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Pope Paul VI [1963-1978]

Pope Francis moved one of his predecessors closer to sainthood, beatifying Pope Paul VI in a Mass on October 19, 2014, the last day of the meeting of bishops and church leaders in Rome. Paul was elected in 1963, succeeding the popular Pope John XXIII and inheriting the responsibility of implementing the reforms of Vatican II. Paul oversaw the Church's transformation of saying the Mass in local languages instead of Latin. Paul also visited a number of continents during his tenure. But while Paul was pope during the tumultuous 1960s, he is perhaps best known for the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae which enshrined the Church's opposition to artificial contraception.

Giovanni Battista Montini Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini was born on September 26, 1897 at Concesio (Lombardy) of a wealthy family of the upper class. His father was a non-practicing lawyer turned editor and a courageous promoter of social action. Giovanni was a frail but intelligent child who received his early education from the Jesuits near his home in Brescia. Even after entering the seminary (1916) he was allowed to live at home because of his health. After his ordination in 1920 he was sent to Rome to study at the Gregorian University and the University of Rome, but in 1922 he transferred to the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici to study diplomacy continuing his canon law studies at the Gregorian. In 1923 he was sent to Warsaw as attache of the nunciature but was recalled to Rome (1924), because of the effect of the severe Polish winters on his health, and assigned to the office of the Secretariat of State where he remained for the next thirty years. Besides teaching at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici he was named chaplain to the Federation of Italian Catholic University Students (FUCI), an assignment that was to have a decisive effect on his relations with the founders of the post-war Christian Democratic Party.

In 1937 he was named substitute for ordinary affairs under Cardinal Pacelli, the secretary of state, and he accompanied him to Budapest (1938) for the International Eucharistic Congress. On Pacelli's election as Pius XII in 1939, Montini was reconfirmed in his position under the new secretary of state, Cardinal Luigi Maglione. When the latter died in 1944, Montini continued to discharge his office directly under the pope. During World War II he was responsible for organizing the extensive relief work and the care of political refugees.

In the secret consistory of 1952 Pope Pius XII announced that he had intended to raise Montini and Domenico Tardini to the Sacred College but that they had both asked to be dispensed from accepting. Instead he conferred on both of them the title of prosecretary of state. The following year Montini was appointed Archbishop of Milan but still without the title cf cardinal. He took possession of his new See on January 5, 1955 and soon made himself known as the "archbishop of the workers." He revitalized the entire diocese, preached the social message of the Gospel, worked to win back the laboring class, promoted Catholic education at every level, and supported the Catholic press. His impact upon the city at this time was so great that it attracted world-wide attention. At the conclave of 1958 his name was frequently mentioned, and at Pope John's first consistory in December of that year he was one of 23 prelates raised to the cardinalate with his name leading the list. His response to the call for a Council was immediate and even before it met he was identified as a strong advocate of the principle of collegiality. He was appointed to the Central Preparatory Commission for Vatican II and also to the Technical-Organizational Commission.

On the death of Pope John XXIII, Montini was elected June 21, 1963 to succeed him. In his first message to the world, he committed himself to a continuation of the work begun by John XXIII. Throughout his pontificate the tension between papal primacy and the collegiality of the episcopacy was a source of conflict. On September 14, 1965 he announced the establishment of the Synod of Bishops called for by the Council fathers, but some issues that seemed suitable for discussion by the synod were reserved to himself. Celibacy, removed from the debate of the fourth session of the Council, was made the subject of an encyclical, June 24, 1967); the regulation of birth was treated in Humanae vitae July 24, 1968), his last encyclical. The controversies over these two pronouncements tended to overshadow the last years of his pontificate.

John XXIII died on 3 June 1963 while the work at the Council concluded on 8 December 1965 during the pontificate of Paul VI. The Council brought numerous, important changes which would profoundly mark the life of the Church. The changes included the celebration of Mass with the altar facing the people, the introduction of modern languages in place of Latin in the liturgy, and openness to ecumenical dialogue and religious freedom.

The charge of deicide had been leveled against Jews by anti-Semites for almost 2000 years. The accusation has lead to pogroms and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, not counting the additional six million killed at Hitler's command before and during World War II. In 1965, the Second Vatican Council, called by Pope John XXIII, stated: "What was perpetrated against (the Lord) in His Passion cannot be imputed either to all the Jewish people of that time or the Jewish people of our time. .Accordingly, all must be careful that nothing is taught about this matter in preaching or in catechizing that fails to agree with the truth of the Gospel and the Spirit of Christ."

The Israeli newspaper, Maariv described Pope Paul as a "faithful heir to his teacher, Pope Pius XII, who did not lift a finger to save the Jews during the Second World War", and as a spokesman for the "Curia-Conservative reactionary circles in control at the Vatican". But Vatican officials are "expressing surprise and regret" (according to the Catholic Herald, 16/4/65) that the Pope's now notorious Passion Sunday sermon should have been "misunderstood" and "misrepresented". He did no more, they argue, than "use the traditional Gospel story of the rejection of Christ by the people of his time, as an example of what is going on among peoples everywhere in the world today". What the Pope said was: "Just at the right moment a people predestined to await the Messiah not only did not recognise Him, but fought Him abused Him and finally killed Him". That is indeed, the "traditional" Gospel story and it is hard to see, in the light of it, how there can be any real reconciliation between the Christians and the Jews.

The greatest activity rate with regard to the normalizing of the relations with the socialist countries was demonstrated by Vatican diplomacy in the 1970's, that is, during the period when the process of detente was developing most intensively. During that period the chief of Vatican diplomacy (the Vatican's Secretary of State) A. Casaroli and other representatives made frequent trips tothe socialist countries, and the Vatican held a number of meetings between Paul VI and the leading state figures from the socialist countries. As admitted by A.Casaroli, the dialogue between the Vatican and the socialist countries was "beneficial and even necessary."

Actually the Vatican had been striving to reinforce the positions and expand the influence of the Catholic Church and to limit the atheistic propaganda in the socialist countries by means of the constant and systematic pressure exerted upon the governments of those countries. If it was impossible to eliminate the socialist system, then one must adapt to it, one must use all the legal opportunities to reinforce the church's positions in the socialist countries - that is how certain foreign newspapers characterized the ideological aspect of the Vatican's Eastern policy.

It was also necessary to take into consideration the fact that the Vatican's activities were not limited to church or religious confines. The Vatican continued to be a major international anti-communist center that had at its disposal large amounts of means for exerting an ideological and policy effect upon the broad masses of the faithful. The church leaders constantly reminded the faithful that the dialogue between the Vatican and the socialist countries did not mean any reconcilation of the church with communism. Many Vatican figures, admitting the lack of promise of any armed struggle against the socialist countries, nevertheless harbored the hope that there would be an erosion or degeneration of socialism. It was not by accident that certain Vatican circles supported revisionistic concepts that denied the Marxist-Leninist principles of the building of the communist society and that called for the "improving" of real socialism.

The support of the revisionistic tendencies was reflected, to a certain degree, in the Vatican's Eastern policy. On the other hand, something that leaves its imprint upon the Eastern policy was the anticommunistic activity of the extremely reactionary Vatican figures - the opponents of the normalization of the relations between the Vatican and the socialist countries; and also the other reactionary elements. It should be emphasized that the clerical-nationalistic emigres, of various nationalities in the Vatican, who had an extremely hostile attitude toward socialism, continued to be granted broad opportunities to use the radio for subversive anti-communist propaganda. For example, Vatican radio broadcasts in Lithuanian broadly propagandized materials of anti-Soviet content that are published in the reactionaryemigre press and incite illegal actions by extremist elements.

Pope Paul had an unaccountably poor press and his public image suffered by comparison with his outgoing and jovial predecessor. Those who knew him best, however, describe him as a brilliant man, deeply spiritual, humble, reserved and gentle, a man of "infinite courtesy." He was one of the most traveled popes in history and the first to visit five continents. His remarkable corpus of thought must be searched out in his many addresses and letters as well as in his major pronouncements. His successful conclusion of Vatican II has left its mark on the history of the Church, but history will also record his rigorous reform of the Roman curia, his well-received address to the UN in 1965, his encyclical Populorum progressio (1967), his second great social letter Octogesima adveniens (1971) - the first to show an awareness of many problems that have only recently been brought to light - and his apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, his last major pronouncement which also touched on the central question of the just conception of liberation and salvation.

Pope Paul Vl, the pilgrim pope, died on August 6, 1978, the feast of the Transfiguration. He asked that his funeral be simple with no catafalque and no monument over his grave.