John XXIII

(Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli)

(1881–1963)

   Pope 1958–63. When a successor had to be elected in 1958 to Pope Pius XII, the choice fell on the seventy-seven-year-old Cardinal Roncalli, as a compromise between more illustrious candidates. Of peasant stock, with rugged features, he was a simple and benign man with few intellectual pretensions. To the surprise of some of those who had chosen him, he revealed a firmness of character, breadth of outlook and humanity that marked him as one of the great popes, despite his brief tenure of office.

   Determined to bring a new spirit of universal goodwill into the Church, he convoked the Second Vatican Council in 1959, to prepare the way for an Ecumenical Council of all the Christian faiths, that took place after his death. His encyclical Pacem in Terris (‘Peace on Earth’) was a profound and challenging document that gained world attention.

   Pope John’s humility and compassion were expressed in his attitude to the Jews. During World War II he interceded to try and save Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis in several countries, particularly in Greece and Bulgaria. Soon after he was elected pope he ordered that the reference to Jewish perfidy should be deleted from the Good Friday liturgy. This highly symbolic gesture aroused displeasure among more traditional and reactionary churchmen. The next step of Jewish significance taken by Pope John was more fundamental. At his instigation, one of the commissions set up by the Second Vatican Council prepared a draft declaration clarifying the attitude of the Catholic Church to Judaism and the Jews. After a prolonged internal struggle, and determined attempts to block the declaration, it was promulgated in 1965 by his successor, Pope Paul VI, in a diluted and less positive form. It affirmed the Jewish roots of the Christian faith ‘and the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews’, and it called for mutual understanding and respect. It has had a beneficial effect on subsequent inter-faith relations.