Opening:
Brothers and sisters, if you’re old enough to remember President John F. Kennedy, then you also remember today’s Saint, Pope John XXIII… they died the same year, 1963.
If you remember the day Kennedy was assassinated, how people unashamedly wept in public, in front of strangers, then you remember how people wept and mourned the death of the man they called “Good Pope John.”
He was such an “unlikely” pope. They elected him on the eleventh ballot, a compromise candidate, rather than a favorite. At age 76, he was the sixth-oldest pope ever elected, someone intended to be caretaker until the next election.
But the Holy Spirit had work for him to do; John XXIII was to teach the world about the Catholic Church. Perhaps that’s why the Church established his feastday, not on the day of death, like most saints, but on the day he opened the Second Vatican Council… October 11.
One thing John XXIII firmly believed in was God’s Divine Providence, that the Holy Spirit is at work in the Church and the world, that each of us has a God-given job to do. Throughout his whole life, he simply wanted to be a tool in God’s hands, a tool to do the work of God, any work God asked.
And convening the Second Vatican Council was the work God asked him to do.
As we begin this Mass, let us be sorry for the times we have worked our own plan, worked against God, worked against the plan He wanted us to do. I confess, etc.
After the Gospel: Luke 11: 27-28
Few people had as great an impact on the 20th century as Pope John XXIII.
Yet he was such an unlikely Pope. He was 5′ 2″ and roly-poly. On the day of his election, they had various sizes of white robes in readiness, but not one to fit him, so they ended up cutting and piecing, and holding together with safety pins.
As he stepped onto the balcony to give his first blessing, he said: “My first appearance before the globe, I feel like a newborn babe in swaddling cloths.” He readily joked that he would be a disaster for television.
Early on, he showed that he liked people and could reach out.
He refused to continue as “the prisoner of the Vatican, ” and became the first pope since 1870 to step outside the Vatican walls,
visiting children with polio,
a reformatory for juvenile delinquents,
and Regina Coeli prison, where he told them:
“I have wanted for some time to come here to bless you.
You could not come to me, so I have come to you.”
He reached out to the Jews, gave a warm embrace to the Chief Rabbi of Rome.
During World War II, using his office as Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece,
he helped provide papers and money that saved an estimated 24,000 refugees, mostly Jewish people.
He reached out to the Orthodox Church.
During his 10 years in Turkey and Greece, he became well-acquainted with Orthodox Church leaders, they were on a first-name basis. As pope, he invited them to be Observers at the Second Vatican Council, to witness first-hand the largest gathering of bishops in history .. 2300 all-told .. working together.
His sense of God’s providence at work in the world made him the ideal person to promote dialogue with Orthodox Christians. It was John XXIII who began building the bride toward unity that we have today.
For 400 years, the College of Cardinals had been limited to 70 cardinals.
He increased it to 85, chose non-Italian cardinals, including the first cardinals ever from Africa, Japan, the Philippines… in total, naming 52 cardinals.
The whole world was his parish, so he offered to mediate between US President Kennedy and Nikita Krushev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962.
John XXIII was the First Pope named TIME magazine’s MAN of the YEAR 1962.
The next year, one month short of 5 years in the papacy, he died from the complications of stomach cancer.
Perhaps President Lyndon Johnson spoke for the world when he posthumously conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Pope John XXIII, calling him:
“a man of simple origins, simple faith, simple charity, always the gentle pastor, whose goodness reached across earthly boundaries to warm the hearts of men of all nations and of all faiths
as he spoke of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”
A fitting tribute to the man who took the name of his father, John.
He would be called John XXIII.
He would be remembered as “Good Pope John.”