Today on the Calendar of Saints in the Episcopal Church we find Pope John XXIII, who was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (25 November 1881 – 3 June 1963).
Roncalli was elected as the 261st Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City on October 28, 1958. Following the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, Roncalli, then Archishop of Venice, was elected Pope, to his great surprise. After the long pontificate of Pope Pius XII, the cardinals chose a man who, it was presumed because of his advanced age, would be a short-term or “stop-gap” pope. Upon his election, Cardinal Roncalli chose John as his regnal name.
This was the first time in over 500 years that this name had been chosen. John XXIII’s personal warmth, good humor and kindness captured the world’s affections in a way his predecessor, for all his learning, had failed to do. Far from being a mere “stop gap” Pope, he called the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), but did not live to see it completed; he died on June 3, 1963, two months after the completion of his final encyclical, Pacem in Terris. From the Second Vatican Council came changes that reshaped the face of Roman Catholicism and affected the rest of the Christian community as well.