Pope John XXIII: The Good Pope (2 page)

Life in the barracks was jarring after his insular life in the seminary, but the earthy and sometimes vulgar interests of his military companions broadened his life experience. His outgoing nature won him many friends, and he found that most of the men he encountered respected his clerical status. (He would later be recalled to active duty, and in that second military experience, he had to cope with more disapproving officers.) He was promoted to the rank of corporal and became a sergeant shortly before his discharge.

Having completed his military service in November 1902, Angelo returned to his studies and achieved a doctorate in sacred theology. In August 1904, when he was not quite the required age of twenty-three, Angelo Roncalli was ordained in Rome. He said his first Mass the following day in St. Peter’s Basilica and was later presented in audience to Pope Pius X, who blessed his good intentions. He then returned home to Sotto il Monte so that he could say Mass in the presence of his proud family. Following theses joyful events, he resumed his studies at the Seminario Romano, working towards an additional doctorate in canon law.

In January 1905 Pope Pius X asked the young priest from Bergamo to assist in the consecration ceremony for Bishop Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, who was about to assume leadership of the Bergamo diocese. The new bishop was impressed with Father Angelo and appointed him to be his secretary. Father Angelo served as the bishop’s secretary for nearly ten years until the vigorous bishop’s premature death at the age of fifty-seven. During that time, at the bishop’s suggestion, he also assumed a post in the Bergamo seminary as a theology professor. He taught classes in patrology, apologetics, and Church history, and he was a popular teacher. In addition, he began research on an ambitious multi-volume work on Saint Charles Borromeo, the last volume of which was not published until after he became pope. With this multitude of roles, Father Angelo began to flex his pastoral muscles, and he did so under the socially progressive tutelage of Monsignor Radini-Tedeschi.

Father Angelo was utterly devoted to his bishop, later calling him his “polar star.” Monsignor Radini was from an aristocratic family and had served as a Vatican diplomat. He moved comfortably among the higher echelons of the Church, and wherever he went, he was accompanied by his young shadow. With Monsignor Radini, Father Angelo traveled for the first time outside of Italy: to pilgrimage sites in France and then to countries throughout Europe and, in 1906, to the Holy Land. He also visited every parish in the diocese of Bergamo because Monsignor Radini was not one to sit idly—he was a leader of the Catholic Action movement in Italy and was especially concerned about the rights of workers, which had been recently articulated in Pope Leo XIII’s 1891
Rerum Novarum
(
On Capital and Labor
). Monsignor Radini believed in an activist Church that pursued the earthly fight for social justice, and he regularly met with like-minded people.

Father Angelo had earlier been attracted to such ideas, but now he was exposed to the foremost activist thinkers of the Church, and he had the opportunity to witness how their ideas could be practically applied. Among the other programs Monsignor Radini put in place was an office for assisting poor Italian émigrés seeking employment outside the country. During a contentious strike at the large iron foundry in Ranica, Monsignor Radini’s involvement prompted complaints to the Vatican. He and Father Angelo opened soup kitchens and provided money to the strikers’ relief fund among their other support for the workers.

Following the bishop’s untimely death from colon cancer in 1914, mere days after the death of Pope Pius X and only months after the outbreak of WWI, Father Angelo moved out of the bishop’s palace. The loss of “my bishop” was extremely difficult for him. By now he had grown close with his family again and often sought consolation in visits with them. He continued to teach in the Bergamo seminary and to serve as a pastor.

This activity was interrupted when he was recalled to active military duty upon Italy’s entry into WWI in 1915. He served first as a sergeant in the medical corps. Bergamo was a receiving station for the wounded coming from the front lines. As a medical orderly, Sergeant Roncalli saw a tremendous amount of human suffering. When he could no longer physically help a wounded soldier, he came to the soldier’s aid as a priest, comforting and administering last rites. A year later priests in the Italian military were finally made chaplains, and he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Having trained at the side of Monsignor Radini, Lieutenant Roncalli energetically took spiritual charge of the diverse hospitals and schools that were housing the wounded. He established an association to aid the female relatives of deceased soldiers and a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

The decision to enter the war was catastrophic for Italy. By war’s end, some 600,000 Italians would be killed and nearly one million wounded. In the Roncalli family, Angelo’s four brothers also served in the military, leaving the women and the aged males to farm the land. Angelo was naturally worried about his brothers at the front. In the rare moments when he was able to be alone, the wasteful destruction of life sometimes brought him to tears. A cousin on the Mazzola (maternal) side of the family died of wounds from an Austrian grenade. And following the disastrous battle at Caporetto—one of the worst defeats in all military history—Angelo’s youngest brother, Giuseppe, was reported missing in action. His family feared the worst. Giuseppe would eventually reappear as a prisoner-of-war held by Austria and live to return home, but one of the daughters of the family, Enrica, died of cancer at the tragic age of twenty-five, only a few weeks before the end of the war.

When the war finally did end, Father Angelo opened a Student House at the behest of the now-bishop of Bergamo, Monsignor Marelli. It was intended to serve the spiritual needs of young people. Since the bishop was low on funds because of the war, Father Angelo used his own discharge pay and money borrowed from his father to set up the facility, which provided meals, housing, a quiet place for study, and a recreational area. He brought two of his sisters, Ancilla and Maria, to be housekeepers and help run the hostel. Father Angelo had become accustomed to helping his family in whatever ways he could, often using his meager salary to pay for doctors, food, and other necessities. In particular, he took responsibility for the upkeep of these two unmarried sisters.

In 1919 Father Angelo also became spiritual director of the Bergamo seminary, but he was not asked to teach, perhaps because of suspicions that he was too progressive. Father Angelo grew happy again. He was settling into a future working with young people when the Vatican stepped in.

At this point, the career path of Angelo Roncalli exemplifies how passing contacts can result in career advancement. After the death of Bishop Radini-Tedeschi, Father Angelo decided to compose a biography of his beloved mentor. He was somehow able to complete it during the war years and sent a copy to Pope Benedict XV, who had been a close friend of the bishop’s. After the war, in 1920, Pope Benedict remembered Father Roncalli and removed the priest from Bergamo, appointing him a director of the organization for the support of foreign missions, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide). Although it was a minor position, he met a number of important Church figures throughout Europe and began to be known to the hierarchy in Rome. Now, as a domestic prelate, he was able to add red piping to his garb, the significance of which puzzled his family, and was entitled to be called “monsignor.”

In addition, because of his earlier association with Monsignor Radini, he had met a librarian in Milan, Monsignor Achille Ratti, who later became Pope Pius XI. The contact had led Father Roncalli to discover the material he would use for his biography of Saint Charles Borromeo, and the librarian gave his permission and advice about how to proceed. Later, as pope, Pius XI appointed Monsignor Roncalli to the Vatican diplomatic service. Roncalli was made an archbishop and named apostolic visitor to Bulgaria in March 1925.

In truth, the new archbishop was not happy with his assignment to Bulgaria. A Lombard to the bone, he did not wish to leave Italy, his native region of Lombardy, or his family. Since it would not be feasible to bring his two sisters along, he further had to ponder the difficult problem of their disposition while he was abroad for an indeterminate period. In the end, he rented part of a large house in Sotto il Monte for his sisters, and this became his summer home through all the years until he became pope.

Adding to Angelo’s unhappiness at leaving Italy was the fact that he was genuinely frightened; he did not believe himself to be a capable enough person to assume this new status. He thought himself lazy and untalented, so he resolved to rely upon God for help. If it were God’s desire that he become an archbishop and go to Bulgaria, surely God would make up for his shortcomings. He took as his episcopal slogan
Obedientia et Pax
, Obedience and Peace.

Monsignor Roncalli had not wanted or sought this type of advancement. What is more, there had been no papal representative in Bulgaria in 500 years. So why did it happen? Some have speculated that Pope Pius moved Angelo to Bulgaria in order to remove him from Italy. Pius XI was a disappointment to many in Italy because he failed to live up to progressive expectations and made a shocking alliance with Mussolini. Monsignor Roncalli was a known supporter of the Catholic Popular Party, which Pius suppressed in favor of the Italian fascists.

It is true that by appointing him to Bulgaria, Pope Pius effectively put the monsignor’s suspect views on the shelf and segregated him, even while making him a titular archbishop. But just as the biblical Joseph was required to become a slave in Egypt for a time before rising to the lofty role God intended for him, God also had future plans for Angelo Roncalli. And as time passed and Mussolini’s fist tightened around Italy, Archbishop Roncalli would come to view it as a blessing that he had been able to leave.

And so Archbishop Roncalli found himself aboard the Orient Express on his way to Sofia. Bulgaria was an obscure outpost for the Catholic Church. Archbishop Roncalli’s job there was to protect the interests of the small Catholic community in the predominantly Eastern Orthodox country. Fortuitously, he was also able to provide broader assistance during two national tragedies, thereby attaining a great deal of good will from the Orthodox majority.

The first event occurred even before his arrival. Nine days before the new archbishop arrived in Bulgaria, an attempt was made to assassinate the king of Bulgaria, Boris III, by placing a bomb in the dome of Sofia’s main Orthodox cathedral. The horrific explosion caused the dome to crash down upon the congregants, killing 150 people and injuring 300. Arriving in Bulgaria so soon after the terrible event, the new papal visitor visited the wounded in a Catholic hospital that provided free care in the aftermath of the calamity. Archbishop Roncalli’s ecumenical kindness so favorably impressed King Boris that he received the archbishop only days later. This was an especially meaningful gesture on the part of the king because the papal visitor had no actual diplomatic standing in the country.

The second occasion was in 1928, when Bulgaria experienced a series of destructive earthquakes. Archbishop Roncalli directed food and blanket distribution in the decimated earthquake areas, and he even elected to sleep among the homeless in tents. In addition, he solicited funds for a soup kitchen that fed people for two months following the catastrophe.

Archbishop Roncalli also gained favor with the royal family by overlooking King Boris’ somewhat duplicitous behavior in connection with the Catholic Church. In 1930 this king of Orthodox Bulgaria had married Giovanna, the Catholic daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, in a Catholic ceremony in Assisi. Archbishop Roncalli was present for the occasion. The pope had granted the couple the customary dispensation when they both signed a promise that any issue from their marriage would be reared as Catholics. Nevertheless, upon their arrival in Bulgaria, the couple was remarried in a spectacular Orthodox ceremony, which the pope suffered as a slap in the face.

The children that followed were baptized Orthodox, further angering the pope. Archbishop Roncalli accepted Giovanna’s word that she had no say in the matter, and he understood enough of realpolitik to recognize that Boris, too, had little choice in this regard: to keep the wavering support of the Orthodox Bulgarian populace, Boris could hardly show weakness in his Orthodoxy. As it was, he was the frequent target of assassination attempts in his simmering country, and he did eventually die in 1943 at the age of 49 under highly suspicious circumstances.

While Roncalli did favor reconciliation and reunification of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, his mission in Bulgaria was not to be an emissary to the Orthodox but to assist the Catholics there. The majority of Catholics in Bulgaria were in fact already well served by two bishops. These were Catholics of the Latin rite, mostly foreigners living in the chief population centers of Bulgaria. In addition, however, there were some 14,000 Uniates who followed Orthodox liturgy and customs but at the same time were in union with the Vatican. They were mostly poor and lived in rural regions without the benefit of hierarchical oversight.

Having trained under the tutelage of Bishop Radini-Tedeschi, Archbishop Roncalli followed the lead of his mentor and went out to seek his constituency. He travelled broadly throughout the countryside to wherever they could be found—by car, wagon, and mule. He was accompanied on his journeys by a young Uniate priest, Stefan Kurtev. The simple people the archbishop visited were often astonished to receive such a high-ranking visitor as the archbishop.