St. Paul VI

Their story

Giovanni Battista Montini was born in 1897 near Brescia, in northern Italy. He was a frail child, often too sick to attend school, but he was bright and deeply devout. He was ordained a priest in 1920 and soon began working in the Vatican, where he served for more than thirty years. During the Second World War he helped organize aid for refugees and for persecuted Jews. In 1954 he became archbishop of Milan, where he worked hard to reach workers and people who had drifted from the Church. In 1963, after the death of Pope St. John XXIII, Montini was elected pope and took the name Paul VI. He guided the Second Vatican Council to its completion and then carried out its reforms, including the new Roman Missal used at Mass today. He was the first pope in modern times to travel widely. He went to the Holy Land, where he embraced the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, and the two leaders lifted the excommunications that had divided their Churches for nine hundred years. At the United Nations he pleaded, "No more war, war never again." Paul VI wrote about the dignity of human life, justice for poor nations and the joy of spreading the Gospel. His encyclical Humanae Vitae, on married love and the gift of life, met with strong opposition, and he suffered greatly from the criticism, but he stood by what he taught. He died on August 6, 1978, the feast of the Transfiguration. Pope Francis canonized him in 2018. His feast is kept on May 29, the anniversary of his ordination as a priest.