Paul VI

Roman Catholic pope (1963-1978)

• Born: September 26, 1897
• Birthplace: Concesio, near Brescia, Italy
• Died: August 6, 1978
• Place of death: Castel Gandolfo, Italy

Paul VI convened the last three sessions of the historic Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which brought the Roman Catholic Church into constructive engagement with the modern world. His abiding concern for the poor and for human rights and social justice and his extensive travels reinforced the progressive influence of the Vatican Council.

Early Life

Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, was born in a small village near Brescia, in the province of Lombardy, Italy. He was the second son of Giorgio and Giuditta Alghisi Montini. The Montinis were a prosperous aristocratic family, deeply devoted to the Roman Catholic Church. Giorgio was one of the founders of Sa Paolo Bank of Brescia, La Scuola Publishing Union, and the Morcelliana publishing house. A successful journalist, he edited the daily Il Cittadino di Brescia between 1881 and 1912. Giorgio was also very active in Italian politics, defending the interests of the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XV appointed him to the leadership of the Catholic Electoral Union of Italy. After World War I, when Catholics were allowed to participate in Italian politics, Giorgio Montini became active in the Popular Party. He was elected to represent Brescia in three legislatures prior to the party’s suppression in 1926 by Benito Mussolini. Montini’s mother, Giuditta, was also from an aristocratic family. She was noted in Brescia as a leader of the Catholic women of the area and for her generosity to the poor. Thus, Montini’s parents provided a home atmosphere that emphasized education and a lively interest in the social and political issues of the turn of the century.

Montini suffered from chronic ill health as a child. Much of his early education was provided at home. Until 1914, he was enrolled at the Institute Cesare Arici, an elementary school operated by the Jesuits. Between 1914 and 1916, he was privately tutored in preparation for final examinations at the Liceo Arnaldo de Brescia, which he passed with “highest honors.” Because of his health, he was not called up for military service along with his classmates in 1916. Instead, he began studying for the priesthood. He was ordained on May 29, 1920. After his ordination, Father Montini took up the study of philosophy at the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome, while simultaneously becoming enrolled at the University of Rome.

Father Montini’s talents and potential were soon recognized by those close to the papal throne. In 1922, during the first year of Pope Pius XI’s reign, he was asked to prepare himself for service in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. It was the first step in a career that led to his election as Pope Paul VI, forty-one years later.

Life’s Work

Montini’s first appointment in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps came in 1923, when he was sent to Warsaw, Poland, as attaché on the staff of the apostolic nunciature (papal ambassador). Ill health cut short his appointment. Within a year, he was back in Rome. It was a propitious move, for it returned Montini to the very center of power at the Vatican. He rose steadily over the next thirty years from one post to another in the Vatican Secretariat of State. In addition to his duties at the secretariat, Montini was active in the Catholic student movement during the 1920’s and 1930’s. In 1924, he was appointed chaplain at the University of Rome. During the following year, he was appointed national ecclesiastical assistant to the Federation of Italian Catholic University Students (FUCI), a post he held until early 1933. During those years, Montini led the FUCI in active opposition to the Fascist University Youth. The struggle for the hearts and minds of Italian youth was often a violent one. By his leadership, Montini won the respect and admiration of many individual Catholic students who would later play key roles in postwar Italian politics.

In 1937, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, secretary of state, appointed Montini to his personal staff. The two worked closely together. In 1938, when Pacelli was appointed the papal legate to the Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, Hungary, Montini accompanied him. Their collaboration continued after Pacelli’s election as Pope Pius XII in 1939. They worked together so harmoniously that the Roman press referred to Montini as “the right eye of the Pope.” Pius appointed Montini undersecretary of state in 1939, acting secretary of state for ordinary (that is, nondiplomatic) affairs in 1944, and prosecretary of state in 1953. Pius wanted to elevate him to the Sacred College of Cardinals, but Montini declined the honor.

Throughout his years in Rome, Montini served the poor as a parish priest. It was in recognition of his interest in the working classes that Pius appointed him archbishop of Milan in 1954. For the next nine years until his election as pope, Montini labored to win the workers of Milan to the Catholic Church. It was not an easy task. Milan during the 1950’s was a heavily industrial area and a regional stronghold of the Communists.

With the death of Pius XII in 1958, Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected Pope John XXIII. Montini’s name was the first on a list of twenty-three prelates named by John to the Sacred College of Cardinals in December, 1958. Montini supported the progressive policies of the new pope, including John’s call for an ecumenical council to revitalize the Church. The first session of the historic Second Vatican Council convened on October 11, 1962. On June 3, 1963, shortly before the second session was to convene on September 29, John died. On June 21, the College of Cardinals chose Cardinal Giovanni Montini to succeed John as Pope Paul VI.

Paul’s background in diplomacy prepared him for the difficult task of leading the Church during the remaining years of the Second Vatican Council and afterward. His leadership was conservative in that he sought to keep the Church faithful to past traditions, except where those traditions were hopelessly out of tune with the twentieth century. The progressive nature of Paul’s leadership both during and after the Second Vatican Council can be seen in the reforms he instituted and the causes he championed. Among the former were creation of a Synod of Bishops, replacement of the Latin Mass with the vernacular, and reforms of the papal curia. Even his style was progressive. He was the first pope whose reign was covered by television, as he led the papacy into the center of world religious and political affairs. He traveled extensively, being the first pope to travel by airplane.

Paul also used his influence to promote the cause of human rights and social justice, values that he learned in his parents’ home and never abandoned. In 1967, he issued a papal letter, Populorum Progressio (progress of the peoples), which was such a departure from the Vatican’s traditional conservative stance on social justice that The Wall Street Journal called it “warmed-over Marxism.” In the interest of world peace and social justice, Paul addressed the United Nations General Assembly in 1965 and made journeys to Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Paul was noted for his faithfulness to what he believed to be right, even when it put him at odds with his own clergy and laity. In March, 1964, against the strong opposition of the German bishops, Paul welcomed a delegation from the West German Social Democratic Party (SPD) to the Vatican. It was a recognition of both the efforts of the SPD on behalf of German workers and the progress the SPD was making in moving away from its Marxist origins.

Paul’s conservatism can be seen in his steadfast resistance to all efforts to change the Church’s position on such key issues as artificial birth control and priestly celibacy. In July, 1968, he issued the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (of human life), which upheld the Church’s ban on all forms of artificial birth control. In Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (sacerdotal celibacy), issued in June, 1967, Paul reaffirmed the church’s stand on clerical celibacy, while condemning the “spiritual and moral collapse” of priests who abandoned their ministries for marriage. Both encyclicals evoked some of the most serious attacks on papal authority in modern history, but Paul stood firm.

Paul is perhaps best remembered as the “pilgrim pope,” who reached out to Christians as well as nonbelievers with an ecumenical spirit. He met with the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1964 and again in 1967 while on a journey to Turkey. In 1969, he visited the headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland. Yet his ecumenism was not restricted to Christians alone. He reached out to Jews, nonbelievers, and adherents of non-Western religions, also. He established a Vatican Secretariat for Nonbelievers and a Secretariat for Relations with Non-Christian Religions. Throughout his pontificate, Paul followed an exhausting schedule. When he died on August 6, 1978, at Castel Gandolfo, his summer retreat, he was one of the most significant popes of the Catholic Church in modern history.

Significance

Paul VI was undoubtedly one of the most significant popes of the twentieth century. It was John XXIII who called for the changes that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world, but it was Paul who saw the changes implemented. His constructive and conservative leadership enabled the Church to undergo revolutionary changes without being rent asunder or breaking its continuity with the past.

Paul’s personal contribution, aside from his conservative leadership, was to make the Church an active participant in the struggle for social justice and world peace. On May 15, 1971, the eightieth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s historic social encyclical Rerum Novarum (new things), Paul issued a papal letter calling on all people, whatever their religious beliefs or positions in life, to seek out practical means by which they could work for world peace and justice. Yet, he did more than call for involvement. He set an example that others could follow.

In one respect, however, Paul’s legacy was a mixed one. By upholding the Church’s traditional stance on such controversial issues as birth control and clerical celibacy, he contributed, some believe, to the weakening of papal authority. Others believe just as strongly that by his defense of what he held to be true doctrine, he enhanced papal authority within the Church. Perhaps the Second Vatican Council and Paul’s strong leadership enabled the Church to change without experiencing the physical schism and fragmentation that had rent a more rigid Church in the sixteenth century.

Bibliography

Alberigo, Giuseppe, and Joseph A. Komonchak, eds. History of Vatican II. 5 vols. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, Leuven, and Peeters, 1995-2006. A lengthy account, from official Roman Catholic sources, of all aspects of the council, from its inception under John XXIII through its conclusion under Paul VI.

Andrews, James F., ed. Paul VI: Critical Appraisals. New York: Bruce, 1970. Seven distinguished Catholic and Protestant scholars, theologians, and journalists assess Paul’s policies on such key issues as birth control, celibacy, and ecumenism. It also contains a brief biography and a chronological outline of his reign through 1969.

Clancy, John G. Apostle for Our Time: Pope Paul VI. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1963. Published in the year Paul began his reign, this standard biography is especially good for his early life. The influence of his parents in developing his concern for social justice is well covered. Clancy is clearly one who admired Paul.

Grasso, Kenneth L., and Robert P. Hunt, eds. Catholicism and Religious Freedom: Contemporary Reflections on Vatican II’s Declaration of Religious Liberty. Lanham, Md.: Sheed and Ward, 2006. These essays interpreting the reforms of the Second Vatican Council include information about the work of Paul VI.

Gremillion, Joseph. The Gospel of Peace and Justice. New York: Orbis Books, 1976. Part 1 is a summary and analysis of Catholic social teaching during the reigns of John XXIII and Paul VI. Part 2 contains some 550 pages of papal documents (for example, Humanae Vitae and Paul’s address to the United Nations) in English.

Hebblethwaite, Peter. The Year of Three Popes. Cleveland, Ohio: William Collins, 1979. Although a somewhat dry and fact-laden account of the careers of Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II, this book is particularly good for an understanding on how a pope is elected. It provides a balanced and sympathetic assessment of Paul’s reign.

Holmes, J. Derek. The Papacy in the Modern World, 1914-1978. New York: Crossroad, 1981. This is a highly readable history of the Papacy during the years when Giovanni Montini rose from parish priest to supreme pontiff. The latter chapter covers the Second Vatican Council.

Serafian, Michael. The Pilgrim. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1964. A critical analysis of Paul’s role in the Second Vatican Council by a Roman Catholic diplomat writing under a pseudonym. The emphasis is on Paul’s role during the second session of the Council.

Waibel, Paul R. “Politics of Accommodation: The SPD Visit to the Vatican, March 5, 1964.” The Catholic Historical Review 65 (April, 1979): 238-252. This essay provides an example of how Paul could influence the course of politics within a nation simply by granting an audience to a visiting delegation. Paul’s act meant that the Geman bishops could no longer influence Catholic voters not to vote for the Social Democrats.