Backing up in time again to some other important events in the Christian Era. Unrest toward the Roman Catholic Church was becoming increasingly vocal on the part of clerics within the Church. John Wycliffe (Wyclif, Wiclif, c. 1320-30-1384) was a philosopher and theologian in England. He attained a relatively high rank in the Church and was also held in high esteem by the nobility. He was instrumental in translating the Bible into ordinary English for the common people to understand. Wycliffe himself translated the New Testament. By 1400 his followers had translated the entire Bible.

Wycliffe was hauled before the Archbishop of Canterbury because of his controversial views on the rights of the secular over the wealth and power the Church had acquired. Twice he was put on ecclesiastical trial but nothing came of it because of the strong political support of the lords. He went on to denounce transubstantiation, monasticism and he also leaned heavily toward predestination.

Wycliffe garnered quite an extensive following throughout Christendom and was one of the important predecessors of the Reformation. His influence was felt strongly especially in Czechoslovakia, Germany and Poland. Once again, the archbishop censured Wycliffe and his writings were banned. However, Wycliffe died a natural death of a stroke.

John Hus (Jan Huss, c.1369-1415), was not so fortunate. Born in Bohemia, Hus became a priest, preaching in the Czech language at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague as well as being a scholar, teaching at the University. As a student he had become involved in the reform movement and became an ardent advocate. He was influenced by Wycliffe's writings but did not agree wholeheartedly with all of them. Both Wycliffe and Hus and later, Martin Luther, were of the Augustinian persuasion in their approach to religion. There was wide consensus that reforms in the Church were in order, but it was hotly debated on just how to go about it and to what extent.

When Hus continued to preach his controversial views, the archbishop of Prague, Jan of Jenstein, persuaded the pope to forbid Hus' preaching in the chapel. Hus refused and went right on, so he was ordered to go to Rome and present himself before the Curia. Again he refused. The archbishop threatened to excommunicate Hus and interdict the city of Prague; that is, to cut off all divine services to the city. The Czech King Wenceslas and the Queen were sympathetic toward the reformers. Wenceslas IV (Wenzel) had been the Holy Roman Emperor. He was deposed as Emperor but remained as King of Bohemia.

Hus happened to come on the scene at about the time of the Great Western Schism that took place between 1378 and 1417. This was a serious disagreement in the unity of the Church. Various kings and lords throughout Europe had tried with some success to hold sway over the papacy. At one time the papal court was moved from Rome to Avignon, France from 1309-77. For political expediency, Phillip IV of France persuaded the pope to take up official residency there. As you remember, there was some precedent for this since the back and forth between the political authority of Rome and Constantinople over a thousand years before.

There were seven Avignon popes, all of whom were French as well as a large number of French cardinals created during that time. Germany and England especially objected to the Avignon papacy. After a time, Pope Gregory XI returned the throne to Rome. Urban VI succeeded Gregory and managed to enrage the French cardinals. So they declared Urban's election invalid and chose a second pope for the seat in Avignon. More than anything else, this was a rivalry between the French and Roman cardinals as well as the populous of both regions. This brought on the Great Western Schism. Rome insisted that only the Roman popes were valid by authority of canon law. Therefore, according to Rome, the Avignon popes were considered the "antipopes ".

The Roman and Avignon popes continually excommunicated each other and each other's supporters. This led to the Council of Pisa in 1409 where both the Roman Gregory XII (whose authority was recognized in Bohemia) and the Avignon Benedict XIII were deposed. In their place the council elected a third pope, Alexander V!!!!! He was also considered by many as an "antipope". Alexander V held his papal court in Bologna.

None of the three popes yielded authority to any of the others and thus, retained jurisdiction over different areas of Europe. Christendom was divided three ways in its loyalty to each one's preference for pope. The Great Western Schism lasted forty years. To this day, the Roman Catholic Church does not consider the Council of Pisa a legitimate council.

The procedures for electing a pope underwent a number of changes down through the centuries. Also the Vatican method of officially numbering the names of popes does not include any of the "antipopes".

Some of the popes and "antipopes" engaged in quite heavy-handed methods to support their claims to the throne of St. Peter. The Roman Boniface IX raised money to lobby foreign allies in his favor against Avignon's Clement VII and his successor, Benedict XIII. The Avignon Clement VII (the first of two Clement VIIs ) had at one time been a papal legate. In that capacity he attacked and pillaged Cesena, Italy in 1377, slaughtering 4,000 anti-papal insurgents.

There were two Benedict XIIIs. The earlier was the Avignon Benedict XIII and the latter was the Roman Benedict XIII. Of a noble family, the Avignon Benedict XIII was deposed at Pisa. He refused to recognize any other pope and went to his grave believing he was the rightful pope.

The Great Western Schism with three legal claimants to the papacy prolonged the Hundred Years' War between England and France. The faithful were confused and didn't know which pope to obey.

Meanwhile back in Prague, Hus went about his activities as usual. From the Council of Pisa, Alexander V issued a bull, an official order, forbidding Hus' sermons and any further discussion of Wycliffe's views. Hus ignored the bull.

Archbishop Jan of Jenstein countered by getting the pope to accuse Hus of heresy. Infuriated that anyone would have the audacity to imply heresy in his country, Wenceslas set out to punish the church hierarchy in Prague. The situation continued to escalate. The archbishop left hurriedly for sanctuary in Hungary where he died from unexplained causes. But under his own authority, and before his death, the archbishop interdicted the city and excommunicated Hus.

Alexander V was pope for only one year when he died. The Bologna "Antipope" John XXIII succeeded. Here again there were two popes with the same name. Over 500 years later, the beloved John XXIII presided from 1958-1963 and had a positive impact on the Catholic Church's relations in the world.

In 1412, the Bologna Pope John XXIII went to war with Naples. He sent legates to Prague offering indulgences for support in raising funds to finance the war. Hus objected publicly to what he considered a fratricidal war and selling the remission of sins. (Exactly what an indulgence is will be explained a little later.)

Pope John XXIII formally and officially interdicted the city of Prague and Hus moved to the countryside under the protection of friendly lords. He lost the patronage of Wenceslas since the king made a tidy profit from his share of the sale of indulgences.

Wenceslas' half-brother, Sigismund, King of Hungary, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Aachen, Germany, succeeding several other short-term emperors of that high office. By that time the emperors were no longer crowned in Rome. Exactly how the title of "Holy Roman Emperor" was moved from Rome to Northern Europe in 800 with Charlemagne is explained in the Medieval Europe chapter. Aachen was Charlemagne's official palace.

Finally as Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund in concert with John XXIII convened the Council of Constance (Konstanz, in Germany) in 1414-1418 to straighten out the whole mess. The Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches were ignored. The Council of Constance was the sixteenth council after the first one convened in Nicaea by Roman Emperor Constantine in 325.

The council was comprised of not only high-ranking clerics and scholars from universities but also members of the nobility and emissaries of kings. A number of distinguished theologians with sincere and high-minded intentions included three French: Nicholas of Clemanges, Pierre d'Ailly, Jean de Gerson and the Spanish Vincent Ferrer. Ferrer was later beatified.

The council dragged on for four years, and predictably, became quite contentious. Actually, "nasty" would be a better word to describe a few of the topics for debate. Some members trotted out an old tale that would make present-day tabloids proud. This story, some said legend, had been utterly discredited by the official Church, but it persisted for centuries even in the writings of reputable theological scholars. It involved a pontiff under the name of John VIII who supposedly reigned for only a few weeks to perhaps more than twenty-five months between 855-857, depending on who told the story.

Literacy was a rarity in those days, so to be able to read and write was indeed, a distinction.  This pope supposedly was a scribe who became a notary in the papal court and was later elected pope; thus bypassing the usual priest-to-bishop-to-archbishop-to-cardinal hierarchy for elevation to the papal throne.  During medieval feudal times, bishops and popes almost invariably came from the hereditary class of the nobility. Often the nobility too was illiterate.  The popes were usually elected to the papacy by popular acclaim.  Other clergy and bishops were appointed with not too much regard to their qualifications.  Some were not even priests.  A common practice was for a father to pledge a son to the Church as an "oblate" in infancy. Whether or not many of them had a true calling to the religious life was very often questionable.  This too is explored further in the discussion on Feudalism in the Slavery chapter.

During a procession to the Lateran Church, John VIII /or Pope Joan (Johannes Angelicus), as she came to be known, gave birth to a child. Two versions of the fable declare that she died in childbirth and was buried in the exact place where the birth occurred/or that she was taken out of Rome and stoned to death.

In any event, thereafter, tradition dictated that subsequent papal processions always skirted the street in Rome where the scandalous event was reported to have taken place. This juicy tidbit of gossip was considered fact at the Council of Constance. Later the legend was widely used to discredit the Catholic Church during the Reformation.

There is an interesting novel written by Donna Woolfolk Cross entitled Pope Joan. A fascinating description of the lives and times of the people in the Middle Ages, it is a fictional biography of a courageous woman.

There were so many delegates that the four major powers (Italy, France, Germany and later Spain) were each given one vote while the cardinals as a whole body also received one vote. Obviously this gave much more power to the political representatives than to the Church authorities.  John XXIII tried to run a bluff by offering to resign if the other two popes would too. He thought, wrongly, the council would collapse without him. Instead, the council started looking into his background and condemned him. He lost control of the council and fled.

Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund pressed the council to resume its duties. Ultimately, in 1417 it issued a decree, Sacrosancta, with the following provisions: With all three popes deposed, a new one, Martin V, was elected thus reuniting the Church once again under one pope - in Rome. In addition to legitimizing this pope, it was decided that the council would thenceforth supersede the pope and his role would be only that of the executor. It was further decreed that proper governance of the Church required more frequent councils being held.

The supremacy of the papal authority on pain of eternal damnation was reversed in favor of the council. Before the Sacrosancta, Boniface VIII had decreed that obedience to the pope was mandatory for salvation.

The schism was healed, but with a great loss of the pope's prestige. Few of the other real reforms were addressed. To this day, ecclesiastic scholars debate the pros and cons of the Sacroscancta. The failure of the Council of Constance to effect any lasting change no doubt contributed to the Protestant Reformation one hundred years later.

And what about Hus? His name along with Wycliffe's came up frequently during the deliberations at the Council of Constance. Sigismund offered Hus safe conduct to the council. In good faith, Hus went to defend himself against the many charges of disobedience and finally, heresy. When Hus arrived in Constance he was imprisoned in a dungeon of the Dominican monastery for about eight months. Cardinal Pierre D'Ailly presided over Hus' trial. There were some thirty charges leveled against him including that of being a Wycliffe heretic. The whole council was in attendance at his trial. D'Ailly challenged Hus to recant. Hus answered that the charges against him were false to begin with and refused.

In July of 1414 the council pronounced Hus a heretic. In a formal ritual anathema Hus was stripped of the priesthood and his vestments. His soul was delivered to the devil. The same day he was handed over to the secular authorities and burned at the stake. Before the smoke of the flames engulfed him, he prayed and consigned his soul to God.

The followers of Hus grew in number at the outrage of his martyrdom. The Hussite Wars that followed went on for a decade.

There is an opera La Juive (The Jewess) written by Fromental Halévy that premiered in Paris in 1835. The story of the opera revolves around a Jewish father and his daughter at the same time of the Council of Constance and Hus' execution. It is a tale of mistaken identity depicting the prevailing attitudes of the times.

A hundred years later the Reformation began in Germany on October 31, 1517. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a young Augustinian monk and a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg. The University had only been established a short time. Luther was quite idealistic in his religious fervor. During an extensive visit to Rome he became disillusioned by some of the corruption he saw there. Many Church-sanctioned practices had sprung up that he found objectionable.

Luther took on the whole Roman Catholic Church when he nailed ninety-five theses of his oppositions to Catholic doctrine and practices to the door of the castle church. In this way, he threw down the gauntlet to debate his theses against all challengers. He primarily took exception to the use and what had become the abuse of indulgences.

Johann Tetzel was a German Dominican priest who countered with one hundred and six theses of his own rebutting Luther's. A huge and increasingly bitter controversy ensued. Soon it pitted the Augustinian against the Dominican monastic orders. Luther's ideas spread rapidly throughout Europe, sometimes peacefully, sometimes bloody. A number of German princes as well as the common people approved of Luther's view. At the time there was a growing spirit of German nationalism. Luther was seen as the voice for that spirit as well as champion of a holy cause and the reformer of the Church. He was taken under the protection of the Prince Elector of Saxony.

In June 1520 Pope Leo X condemned and excommunicated Martin Luther. However, the reformation movement had taken hold in a very strong way. It became the foundation of Protestantism in Christianity.

It was a different story in Britain. Neither revolt against Rome nor theological reforms were at the root of religious change in that country. King Henry VIII was a devout Catholic whose faith was beyond question. In 1521 he wrote a lengthy rebuttal treatise on Luther's ideas. Any incursions of Protestantism into Britain were met with harsh penalties.

Henry's motives were personal and political. Catherine of Aragon, his Spanish wife had failed to give him a male heir. Besides, he wished to marry Anne Boleyn. He also wanted to ally Britain with France to fend off their mutual fear of Spanish power. The validity of his marriage to Catherine was called into question so that Henry could obtain an annulment. He appealed to Pope Clement VII to invalidate the marriage. The pope rejected the request. (This was a different Clement VII, not the "antipope" of the Great Western Schism.)

King Henry regarded the denial of his annulment request as foreign intervention into his sovereign prerogative. The pope threatened excommunication. Henry countered with the "Act of Supremacy" proclaiming the King (himself) the absolute authority of the Church of England over any other ecclesiastic, and especially the pope. Refusal to take the "Oath of Supremacy" was punishable by death. A number of high-ranking church and government officials paid with their heads. The old Byzantine tradition of blinding and deposing was not sufficient for Henry. He lopped off heads, including those of some of his six wives!

Henry confiscated monasteries and convents and used the buildings for public use. The lands belonging to the Church were distributed among his favored supporters. The breach between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England was permanent.

We have to back up about three hundred years to understand what some of the religious circumstances were that led to and brought on the Reformation. A brief summary of some of the Roman Catholic theology is this:

Original Sin was perpetrated on the whole human race as a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience of God's law in the Garden of Eden. Baptism washed away that Original Sin. However if you committed sin after baptism, there were consequences to be paid; the debt of temporal punishment. That is, here on earth you have to redeem yourself from the sin to be reinstated into the good graces of God.

There are two kinds of sin; mortal sin and venial sin. Mortal sin is a serious infraction that will send you straight to hell for all eternity when you die if you have not confessed the sin, sincerely repented and received absolution for that sin from the Church through a priest. The priest assigns a penance that you must perform before you are fully restored to a state of grace.  The variety of sins are clearly spelled out by the Church.  Absolution was never intended to be a license to go out and commit the same or other sins again. It was simply recognition of human frailty and an opportunity to start afresh.

Mortal sin is similar to a capital crime. Venial sins are naughty little sins like misdemeanors. The temporal debt may be paid off either here or in the hereafter. If you die before confessing those sins and paying your temporal debt, you won't automatically go to hell, but you won't go directly to heaven either. You will spend a certain but indeterminate amount of time in a place called "purgatory" before going on to heaven.

This is analogous to the death penalty for murder or paying a fine and/or going to jail for a serious traffic violation. The amount of time spent in purgatory/jail depends on the severity of the sin/crime. As with the teenager who finds himself arrested and in jail overnight for a not too serious offense, he still has to call Dad to bail him out until a trial date is set. The teenager doesn't have that kind of money for bail. He can appeal to his father for monetary help at least. Dad may be pretty upset though!

Because we care about our loved ones, even when they are naughty, it follows that we want them to go to heaven. If they are serving out time in purgatory, "we good and sinless people" can help them get out by means of good works and services or money given to the Church and applied for that specific purpose. The souls in purgatory have no means of helping themselves get out and go to heaven. Prayers are especially effective when directed for the benefit of those souls. If donations of money to the Church are made for special masses to be said for the repose of a soul and more people participate in the prayers, theoretically the loved ones will leave purgatory and go to heaven sooner.

Thus, indulgences.

From around the ninth century on, partial indulgences were offered for pilgrimages to holy shrines. The benign use of the distribution of indulgences was for many good works such as special prayers or religious services. Originally, the pope was to use the proceeds from indulgences for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Over time, the use was expanded. Building roads and bridges as well as other civic projects could earn indulgences for the faithful. Unfortunately, it escalated into rewards for crusades and Christian Wars.

Pope Urban II gave the first plenary indulgences as incentives for joining the First Crusade. The Crusaders were instrumental in developing the system of indulgences. The various sins had a certain rate assigned to them for the amount needed for an indulgence but it could be adjusted according to the giver's income. An official document was given in recognition for the "donation".

There were plenary (whole) indulgences for getting out of purgatory altogether and partial ones for taking off a certain amount of time for one's self or a loved one. In a sense, you could buy your way into heaven by means of an indulgence; in theory, a sort of insurance policy against any future sins you might commit in the event you died before you had a chance to confess and do penance.

Obviously, pretty soon there was a brisk trade in buying and selling indulgences. Abuses for receiving or applying the practice became rampant. The rich had a far better chance of getting into heaven than the poor.

Here is an extreme example of how far out of hand the use of indulgences became. The Renaissance was on the horizon in Italy and would soon spread to France. The French king held tenuous control over many little principalities. About 1200 AD, a number of heretical sects rose to prominence especially in southern France - Albigensian and Catharism were two of them. Catharism had elements of Manicheism in its theology; total rejection of Roman Catholicism and fierce anti-sacerdotalism, the refusal to accept the whole idea and methods of the priesthood. Some of these sects originated in Bulgaria, the beginning of the derogatory word, bugger.

Pope Innocent III decreed a plenary indulgence be given to kings and nobles for their help in quelling the sects. He wrote the following letter to the archbishop of Auch in Gascony, France:

"The little boat of St. Peter is beaten by many storms and tossed about on the sea. But it grieves me most of all that...there are now arising, more unrestrainedly and injuriously than ever before, ministers of diabolical error who are ensnaring the souls of the simple. With their superstitions and false inventions they are perverting the meaning of the Holy Scriptures and trying to destroy the unity of the Catholic Church. Since...this pestilential error is growing in Gascony and the neighboring territories, we wish you and your fellow bishops to resist it with all your might. We give you a strict command that, by whatever means you can, you destroy all theses heresies, and repel from your diocese all who are polluted by them. If necessary, you may cause the princes and people to suppress them with the sword." ₆

The bishop of Beziers in France and several surrounding archbishops took no action.

A number of highborn ladies converted to Catharism in a public ceremony witnessed by a large contingent of the nobility. As the sect grew in numbers and influence, Pope Innocent III used every means at his disposal to discourage the sect; originally, excommunication. Then priests were encouraged to give indulgences to any of the faithful who would name heretics in the confessional. The priest was then obliged to turn over the names to secular authorities. The pope even promised to confiscate the land of heretics and redistribute it to France's King Phillip Augustus if he would help. The king declined.

The Catharist retaliated by defacing churches, burning monasteries and generally causing chaos. Many of their activities were disgusting vandalism and blasphemies. The sects would probably have died out in time because of their own excesses, but the escalating opposition of the Church only served to call attention to them and attract more converts.

After about ten years, Innocent III decreed a plenary indulgence be given to northern kings and nobles for their help in ridding the sects in southern France. The pope recruited Cistercian Crusaders from Italy and Germany with the promise of a plenary indulgence for participation.

The Cistercians were another order of Christian monks who obeyed the Benedictine Rule but were considerably more austere. They took on vows of fasting and perpetual silence. Trappist Monks were a later offshoot of the Cistercians.

Finally many of the French nobles joined in the crusade, seeing an opportunity to acquire land and property in the name of religion.

Arnaud, the papal legate sent to oversee the destruction of the heretics, ordered the crusaders to kill all the inhabitants of Beziers; men, women and children - 20,000 of them, some of whom took refuge in the church. The legate intimated that God could sort out which were Catholics and which were heretics. Then they moved on to besiege one town after another. If the town surrendered, the people had to swear allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church or be killed as heretics.

Carcassonne is a city in Southern France not far from the Mediterranean. It is a walled city that has survived some 3000 years through conquering Gauls, Romans, Visigoths, Saracens and what came to be known as the Crusade against the Albigensians. Better fortified than most medieval cities, it has two walls and a moat. It withstood one of those sieges by its wits.

During the eighth century, the Moslem Arabs had possession of the city. A Saracen princess, Lady Carcas was in charge of defending against the prolonged assault by Charlemagne and his forces. Some accounts claim the siege lasted five years. That was a lengthy time for Lady Carcas to become familiar with the dashing figure of the Holy Roman Emperor - at least from afar. Now, this is a legend. The word "legend" should not be confused with the word "fact"!!!

The attackers were starving the city behind the fortification of its walls. Lady Carcas instructed the soldiers to go house to house and confiscate any food. The city was down to only a few baskets of grain and a pig that an old woman had concealed. These pitiful provisions were certainly not enough to feed the garrison let alone the inhabitants. Further, the Moslem soldiers didn't eat pork.

Lady Carcas ordered the wheat to be force-fed to the pig. The hapless swine was then thrown over the wall. Legend says that it landed at the feet of Charlemagne and burst open with the grain spilling onto the ground. Charlemagne surmised, just as Lady Carcas hoped he would, that the city was well provisioned and could continue to withstand the siege. After all, if they could afford to toss food over the wall, then they could withstand the siege indefinitely. Charlemagne ordered his men to cease the attack and leave.

Dear Lady Carcas had apparently become enamored by the sight of the tall Emperor warrior, and could not bear the thought of never seeing him again. So she changed her mind, rang the chimes of the church bells throughout the city to call him back and surrendered to him.

The name of the city of Carcassone is not derived from the French word, carcasse, the carcass of the wheat-filled pig as some might presume. It is from Carcas, the Moslem princess who sonne (French for rings) the bells to call her beloved Charlemagne.

The Holy Roman Emperor took the city but rebuffed Lady Carcas, giving her to one of his compatriots. That union produced the dynasties of the Counts and Viscounts of Trencavel of Carcassone that survived until the Crusade Siege against the Albigensians in 1209. (Four hundred years after the adventures of Carcas and Charlemagne.) The city fell to the crusaders but was not destroyed. Most of the inhabitants managed to flee.

Carcassonne is now a beautifully preserved old medieval walled city. It is very often used as a set and backdrop for movies of that time period. It is a major tourist attraction for those of us interested in climbing the ramparts of an old citadel.

The Crusade against the Albigensian and other sects lasted for thirty years and caused untold death and destruction. A peace treaty was finally signed in Paris in 1229. The church triumphed and religious tolerance ceased in Europe, ushering in the Inquisition.

Another excellent novel, "Labyrinth", by Kate Mosse chronicles the historical events surrounding Carcassone with a different twist on the Quest for the Holy Grail.

"One wonders, in looking back upon these faiths, [and others], whether they brought as much consolation as terror to humanity.  Religions of hope and love are a luxury of security and order; the need for striking fear into a subject or rebellious people made most primitive religions cults of mystery and dread."₇

There is no doubt a necessity for any church to raise funds for construction of churches, schools and its myriad charitable activities. Tithing has been the most commonly accepted method as well as other voluntary fund-raising events. Tel-evangelists solicit donations all the time today. However, indulgences and bingo fall into questionable categories.

Some parochial school children have been given indulgences for good behavior or achievement just as kids receive gold stars and stickers today. It is a method of positive reinforcement and reward while teaching moral values. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. As with so many other things in life, it is not the use but the abuse that causes trouble.

Against the background of all this history, Our Founding Fathers were wise from the get go to set up a government with firm separation of church and state and freedom of religion. We have our fair share of fanatical religious horror stories however, from the hysterical zeal of hanging "witches" in Salem, Massachusetts to the fanatical Jim Jones sect and the like. But for the most part, in the United States the various religions live in relative peaceful co-existence. But we are only some 250 years old. The firmly entrenched religious traditions of countries in Europe and Asia go back for millennia.

When we were in Passau, Germany we were taken on a tour of the City Hall, an historical building erected many years ago. In architecture as well as interior décor, it looked very much like a medieval church. While we were inside and only as a matter of passing, our guide told us this. If you wanted to be married in a civil ceremony or anywhere else, for that matter, in order to get a marriage license, you have to prove that you have paid your annual church tax. Passau is primarily a Protestant city.

In 1059 a canon law was enacted giving the College of Cardinals the sole responsibility for electing the pope. (Incidentally, it is the sole responsibility of the Electoral College of the United States to officially name the new president regardless of the popular vote.)

Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli was elected pope in 1958. According to scripture, Jesus chose his disciple, Simon, and changed his name to Peter. Petra is the Latin word for "stone". Jesus said he would build his church on this stone. Thus tradition has dictated that each pope chose a new name when he becomes the pontiff. There is a direct line of succession from Peter to the present pope. It was probably no coincidence that Roncalli chose the name John XXIII.

Roncalli (1881-1963) was the third of a family of thirteen children of a tenant farmer in a tiny village in Italy. The oldest son, at age eleven he went off to school to ultimately be ordained a priest. He served in the military as an orderly in a hospital and later as a chaplain. He was then assigned as secretary to a bishop and was on the faculty of a seminary. There he also engaged in research into church history. Later he had a position with the Italian Foreign Mission organization.

The next post for, by then, Archbishop Roncalli was with the Vatican's diplomatic service in Bulgaria for ten years. This was a somewhat obscure assignment in a predominately Eastern Orthodox country. From there he was sent to Greece, another Eastern Orthodox country and then Turkey, a Moslem country. These were not exactly auspicious duties for any priest ambitious for personal advancement.

No one was more surprised than Roncalli when he was appointed nuncio, papal ambassador, to France in 1944 right after her liberation from the Nazis. His predecessor had been considered a collaborator with the hated Vichy regime. The provisional President Charles de Gaulle had no use for the former nuncio and demanded an immediate replacement. Roncelli had plenty of fence mending to do! He managed to do just that not so much because of his political skills or experience in remote posts, but through his disarmingly genial personality.

The pope recognized the favorable results of Roncalli's work in Paris and rewarded him with the red hat of a cardinal in 1953. As cardinal he was promoted to the more important position in Venice. All those years he had quietly and obediently worked without fanfare.

To be elected pope at age 77 in 1958 was astonishment for the aging cleric, obviously a compromise choice on the twelfth ballot. Because of his age, he was regarded by most as an interim pope and as such, was expected to maintain the status quo. Quite the contrary, he announced he was convening an ecumenical council to reform and breathe some fresh air into the Catholic Church. This was the first council called in nearly a century. Despite delaying tactics of many of the Vatican Cardinals, Pope John XXIII opened the second Vatican Council in 1962.

Right from the start, Pope John very much took charge of the proceedings. In his usual congenial manner, he made it quite clear he expected the council to maintain positive attitudes. He emphasized that the church was there to serve humanity, not to dominate it. He did not wish for any new doctrines to be introduced but instead to closely scrutinize old dogmas. There were to be no recriminations, no anathemas or political animosities. It was the pope's hope that old antagonisms should be ignored and that the Church recognize and take its own responsibilities for the division of Christianity. He increased the number of cardinals from seventy to one-hundred, thus including Catholic leaders from all corners of the globe.

Few in the Vatican expected the degree of the pope's willingness to embrace Christians everywhere. His years in countries where Catholics were in the minority, served him well in his efforts at reconciliation. Inviting Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican leaders as observers to the Vatican Council, Pope John welcomed them with warm hospitality. For the first time since the fourteenth century the Roman Catholic Pope met with the English Archbishop of Canterbury. A Shinto priest was received, the first time in history.

Pope John had passages that were derogatory toward Jews deleted from the liturgy. At one touching meeting with Jewish leaders he greeted them, "I am Joseph your brother", in reference to the biblical story of when the sons of Jacob first met their brother Joseph at the court of Egypt.

He received political leaders of every conviction but was always cautious to remain a spiritual leader only. During the Cold War his encyclical, Pacem in Terris, helped to diffuse some of the tensions between Communism in the East and Democracy in the West by promoting peaceful co-existence for the sake of the survival of humanity.

He never ever used his powerful position to benefit anyone in his family. When he died, he left his entire personal fortune to his surviving family members. This amounted to less than $20 each. In the short five years of his tenure as pontiff, by virtue of his warm and loving nature, Pope John XXIII, née Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli, was able to personify and promote the true spirit of religion.