Saint John XIII was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on November 25, 1881, in a small village in Italy. He was ordained in 1904 and later earned a doctorate in canon law. During World War I he served as a stretcher-bearer and chaplain for the Italian army. Beginning in 1925 he served as a Vatican diplomat, first in Bulgaria, then in Greece and Turkey. From 1935 through the Second World War he helped save thousands of Jewish people. In 1944 he was named papal nuncio to France. He was named cardinal and appointed patriarch of Venice in 1953. A quiet pastoral life passing into retirement, however, was not in God’s plan for the saint.

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected Pope in 1958 and took the name John. His papacy was short, but full of action. He transformed the Vatican, calling for openness, a spirit of ecumenism, and the setting aside of politics. He called the Second Vatican Council in the fall of 1962, the first meeting of its kind in almost a century, setting the agenda to work for the spiritual regeneration of the Church. His efforts changed the face of the Catholic Church. At the same time worked diligently and publicly to ease tensions during the Cuban missile crisis, pleading with leaders for the end of the Cold War.

Saint John XXIII’s kindness, sense of pastoral care, and works of reconciliation and peacemaking made him beloved not only to Catholics but to people around the world. He died on June 3, 1963. He was beatified in 2000 by St. John Paul II, and canonized by Pope Francis in 2014.