John XXIII, originally Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli 1881-1963
Italian pope

He was born in Sotto il Monte, near Bergamo in northern Italy, the son of a peasant. Ordained in 1904, he served as sergeant in the medical corps and as chaplain in World War I, and subsequently as apostolic delegate to Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. In 1944 he became the first papal nuncio to liberate France and championed the controversial system of worker-priests. Patriarch of Venice in 1953, he was elected pope in October 1958 on the twelfth ballot, and at once began attempts to modernize and reinvigorate the Roman Catholic Church. He convened the second Vatican Council in order to seek unity between the various Christian sects and broke with tradition by leaving the Vatican for short visits to hospitals and prisons in Rome. In 1963 he issued the celebrated encyclical Pacem in Terris ('Peace on Earth'), advocating reconcilation between East and West. His diary was published in English in 1965 as The Journal of a Soul.