Pope John XXIII who died on June 3, 1963, was known as \u201cGood Pope John.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf in John Paul II the key phrase is \u2018courage of the faith,\u2019\u201d Cardinal Angelo Comastri told Catholic News Agency, \u201cin John XXIII the key phrase is \u2018the strength of goodness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That \u201cstrength of goodness\u201d was a product of the faith John XXIII learned from his upbringing in the Catholic culture of northern Italy \u2014 the same Catholic culture that would later attract Elizabeth Ann Seton into the faith and encourage in her the same strength of goodness.<\/p>\n
St. John XXIII and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton both learned their faith from their parents, especially their fathers.<\/p>\n
John XXIII\u2019s father and mother supported their 13 children \u2014 Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the future John XXIII, was the fourth \u2014 on their earnings as a sharecropper family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are three ways to face ruin: women, gambling and farming,\u201d John XIII once quipped. \u201cMy father chose the most boring one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, John XXIII was so influenced by his father that when he shared his choice of papal name with the cardinals who elected him, he said, \u201cI choose John … a name sweet to us because it is the name of our father, dear to me because it is the name of the humble parish church where I was baptized, the solemn name of numberless cathedrals scattered throughout the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
His life was filled with moments like that, exalted positions that he nonetheless connected to his humble roots.<\/p>\n
He received his doctorate in theology at age 23 \u2014 completing studies he started amidst farm duties. He served as secretary to a bishop \u2014 but was equally at home serving fighting men in World War I as a chaplain and medic. He was a diplomat to Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece \u2014 and saved thousands of Jews during the Nazi occupation.<\/p>\n
His brief papacy \u2014 from 1958 until his death five years later \u2014 was one of the most influential in Church history, since he opened the Second Vatican Council. But in America, at first, he was better known for assisting in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis.<\/p>\n
In all of it, Pope John XXIII was influenced by the memory of his own holy dad.<\/p>\n
It was the same for Elizabeth Ann Seton, who lost her mother when she was young and learned much from her father, Richard Bayley, a New York surgeon. One biographer, Leonard Feeney, tells the story of a Staten Island doctor who once visited her father. He asked Dr. Bayley\u2019s advice but couldn\u2019t convince him to come and visit his patients. \u201cIt was late at night, the distance was great, and he was exhausted,\u201d writes Feeney.<\/p>\n
The doctor expressed his disappointment. \u201cHow your refusal will grieve those needy persons who are so anxious to see you!\u201d he said. \u201cThey are already so unfortunate, and they are so poor!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are poor?\u201d Dr. Bayley said, leaping to his feet. \u201cWell, why didn\u2019t you tell me that before? Let us go to them!\u201d<\/p>\n
Elizabeth would later imitate her father\u2019s \u201cpreferential option for the poor.\u201d That was a phrase Pope John XXIII\u2019s Second Vatican Council would popularize. John XXIII saw it practiced by his mother.<\/p>\n
His secretary told the story of his first Christmas as pope. \u201cListen, Don Loris,\u201d he said, \u201cmy mother taught me that for the holidays we must not only go to Mass, but we must also do works of mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good Pope John set the dates for his secretary to schedule: \u201cThe day of Christmas I will go to the children in Bambino Gesu Hospital. And Dec. 26, I\u2019m going to visit the prisoners of the Regina Coeli Prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
That Northern Italian marriage of devotion and service is not just at the heart of the Second Vatican Council\u2019s teaching, it\u2019s at the heart of what it means to be a Christian \u2014 and a Catholic.<\/p>\n
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton saw it in the northern Italian family who inspired her own faith journey.<\/p>\n
Antonio Filicchi and his brother Filippo were business partners of Elizabeth\u2019s husband William when the Setons were still Episcopalians. The Filicchis frequently visited America, and in fact Filippo married a woman from the United States. The Filicchis knew George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore, but they also did all they could to welcome and help the Setons when Elizabeth brought her husband to Italy in an attempt to help him recover from tuberculosis.<\/p>\n
The attempt to help him failed. He passed away, but the Filicchi family\u2019s kindness impressed Elizabeth. She spoke with the Filicchis often about religion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand,\u201d Elizabeth told Filippo once; \u201cyou wish that I pray, that I seek, and that I embrace your belief.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPray and seek,\u201d he answered her, \u201cthat is all I ask of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
That she did, and became first a Catholic, then a consecrated religious, and then a founder of schools and orphanages.<\/p>\n
The story goes that a student once asked her, \u201cMother, what is that \u2018benignity\u2019 of which my catechism speaks?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDear little one,\u201d Mother Seton replied, \u201clook at Bishop Carroll, and you will find what benignity means, in his appearance, his language and in all his manners.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe \u201cthe strength of goodness\u201d would have been a good definition, too. That\u2019s what Seton saw in Bishop Carroll, and what the world saw in John XXIII.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen are like wine,\u201d St. John XIII once said. \u201cSome turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. John XXIII was the second kind. The story is told that a Vatican official worried about the pope\u2019s age and said it would be \u201cabsolutely impossible\u201d to open the Second Vatican Council by 1963. \u201cFine, we\u2019ll open it in 1962,\u201d said Pope John. And he did, on October 11.<\/p>\n
He died eight months later. Cardinal Angelo Comastri compared the weeks before Pope John’s death on June 3, 1963, to the last days of St. John Paul II, when pilgrims camped outside his window, praying all night.<\/p>\n
\u201cJews, Buddhists, even jail inmates all communicated their sentiments to the secretary of State, because Pope John XXIII was felt to be the father of the world, the father of humanity, the father who had helped men to feel more like brothers,\u201d he told Catholic news Agency.<\/p>\n
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s spiritual director, Father Simon Brut\u00e9, saw the same \u201cstrength of goodness\u201d in her when she died.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer distinguishing characteristic was compassion and indulgence for poor sinners,\u201d he said. \u201cMother\u2019s special virtues were her attachment to her friends and her gratitude, her religious respect for the ministers of the Lord, and for everything pertaining to religion. Her heart was compassionate, religious, lavish of every good in her possession, disinterested in regard to all things.\u201d<\/p>\n
That \u201cbenignity\u201d is why the Church no longer mourns St. John XXIII and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, but celebrates their lives.<\/p>\n
TOM HOOPES<\/strong>, autor m\u00e1s reciente de El Rosario de San Juan Pablo II, es escritor residente en el Benedictine College de Kansas, donde imparte clases. Es anfitri\u00f3n de La extraordinaria Stor<\/a>y podcast sobre la vida de Cristo. Su libro Lo que dijo realmente el Papa Francisco<\/a> ya est\u00e1 disponible en Audible<\/a>. Antiguo reportero en la zona de Washington, D.C., fue secretario de prensa del Presidente del Comit\u00e9 de Medios y Arbitrios de la C\u00e1mara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos y pas\u00f3 10 a\u00f1os como editor del peri\u00f3dico National Catholic Register y de la revista Faith & Family. Su trabajo aparece con frecuencia en el Register, Aleteia y Catholic Digest. Vive en Atchison, Kansas, con su esposa, April, y tiene nueve hijos.<\/em><\/p>\n