Collected Works of Pope St. Paul VI

About the Author

St. Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonia Maria Montini) (1897–1978) was elected pope after the death of Pope John XXIII, whose untimely death brought the Second Vatican Council to a standstill. Pope Paul VI continued the Second Vatican Council, bringing it to conclusion, and instituting through it the biggest changes to the Catholic Church since the Council of Trent 400 years prior.

Giovanni Montini was born in the village of Concesio, Lombardy. His father was a laywer, a journalist, the director of the Catholic Action, and a member of the Italian Parliament. Montini attended a Jesuit school since his early childhood and was frequently a sickly child. In 1916, he entered the seminary to become a priest. After ordination in 1920, he studied at the Gregorian University, the University of Rome La Sapienza, and at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici; despite already having his doctorate in canon law from Milan.

Largely due to his organizational skills and vast knowledge, his religious career was strongly centered on papal service. He directly served Pope Pius XII as the Vatican’s Secretariat of State from 1922 to 1954. During World War II, he formed the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza to provide shelter, food, and aid to the refugees of war. In 1954, Montini was made the Archbishop of Milan, and in 1958, immediately after Pope John XXIII was named pope, Montini was brought to the cardinalate.

When Pope John XXIII died in 1963, Cardinal Montini was elected pope and took the name Paul VI. As pope, he did away with much of the regal display of the papacy, a trend continued by his immediate successors. He reopened the Second Vatican Council, which had closed with the death of Pope John XXIII, and brought out of it a deeper and more thorough understanding of the Church’s understanding of itself.

Pope Paul VI passed away in 1978 at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo after suffering a massive heart attack. The cause for his beatification was opened by Pope John Paul II in 1993, and, in December 2012, he was declared “Venerable” by Pope Benedict XVI and cannonized by Pope Francis in October 2018.