FROM THE ARCHIVES: Pope John XXIII
Cogley, John
constants in his spiritual journey. The sources on which he regularly drew remained quite traditional ones: the Scriptures, the fathers of the church, the breviary, the liturgy, the lives of the...
...More than one Protestant noted the paradox of their mourning the death of a pope...
...Half-full as the Mass began, the square was crowded by the time it ended...
...The sentence conveys what is called "holy indifference," an attitude of utter openness to the will of God...
...Above in his room, where the hymn could be heard, John XXIII trembled for an instant and peacefully died...
...Barnums--may in time crush the man...
...Part of the reason for this may be that, with whatever other gifts they had, recent incumbents of the papal chair have not given the impression of outgoing warmth in personal relations...
...The following excerpts are selected from several essays published in the issue of June 23, 1963...
...The sources on which he regularly drew remained quite traditional ones: the Scriptures, the fathers of the church, the breviary, the liturgy, the lives of the saints, the Imitation of Christ, and other spiritual classics...
...I was in that crowd...
...His favorite saints were Joseph, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and Francis de Sales...
...John XXIII was no less a man because he was stunningly Christian...
...Several times in his writings, Pope John quoted a description of Saint Martin: "He neither feared to die nor refused to live...
...Commonweal too paid tribute to Good Pope John...
...As he remarked, it was the serenity that came from surrender to God's will that gave him the bold freedom to act as he did when his unlikely journey brought him to the papacy...
...The press was informed and, as older people will remember, it seemed that the whole world gathered in a vigil around his deathbed...
...FROM THE ARCHIVES Pope John XXIII The death of Pope John XXIII on June 3,1963, brought forth encomiums from every corner of the world...
...Universal grief was a first testimony in the process that this year will pass a major milestone when Pope John Paul II beatifies John XXIII and confirms the gospel peace and freedom that characterized that serene man and defined his bold ministry...
...In 1963, John Cogley (1916-76) was at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions...
...The important thing is not simply that Giuseppe RoncalCommonweal | 5 August 11,2000...
...No less familiar, at least to older Catholics, were the practices to which he remained faithful: the rosary and other popular devotions, weekly confession, annual retreats, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy...
...The days that followed were a remarkable tribute to the person and the work of Pope John...
...he was asked...
...And when some added, "Here, too, was a Christian," it became exquisitely certain, at least for a while, that there was no contradiction between the two claims...
...he was no less a Christian because he was stunningly human...
...But the death of Pope John has been the death of Joseph, our brother, and we feel his loss as the loss of a member of our family...
...the Lord is calling you...
...John Cogley [] Already the legends are beginning to grow, but in the case of the late pope, legend can only diminish, it cannot enhance his charm...
...When in fact his final illness came (doctors diagnosed his stomach cancer in October 1962, but seem not to have told him), he was ready...
...We may live to see the day when that solid peasant body will be melted down to fashionable proportions and the winningly homely features will be prettified or "ennobled" in plaster statues...
...That Pope John was able to overcome, and indeed to destroy, this image of austerity and aloofness in a space of less than five years, is one of those facts of history that could never have been predicted in advance...
...The "Saint"--the creature of the ecclesiastical P.T...
...Robert McAfee Brown ! The papacy has always been an area of the life of Roman Catholicism from which non-Catholics have felt more than ordinarily separated...
...But we who have been fortunate enough to live during his short pontificate can never forget the reality...
...At seven on the evening of June 3rd, the Monday after Pentecost, a Mass was celebrated for Pope John in Saint Peter's Square below the apartment where he lay dying...
...His spirituality was that of a Christian, of course, but also that of a priest, and his self-examination always kept these two dimensions of his life in close connection: it was as priest, bishop, pope that he was to be a Christian, as a Christian that he was to be a church leader...
...He prayed that he would be able to endure pain...
...For the last fifteen years of his life, the idea that his death could be near is a frequent theme in his notes...
...His notes detail the onset of the difficulties, embarrassments, and sufferings of his disease ("How do you feel, Holy Father...
...In the past, the death of a pope has not been a fact about which non-Catholics felt a particular sense of personal involvement...
...At his death a hardboiled generation, friend and enemy, joined together in the simple declaration that here, indeed, was a man...
...One of the sayings attributed to him by newspapermen is that he told one of their number: "After I am gone, I hope it will be said that Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was a man...
...In his person the human qualities shone forth with such fine Franciscan splendor that all men, whatever their religious faith or secular belief, were pleased, indeed anxious, to claim kinship with him...
...he was a former executive editor of Commonweal and a regular columnist...
...Around 7:40 the Ite missa est was chanted and we began to sing "Ubi caritas et amor ibi Deus est...
...And what a man he was...
...The hour has come...
...The same spiritual orientations appear throughout Roncalli's adult life...
...Like Saint Lawrence on the grill," he replied), until on May 31, 1963, his secretary, Monsignor Loris Capovilla, fulfilled a promise he had made long before and told him: "Holy Father, I am now performing the same duty that you performed for Monsignor Radini at the end of his life...
Vol. 127 • August 2000 • No. 14
