Pope John XXIII was one of the most beloved and consequential popes of the twentieth century, the genial "Good Pope John" who, late in life, set in motion the sweeping modernization of the Roman Catholic Church. Born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli to a large peasant family in northern Italy, he was ordained a priest in 1904 and rose through the Church over a long career marked by humility, warmth, and pastoral devotion.
He served for many years as a Vatican diplomat in Bulgaria, Turkey, and France, where during the Second World War he is credited with helping to save Jewish refugees from the Nazis. Created a cardinal and made patriarch of Venice, he was already an old man when, in 1958, the cardinals elected him pope, many expecting a quiet, caretaker reign.
Instead, John XXIII surprised the world. In 1959 he announced his intention to convene an ecumenical council — the Second Vatican Council — to renew and modernize the Church and open it to the contemporary world. The council, which he opened in 1962, would transform Catholic worship, encourage dialogue with other faiths, and reshape the Church's relationship with the modern age.
A warm, plainspoken, and deeply human figure, he won affection far beyond the Catholic world. His encyclical Pacem in Terris appealed for peace among all people of goodwill at the height of the Cold War. He died of cancer in 1963, before the council finished its work, and was later declared a saint.