Paul VI

Paul VI (1897-1978), pope (1963-1978), who presided over most of the Second Vatican Council and guided the Roman Catholic church in a time of change.

Born Giovanni Battista Montini in Concesio, Italy, on September 26, 1897, he studied in Brescia and Rome, receiving degrees in civil and canon law, theology, and philosophy. Ordained in 1920, he served as an attaché of the nunciature in Warsaw (1923), and as spiritual adviser and moderator of the Roman group of the Italian Catholic Federation of Universities (1923-1933). He became a clerk in the Vatican Secretariat of State (1933), undersecretary to the papal secretary of state (1944), and pro-secretary of state for ordinary affairs (1952). In 1954 he was consecrated archbishop of Milan, and in 1958 was made a cardinal. He succeeded John XXIII as supreme pontiff, and presided over the Second Vatican Council beginning with its second session. In 1964 Pope Paul visited the Holy Land, the present-day countries of Jordan and Israel. In 1965, in a historic meeting, he and Athenagoras I, Greek Orthodox ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople (present-day İstanbul), reached an agreement to nullify the mutual excommunications of the Eastern and Western churches in 1054.

Paul VI was active in extending the concern of the Vatican to Roman Catholics outside Europe. He traveled to the United States in 1965, to Colombia in 1968, to Uganda in 1969, and to various Asian countries, including the Philippines, in 1970. He conferred with the head of the Anglican Communion, Arthur Michael Ramsey, then archbishop of Canterbury, in 1966, and with Shenouda III, patriarch of Alexandria and head of the Coptic Orthodox church, in 1973. In all these travels and encounters, he was either the first pope to travel to the given area or the first head of the church to attempt such systematic rapprochement with other Christian bodies. Among secular leaders with whom the pope met were Communist leaders such as President Nikolay V. Podgorny of the Soviet Union in 1967 and President Tito of Yugoslavia in 1971. His negotiations with the Communist regime in Hungary led him to require the resignation of József Cardinal Mindszenty in 1974.

The pope was also the first to work with an advisory body set up on the basis of the principle of collegiality announced at the Second Vatican Council. The Synod of Bishops, in regular biannual meetings, discusses problems of interest to the Roman Catholic church throughout the world. The first such meeting was held in 1967.

Among Paul's more important encyclicals were his decision to increase the use of the vernacular in parts of the Mass (1963) and his reaffirmations of the traditional church bans on priestly matrimony (1967) and artificial birth control (1968). In 1972 an encyclical barred women from formal investiture in the minor roles of lector or acolyte. Paul died at Castel Gandolfo on August 6, 1978.