Saint Paul VI (1897-1978)

A family of the Catholic "good press"

Giovanni Battista Montini was born on 26 September 1897 in Concesio, a town in the province of Brescia, and was baptized four days later.^[1] His father, Giorgio Montini (1860-1943), was a prominent figure of Lombard social Catholicism: a lawyer, editor of the Catholic daily Il Cittadino di Brescia, an uncompromising activist and later a deputy of the Italian Popular Party founded by Don Luigi Sturzo.^[2] His mother, Giuditta Alghisi, from the lesser rural nobility, passed on to her three sons an interior and demanding piety. From this home, the future pope inherited two lasting traits: a sense of the public engagement of Catholics in the modern city, and a culture of books and thought that would make him one of the most literate popes of the century.

Of delicate health from childhood — a fragile heart and a weak constitution — young Montini could not follow an ordinary seminary path. Much of his formation took place at home, under an adapted regime; he completed his secondary studies in 1916 and entered the seminary of Brescia that same year.^[3] This studious and suffering youth, far from noisy schoolboy camaraderie, forged a temperament that was reflective, scrupulous, inclined to interiority — what the press would later sum up, not without excess, with the nickname "Hamlet of the Vatican".

Priest, diplomat, chaplain to students

Montini was ordained a priest on 29 May 1920, with a dispensation for his age, and celebrated his first Mass the next day in the basilica of Saint Mary of Graces in Brescia.^[4] Sent to Rome, he continued his studies at the Gregorian University and the Sapienza, then was admitted to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the diplomatic school of the Holy See.^[5] A brief mission to the nunciature in Warsaw, in 1923, turned him away from a strictly diplomatic career: there he discovered he was not made for distant expatriation.

Back in Rome, he entered the Secretariat of State on 24 October 1924, where he would serve for nearly thirty years.^[6] At the same time, he became chaplain of FUCI, the Italian Catholic University Federation. Among university youth, he formed an entire generation of future Catholic intellectuals and politicians — several of whom would animate the post-war Christian Democracy. Under pressure from the Fascist regime, hostile to the autonomy of these circles, he was forced to give up this office in 1933; but the experience marked him durably: Montini would remain the man of patient dialogue with the modern world and of confidence in the intelligence of faith.

The right-hand man of Pius XII

His ability carried him to the top of the Curia. Appointed Substitute for Ordinary Affairs in 1937, he became one of the two principal collaborators of Pius XII, then Pro-Secretary of State in 1952.^[7] During the Second World War, he directed the vast Information Bureau for prisoners, which handled millions of requests from families, and coordinated the Holy See's aid to refugees and the persecuted, among them many Jews hidden in Rome's religious institutions.^[8] A direct witness of the bombing of the city in 1943, he concretely carried the charity of the Church into the turmoil.

It is reported that he refused the cardinal's purple that Pius XII was considering for him.^[9] In 1954, after a period of muted tension with a more conservative curial entourage, Pius XII appointed him Archbishop of Milan.

A "mission" in the heart of the industrial metropolis

On 1 November 1954, Montini was appointed head of the Archdiocese of Milan, the largest in Italy and one of the most populous in the world; he was consecrated bishop on 12 December 1954 by Cardinal Eugène Tisserant and made his solemn entry on 6 January 1955.^[10] In this metropolis of industry and labor, marked by working-class dechristianization and Communist influence, he deployed a pastoral approach of remarkable boldness. In November 1957, he launched a vast "Mission of Milan": hundreds of preachers — priests, religious, but also lay people — went out to meet the factories, the markets, the working-class districts.

He multiplied the building of churches in the new suburbs — more than seventy are attributed to him — and established direct contact with the world of labor, to the point of earning the nickname "archbishop of the workers".^[11] This concrete attention to the poor and to workers would later nourish his great social magisterium as pope.

Cardinal of John XXIII and eve of the council

On the death of Pius XII, the new pope John XXIII created him cardinal at his very first consistory, on 15 December 1958.^[12] When John XXIII announced, in January 1959, the convocation of an ecumenical council, Montini immediately grasped its significance. A member of the central preparatory commission, he lodged at the Vatican during the first session of Vatican II (autumn 1962): the Cardinal of Milan was already, in the eyes of many, the most likely successor of Pope John.

The conclave of 1963

John XXIII died on 3 June 1963, leaving an unfinished council and a Church in full turmoil. The conclave that opened a few days later carried a decisive question: would the future pope continue the council, or bury it? On the sixth ballot, on 21 June 1963, the cardinals elected Giovanni Battista Montini, aged 65.^[13] He chose the name Paul VI, in reference to the apostle to the nations, the great missionary Saint Paul — a declaration of intent: the Church would go out to the world.

His coronation, on 30 June 1963, was the last in history to employ the triple-crowned tiara.^[14] A gesture full of meaning for what was to come: at the end of the third session of the council, in November 1964, Paul VI solemnly laid his tiara on the altar of Saint Peter's, renouncing this symbol of temporal power, its value being destined for the poor.^[15] No pope since has taken up the tiara.

Taking up the council and bringing it to its conclusion

The first major decision of Paul VI was also the weightiest: continuing the Second Vatican Council. He reopened its second session on 29 September 1963 and led it, through debates, to its solemn closure on 8 December 1965, feast of the Immaculate Conception.^[16] Under his authority were promulgated the great texts that still structure the Church: the constitution on the liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (4 December 1963), the dogmatic constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (21 November 1964), the constitution on Revelation Dei Verbum (18 November 1965) and the pastoral constitution on the Church in the world Gaudium et Spes (7 December 1965).^[17]

Paul VI was no disembodied theoretician: he arbitrated, tempered, stitched back together. He ensured that reforms took place in continuity with Tradition, not in rupture. At the closure of the third session, on 21 November 1964, he solemnly proclaimed Mary "Mother of the Church" (Mater Ecclesiae), crowning the Marian doctrine of Lumen Gentium.^[18]

The ecumenical gesture of Jerusalem

As early as January 1964, while the council was still in session, Paul VI accomplished an unprecedented gesture: he traveled to the Holy Land, the first pope to return there in centuries. On 5 January 1964, on the Mount of Olives, he embraced the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras I — the first meeting between a pope and a Patriarch of Constantinople since the Council of Florence in the 15th century.^[19]

This reconciliation culminated on 7 December 1965, the eve of the council's closure: by a joint declaration read simultaneously in Rome and Istanbul, Paul VI and Athenagoras lifted the mutual excommunications of 1054 and consigned them to oblivion.^[20] The schism was not erased, but the memory of the anathema was: this was the starting point of the contemporary Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.

The liturgical reform

The implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium led Paul VI to promulgate a new Roman Missal through the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum of 3 April 1969; the new Ordo Missae came into force in 1969-1970.^[21] This reform — use of living languages, simplification of rites, altar facing the people — was one of the most contested of his pontificate. The Church received it as the ordinary liturgy of the Roman rite. The questions of validity and continuity raised by its opponents are treated separately in the dossier devoted to the Mass of Paul VI.

To give the bishops an instrument of collegial government, Paul VI instituted by the motu proprio Apostolica Sollicitudo of 15 September 1965 the Synod of Bishops, a permanent consultative body that would meet regularly around the pope.^[22]

A dense teaching despite the silence of the later years

The magisterium of Paul VI is a doctrinal summit of the twentieth century. The table below summarizes his major documents and their subject.

Ecclesiam Suam: the Church becomes conversation

His first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (6 August 1964), set the spiritual program of his entire pontificate: the Church must know herself, purify herself and dialogue with the world. The formula has remained famous.

"The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which she lives. The Church has something to say; the Church has a message to give; the Church has a communication to share." — Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, 6 August 1964^[23]

Dialogue, in Paul VI, is not a dilution of truth: it is its form of charity. Proclaiming Christ requires meeting man where he is, in his language and his questions.

Populorum Progressio: "development, the new name for peace"

Published on 26 March 1967, Populorum Progressio is one of the most powerful social texts of the Church. In it Paul VI denounced the growing gap between rich and poor nations and called for a development that would not be merely economic.

"Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man." — Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, 26 March 1967^[24]

The formula crowning the encyclical would become a watchword of social Catholicism:

"Development is the new name for peace." — Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, no. 76^[25]

Evangelii Nuntiandi: witnesses more than teachers

The fruit of the 1974 Synod on evangelization, the exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (8 December 1975) is considered by many to be the pastoral testament of Paul VI and remains one of the most quoted texts on mission. In it he recalled that evangelization is the proper vocation of the Church and gave a key that spans the decades:

"Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses." — Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, no. 41^[26]

This intuition — the authority of lived holiness over that of discourse alone — would be taken up word for word by his successors and by the ongoing council of evangelization.

The context and the decision

At the end of the 1960s, the arrival of the contraceptive pill and the pressure of the "new world" placed the Church before an immense expectation: many hoped that Rome would authorize artificial contraception. A commission of experts, enlarged by Paul VI, had even concluded mostly in that direction. The pope, after years of prayer and torment, decided otherwise. On 25 July 1968, Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the inseparable bond between the union of spouses and openness to life.

"Each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life." — Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, no. 11^[27]

The encyclical announced with prophetic lucidity the consequences of a separation between sexuality and fruitfulness: the trivialization of infidelity, the lowering of woman reduced to an instrument, the interference of public authorities in conjugal intimacy.

Rejection and the cross of the pope

The reaction was of unexpected violence. Part of the Western clergy and theologians publicly contested the encyclical; some episcopal conferences qualified its scope. Paul VI was deeply wounded by it. A remarkable and long-meditated fact: he would publish no more encyclicals during the last ten years of his pontificate, from 1968 to 1978.^[28] This silence was no abdication, but the mark of a man who paid in person for fidelity to the deposit of faith, at the price of unpopularity. Time proved him right: Humanae Vitae is today re-read as one of the most prophetic texts of the twentieth century.

Carrying the Gospel to every continent

Paul VI broke with centuries of pontifical immobility: he was the first pope of the modern era to travel outside Italy, inaugurating the apostolic journeys that his successors would bring to their peak. The table below summarizes his major international travels.

"Never again war!"

On 4 October 1965, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Paul VI addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. His speech, delivered in French, launched an appeal that has remained engraved in memories.

"Never again war, never again war! It is peace, peace, that must guide the destinies of peoples and of all mankind!" — Paul VI, address to the UN, 4 October 1965^[29]

In Manila, on 27 November 1970, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt: a Bolivian painter, disguised as a priest, struck him with a dagger at the airport; the pope, slightly wounded, concealed the incident and continued his journey.^[30]

Women Doctors of the Church

Paul VI also made doctrinal history by conferring for the first time the title of Doctor of the Church on women: Saint Teresa of Avila, on 27 September 1970 — the first woman in history to receive this dignity —, then Saint Catherine of Siena, on 4 October 1970.^[31] A gesture recognizing the doctrinal authority of feminine holiness, long before its scope was measured.

"The smoke of Satan"

The post-council period was not the hoped-for spring: accelerated secularization, departures of priests and religious, liturgical abuses, contestation of authority. Paul VI suffered to see the conciliar impetus diverted. On 29 June 1972, in his homily for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, he uttered a striking sentence.

"We have the feeling that through some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the people of God." — Paul VI, homily of 29 June 1972^[32]

Far from being the admission of a failure of the council, this saying denounced the betrayal of the spirit of the council by those who claimed its authority to demolish the faith. Paul VI thus distinguished, with clarity, the authentic council from its caricature.

The rupture with Archbishop Lefebvre

The traditionalist crisis crystallized around Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, who rejected the liturgical reform and several orientations of the council. Despite Rome's injunction, Lefebvre proceeded on 29 June 1976 with unauthorized ordinations at the Écône seminary. Paul VI struck him with suspension a divinis on 22 July 1976, forbidding him any exercise of ministry.^[33] A tense meeting at Castel Gandolfo, on 11 September 1976, resolved nothing. The pope, who had sought unity so much, lived this rupture as a personal wound.

Aldo Moro: the letter "on my knees"

The last great trial was political and personal. On 16 March 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped Aldo Moro, president of Christian Democracy and a long-standing friend of Montini. The pope, already ill, wrote by his own hand a public letter to the kidnappers, dated 21 April 1978, in which he begged them "on his knees" to free Moro "simply, without conditions".

"E vi prego in ginocchio, liberate l'onorevole Aldo Moro, semplicemente, senza condizioni." ("I beg you on my knees: free Aldo Moro, simply, without conditions.") — Paul VI, letter to the Red Brigades, dated 21 April 1978^[34]

Moro was assassinated on 9 May 1978. At the funeral, celebrated at Saint John Lateran on 13 May 1978, Paul VI, heartbroken, pronounced in a breathless voice a homily-prayer addressed directly to God, calling Him to account for this mystery of evil. It was one of his last great public appearances: he would die less than three months later.

On 6 August 1978, feast of the Transfiguration, Paul VI died at Castel Gandolfo, struck down by a myocardial infarction, at the age of 80.^[35] Lucid to the end, he asked, an hour before dying, that prayer continue beside him. It is reported that he breathed his last while the Our Father was being recited.

Faithful to his testament, his funeral was of a willed poverty: a simple wooden coffin laid directly on the ground in Saint Peter's Square, topped by the open Book of the Gospels, whose pages the wind turned — an image that became one of the most famous of the century.^[36] He had asked to rest "in real earth", without a special tomb or monument.

"I desire that my funeral be very simple, and I desire neither a special tomb nor any monument." — Paul VI, spiritual testament^[37]

A crucified love of the Church

The entire interior life of Paul VI is summed up in a passionate love of the Church, even in her wounds. His testament, written on 30 June 1965 and completed in 1972-1973, is an act of abandonment and adoration. In it he fixed his gaze on death without anguish:

"I fix my gaze with humble and serene confidence upon the mystery of death." — Paul VI, spiritual testament^[38]

And he offered the Church his ultimate declaration of love:

"O holy Church, one, catholic and apostolic… receive my supreme act of love." — Paul VI, spiritual testament^[39]

A man of dialogue but also a man of the Cross, Paul VI lived his pontificate as an offering. He liked to say that the pope must bear alone a burden that no one can share. His joy was no facile optimism: in his exhortation Gaudete in Domino (1975), he affirmed that Christian joy springs not from the absence of trial, but from the presence of Christ at the very heart of distress — a joy that his contemporaries, he said, urgently needed to hear sung.^[40]

The pope of the Virgin

The Marian piety of Paul VI was ardent and theologically precise. In proclaiming Mary "Mother of the Church" on 21 November 1964, he inscribed her at the heart of the ecclesial mystery. Ten years later, his exhortation Marialis Cultus (2 February 1974) renewed Marian devotion by rooting it in liturgy and Scripture, against a double deviation — the dryness that forgets Mary and the sentimentality that deforms her.^[41] For Paul VI, the Virgin is the model of the Church that listens, keeps and gives the Word.

The recognition of holiness

Long after his death, the figure of Paul VI was re-evaluated: people rediscovered the fruitfulness of his fidelity and the hidden heroism of his government. On 20 December 2012, Benedict XVI declared him venerable, recognizing the heroicity of his virtues.^[42] Pope Francis beatified him on 19 October 2014, at the close of the Synod on the Family — a highly symbolic setting for the pope of Humanae Vitae. The recognized miracle was the unexplained healing of an unborn child in California, in the 1990s, after the invocation of Paul VI's intercession when abortion had been advised.^[43]

The canonization took place on 14 October 2018, at the same time as that of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The second miracle retained was, once again, linked to nascent life: the healing of an unborn child in Verona, in 2014, during a gravely threatened pregnancy.^[44] A striking coherence: the saint who defended life in Humanae Vitae was glorified by two miracles touching children said to be condemned.

"Prophet of a Church turned outward"

In his canonization homily, on 14 October 2018, Pope Francis summed up the particular grace of Saint Paul VI.

"Paul VI spent his life for the Gospel of Christ, crossing new boundaries and making himself its witness in proclamation and in dialogue, a prophet of a Church turned outward, looking to those farthest away and caring for the poor." — Pope Francis, canonization homily, 14 October 2018^[45]

The Church celebrates Saint Paul VI on 29 May, the anniversary of his priestly ordination in 1920: the holiness of the pope is thus attached not to his glory, but to the humble root of his whole life, the priesthood.

• The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) — the council that Paul VI brought to its conclusion and implemented.
• Saint John XXIII (1881-1963) — his predecessor, who convoked the council and created him cardinal.
• Saint John Paul II (1920-2005) — his successor, who brought the apostolic journeys inaugurated by Paul VI to their peak.
• Pius XII (1876-1958) — the pope whose right-hand man Montini was, during the war, at the Secretariat of State.
• Is the Mass of Paul VI valid? — the dossier on the 1969-1970 liturgical reform and traditionalist objections.
• The Society of Saint Pius X — the rupture with Archbishop Lefebvre (Écône ordinations of 1976, suspension a divinis), which tested the end of his pontificate.
• Saint Pius X (1835-1914) — another canonized pope of the twentieth century, whose name the dissident Society claimed.