John XXIII, ___ 1881-1963 ___ Italian ___ priest

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born at Sotto il Monte, Bergamo, the fourth child in a large religious family of sharecroppers. He entered the Bergamo seminary when only 11, which is where he began to make spiritual diary notes, a practice he continued throughout his life. He was ordained in 1904 as a priest in the church of Santa Maria in Monte Santo, Rome. The following year, he was appointed secretary to the new Bishop of Bergamo, Giacomo Maria Radini Tedeschi. From 1915, he served as a military chaplain, and in 1920 was made director of the Italian organisation for the support of foreign missions. In 1925 he was ordained bishop. Pope Pius XI brought him in to the Vatican's diplomatic service and, thereafter, he served in Bulgaria, where he remained until 1935, Greece and Turkey (1935-1944), and France (1944-1953). During the last months of the war and after peace was achieved he aided prisoners of war and helped to normalise the ecclesiastical organisation in France. In 1953, he was created a cardinal and sent to Venice as Patriarch. Five years later, he was elected pope, and took the name John XXIII. Although his pontificate lasted only five years, he is considered to have been one of the most popular popes of modern times (due, it is said, to his personal warmth, good humour and kindness), and to have begun a new era of openness in the Roman Catholic Church.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - A pope's view of Mussolini

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1892-1963 ___ religious

WEB TEXT LINKS
some extracts
a few pages
googlebooks

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
The Vatican Library - probably

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Journal of a Soul
 

November 2005, July 2008, April 2013
Please email if you have any corrections, additions or comments, or if you've found the site useful. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.