The reformer

The reformer

50 years ago, on the 30th. June 1963, Paul VI. crowned pope. At the end of his 15-year reign, the Catholic Church had a different face.

The world was changing furiously and the Church was in the midst of the greatest council in its history when the choice fell on him. Milan Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini had not pressed for the chair of Peter. "Here I am, crucified with Christ," he is reported to have said at the conclusion of the conclave.

The last time a pope had the tiara placed on his head, the symbol of the papal claim to power over the globe. Later it carried Paul VI. never again, and no pontiff has since put it on again. Within the Church, the most difficult legacy that a Pope of the 20th century could possibly have was waiting for the reserved man. Century had to take over.

Even on the surface, the fine-boned Montini looked like the antithesis of his popular predecessor, John XXIII. Born in 1897 in Concesio, northern Italy, the son of a lawyer, he had passed through the papal diplomatic academy and worked for 30 years in the Vatican Secretariat of State. "Always polite, sometimes shy," is how contemporaries described him. But when he became archbishop in the industrial metropolis of Milan in 1954, the cool-headed intellectual also sought conversation with workers on factory floors and construction sites, over which red flags often flew during strikes.

Hostilities from both sides

The new pope left no doubt that he would continue the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965): "To this end, we will use all the powers the Lord has given us."Cautiously, deliberatively, but expeditiously, he steered the bishops through three periods of sessions. The limits and dangers for a 2.000-year-old institution, which embodies the claim to truth, were always conscious to him. They required a sensitivity that almost overtaxed the powers of any one individual.

But the personal price for this was highly. When the pope opened the council on 8. December 1965, its documents were tantamount to an earthquake for traditionalists like the French Archbishop Lefebvre and many a curia representative – and fell far short of expectations for progressives. For some, the commitment to freedom of faith, the opening of the liturgy to the vernacular, the recognition of other religions as partners in dialogue was sheer betrayal of the message of Jesus. Others resented his insistence on papal primacy over, for example, the synods of bishops decided by the Council. Amid hostility from both sides, Paul VI. suffered.

The first "travel pope" of modern times also set impulses politically, if only because he doubled the number of Vatican nunciatures; his itinerary ranged from South America to the Far East. His appeal for peace before the United Nations in New York in 1965 was considered a milestone against the backdrop of the escalating Vietnam War. He was the first pope to begin talks with the Soviet Union and the atheist Eastern Bloc, against the protests of conservative circles.

Historic contribution to ecumenism. The embrace with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras on his Holy Land trip in 1964 and the subsequent lifting of the mutual excommunication curse of 1059 ushered in a new era in church history.

Encyclical "Humanae vitae"

Paul VI. sought dialogue with the world when, in the West at least, it was turning away from the church more fiercely than ever before. He often seemed powerless against the leftist cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

The negative reactions to Paul's 1968 encyclical "Humanae vitae," in which he opposed the fundamental separation of sexuality and family planning through artificial contraceptives, made the divide clear. The fact that he had abolished the notorious "anti-modernist oath" for priests in the previous year or called for a more just world economic order in his social encyclical "Populorum progressio" (1967) was almost lost on his opponents.

Difficult pontificate took toll. Paul's powers visibly diminished in the second half, leaving him on 6. August 1978 entirely. For many, he remains the greatest pope of the 20th century. The message of the twentieth century.

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Christina Cherry
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