A People’s Pope: How ‘Il Papa Buono’ Humanized the Papacy

On March, 15, 1953, the tenderhearted son of Lombardy tenant farmers, portly and a bit squat, stood before the people of Venice. He spoke to them as their new cardinal, but his words foreshadowed the makings of a radical future pope.

“I have an inclination to love people, which keeps me faithful to the law of the Gospel and respectful of my own rights and the rights of others. It stops me from doing harm to anyone; it encourages me to do good to all,” Angelo Roncalli told the crowd. “I commend to your kindness someone who simply wants to be your brother, kind, approachable and understanding.”

The world could have no better brother than the “fat, lovable little bishop,” biographer Thomas Cahill writes in “Pope John XXIII”: “Here at last was a pope as a pope ought to be.”

Here was a pope who felt most comfortable among the citizenry; who as a relatively lowly bishop in Turkey wheedled and begged to help save as many as tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust; who reached out to people of sundry religions and cultures and who, never believing in his own papal infallibility, sought the wisdom of others. A pope who was august in deeds, if not in looks.

Cahill does more than present us with a biography of a beloved pope who served only five years, from 1958 until his death at 81 in 1963. The author also provides context for understanding why this pope was dubbed il papa buono (the good pope) by his people. He chronicles the history of the papacy, presenting Roncalli as a kind of descendant of those greatly humane popes who all too infrequently did right by the papacy: popes who did not forget that the first step in being Christlike was loving their fellow human beings.

Cahill, whose previous books range in topics from the early biblical Jews to the Irish contribution to civilization, writes passionately and deeply here. His love of John XXIII is rooted in his disappointment that so many popes over so many centuries squandered so many opportunities. His joy in those popes he considers benevolent is equally palpable, approaching a glow. As the author illustrates, good popes have been far outnumbered by middling to awful ones. Men of cruelty, violence and insecurities warred with kings. They subjugated lives. They built pleasure palaces. They created that cynical torture assembly line, the Inquisition.

“Inconvenient popes,” Cahill writes, “were dispatched mafia-style or left to live on as terrifying examples, minus eyes, lips, tongue, hands--or, in the case of one, all the above.”

Pope Stephen VI (896-97) had the corpse of his predecessor, Formosus, exhumed, seated at a trial, convicted, then thrown into the “green sludge” of the River Tiber. One pope, Boniface V--”rumored to be an atheist and insatiable pederast”--so inflamed the great poet Dante that the writer gave him an especially hot place in hell when he wrote his “Inferno.”

The popes Cahill praises demonstrated a love of humanity, an inherent kindness, tolerance, concern for the poor and a lack of monarchical delusions. Angelo Roncalli also demonstrated a sense of humor and a tendency not too take himself too seriously. He came from a humble family with a streak of social awareness. Cahill illustrates the pope’s earthiness by describing the visit of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

“He had been advised to address her as ‘Mrs. Kennedy’ or, if he preferred, as ‘Madame,’ since they would speak French together. But when he saw the beautiful young woman striding toward him, he opened his arms and exclaimed, ‘Jackie!’”

Unlike previous popes, Roncalli did not see non-Catholics, especially Jews, as “faithless” or blind, Cahill writes. He simply saw them as “separated brethren” to be loved equally. On his first Christmas as pope, he changed a harsh prayer that referred to the “faithless Jews.” His new text read: “Let us pray also for the Jews to whom God our Lord first spoke. May he keep them in fidelity to his covenant and in the love of his Name, so that they may reach the goal to which his will wishes to lead them.”

John XXIII and his immediate predecessor, the austere, imperious Pius XII, were both shaped by the question of what they did to help the Jews during World War II. Both men are candidates for sainthood, yet Pius’ ascension would certainly evoke anger and controversy because of the belief among many that he did not do enough to oppose Hitler’s “final solution.” Pius, writes Cahill, did more than he has been credited for in many circles, using his personal resources to “ransom” Jews and directing Italian churches, monasteries and convents to give asylum to many. Pius’ great error, according to Cahill, was putting “too much reliance on silent diplomacy and not enough on the power of his position as a mouthpiece of morality.”

What Pius could not convey was what Cahill describes as John XXIII’s “aura of goodness.” As John lay dying, soon to be succeeded by Pope Paul VI, he was read messages from all over the world, from the rich and the poor, “from Christians and Jews, from Buddhists and atheists.”

One atheist wrote: “Insofar as an atheist can pray, I’m praying for you.”

The pope, writes Cahill, smiled.