, he knew the world, the need to stand up for himself, to distinguish between what was essential and what did not matter so much. He learnt how to negotiate, and how to tell the difference between the superficial and the genuine, the fair and the unfair. After he was ordained a priest in 1904, he was fortunate enough to be made secretary to a bishop with a passionate commitment to social justice. The bishop’s dying words in 1914 were, ‘Angelo, pray for peace.’

After serving in the army as a stretcher-bearer during the Great War, he was summoned by the Pope to Rome, later being appointed as papal delegate to Bulgaria and then ordained a bishop. In this role, he related easily to Muslims. In 1935, he was also made apostolic delegate to Turkey and Greece, where again he built good relationships with the Orthodox and Turkish majority. This was invaluable during the Second World War, enabling him to work with the authorities to save the lives of many Jews at risk under the Bulgarian alliance with Germany. After the war, he was given another delicate task, healing tensions between Catholics in France, and was made Patriarch of Venice in 1953.

Pope John XXIII never lost his common touch. Nor did he take himself too seriously.

After Pope Pius XII died, the other cardinals elected him Pope in 1958, apparently as an ageing choice to warm the seat for the next pope. Any expectation of a do-nothing pope was soon disappointed. He reached out to communist regimes and to other churches, and in his conduct, he chose simplicity and pastoral outreach over traditional customs. In his visits to hospitals and prisons, he anticipated the behaviour of Pope Francis.

Perhaps his most significant gift to the Church was his calling the Second Vatican Council in 1959 and ensuring that it did not focus on defending Church teaching or condemning the modern world, but on reaching out to people pastorally and engaging with the goodness and the failures of modernity.

Pope John XXIII never lost his common touch. Nor did he take himself too seriously. The story goes that shortly after his election as Pope, he passed a woman in the street. She gasped and exclaimed how fat he was. The Pope replied, ‘Madam, papal elections aren’t beauty contests!’

When a writer later asked Pope John XXIII if he could write a few words to introduce the writer’s book, the Pope asked him why he wanted them. The honest and embarrassed writer answered that they would help sell his book. The Pope smiled, did what the writer asked, but said that if he really wanted the book to sell, the Pope could have it put on the Index of Forbidden Books.

Such stories, however, can conceal the depth of his inner life. He was devout and prayerful, and kept a spiritual journal from his youth. Selections from this and from his letters were published shortly after his death in Journal of a Soul. The book reveals his growth as a person through his pastoral experience and through living with the uncertainties and struggles inherent in meeting difficult situations. His boldness as Pope was the fruit of spiritual depth, not of nonchalance.