This Sunday, Sept. 4, Pope Francis and 1000’s of the faithful will gather in St. Peter’s Square for the beatification of Pope John Paul I. He shall be the 177th person beatified by Pope Francis and the fourth Twentieth-century pope to be beatified within the last dozen years. His predecessors, Paul VI and John XXIII, and his successor, John Paul II, have all also been declared saints within the last decade; much ink has been spilled over all three and their monumental impact on the contemporary church. But what about this “smiling pope,” who served as leader of the Catholic Church for just 33 days in 1978? Here’s a not-so-brief introduction.
The American cardinals hinted within the aftermath of the election of Pope John Paul I that many on the conclave had wanted a relative outsider.
From Forno di Canale to Rome
Pope John Paul I used to be born Albino Luciani in Forno di Canale (now called Canale d’Agordo), a small town within the foothills of the Dolomites northwest of Venice, on Oct. 17, 1912. He joined the minor seminary in Feltre in 1923 on the age of 11 (!) and was ordained for the diocese of Belluno-Feltre in 1935.
After ordination, Luciani served as a parish priest in his hometown for lower than two years before becoming a seminary professor. In 1947, he received his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, though he remained living within the Belluno-Feltre Diocese. He served in a lot of diocesan positions in the next years and published a book on catechetics in 1949, Catechetica in Briciole (“Catechism in Crumbs”).
In December 1958, Pope John XXIII appointed Luciani the bishop of Vittorio Veneto, within the region of Venice; just just a few weeks later, in January 1959, the pope announced his intention to call an ecumenical council. Luciani participated in all 4 sessions of the Second Vatican Council.
In 1967, Luciani drafted a document on behalf of the bishops of his region that was given to Pope Paul VI, unsuccessfully arguing for a change in church teaching on artificial contraception to permit for the usage of synthetic progesterone and estrogen to stop ovulation. “It could seem to not go against nature if, manufactured in imitation of natural progesterone, one would use it to distance one birth from the opposite, to present rest to the mother and to think about the great of kids already born or to be born,” he wrote.
In 1969, Pope Paul VI named him patriarch of Venice, where Luciani would remain for the following nine years.
During his time as patriarch of Venice, Luciani published a well-received series of whimsical and erudite letters to historical and literary figures, with each letter serving as a sermon or a possibility for catechesis; they were eventually published as a book, Illustrissimi (“To The Illustrious Ones”). While a few of his imagined correspondents were predictable—Jesus, St. Luke, Teresa of Ávila—others might come as a surprise. G. K. Chesterton? Mark Twain? St. Romedius’s tamed bear?
Luciani gained recognition amongst his fellow bishops for his leading role within the 1971 Synod of Bishops, and Pope Paul VI named him a cardinal in 1973. Despite controversies over the legalization of divorce in Italy and struggles with each communist and fascist groups, his tenure as patriarch was considered a positive one, and Luciani gained a repute for simplicity and humility (his first episcopal motto was Humilitas).
Pope John Paul I used to be the last Italian-born pope, breaking a lineage that spanned 45 popes over 456 years.
The election
When Pope Paul VI died on Aug. 6, 1978, it marked the tip of an extended and memorable papacy that spanned 15 years of tumult within the Catholic Church and on the earth. Elected during Vatican II, he oversaw the often-contentious and ceaselessly uneven implementation of the decrees of that council. He also reigned during a period of rapidly changing social mores around issues like divorce and artificial contraception. His encyclical on the latter subject, “Humanae Vitae,” caused a firestorm of controversy upon its release and stays a neuralgic topic for Catholics all over the world today.
Even before his election in 1963, Pope Paul VI had been described by Pope John XXIII as “a bit like Hamlet,” within the sense that he could give the impression of indecisiveness and doubt; indeed, shortly before his death, he wrote, “Am I Hamlet? Or Don Quixote? On the left? On the fitting? I don’t think I actually have been properly understood.” His confessor, Paolo Dezza, S.J., later said of him that “[i]f Paul VI was not a saint when he was elected pope, he became one during his pontificate. I used to be in a position to witness not only with what energy and dedication he toiled for Christ and the church, but additionally and above all, how much he suffered for Christ and the church.”
Who would the cardinals gathering in a hot Roman August for the papal conclave elect to succeed him? The most probably candidate was Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, the archbishop of Genoa, who had purportedly garnered quite a few votes in each the 1958 conclave that elected John XXIII and the 1963 conclave that elected Paul VI (and would again within the conclave that elected John Paul II). Luciani faced longer odds, partially because he had spent virtually his entire life in northern Italy, and the fashionable papacy looked as if it would require a world traveler. Nonetheless, the American cardinals hinted within the aftermath that many on the conclave had wanted a relative outsider. As well as, Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, the archbishop of Florence who was recognized as something of a king-maker among the many cardinals, was reportedly a champion of Luciani.
After the conventional confusion within the gathered crowd in St. Peter’s Square over the colour of the Sistine Chapel smoke that designates whether a pope has been elected on any particular ballot (“Was that black? Was it gray? Were there two different ballots burned this morning or simply one?”), Cardinal Pericle Felici appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at 7:15 p.m. on Aug. 26, 1978, and issued the standard announcement: “Habemus Papam.” Luciani had been elected on the fourth ballot. He was announced to the gang as Johannes Paulus.
“He doesn’t talk like a Pope,” Father O’Hare reported he heard a young boy say, “He talks like us.”
The primary pope to take a double name, he did so in recognition of his two predecessors, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. “Realize this, I don’t have the wisdom or heart of Pope John. Nor do I actually have the preparation and culture of Pope Paul,” he said after his election. “Nonetheless, I stand now of their place. I’ll seek to serve the church, and I hope that you’re going to help me along with your prayers.”
“Standing in the good window over the predominant entrance to St. Peter’s Basilica, John Paul I looked as if it would strike immediately a responsive chord of affection with the 1000’s within the square below,” wrote Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., editor in chief of America, reporting from Rome on Aug. 28. “They greeted his very first word—‘Yesterday…’—with cheers and laughter. An American couldn’t help considering that the brand new Pope was saying, in effect: ‘A funny thing happened to me on my option to the Sistine Chapel.’”
“The grins, the applause and even the occasional tears on the faces in the gang suggested a sort of non-public intimacy that may normally seem unthinkable in a crowd of such magnitude. Yet, the response of the gang reflected the qualities that the American cardinals cited as they attempted to explain the brand new Pope shortly after leaving the conclave,” Father O’Hare continued. “John Paul I can be a person of simplicity and good humor, they said, somewhat shy and self-deprecating. He can be, above all, a pastoral Pope, a Pope of the people.”
At his installation, Pope John Paul I did away with the standard lavish papal coronation (including being crowned with the three-tiered papal tiara), selecting as a substitute a more easy “solemn inauguration of Petrine Ministry.” He initially wished to cast off the “sedia gestatoria,” a throne on which popes were traditionally carried, but was convinced by Vatican officials that the crowds at his inauguration can be unable to see him without it.
News reports of the day focused on his easy, straightforward style and initial awkwardness with the trimmings and rhetorical pomp of the papacy. “He doesn’t talk like a Pope,” Father O’Hare reported he heard a young boy say, “He talks like us.”
Lots of his priorities would develop into those of his successor, John Paul II.
His program for the papacy
In a message read to the College of Cardinals the morning after his election, Pope John Paul I laid out the priorities for his papacy. Firstly can be the continued implementation of Vatican II, “without diluting doctrine, but, at the identical time, without hesitating.”
He also stressed the necessity to protect the dignity of human life and look after creation, with a touch that he would proceed to oppose communism but additionally the Cold War: “The danger for contemporary man is that he would scale back the earth to a desert, the person to an automaton, brotherly like to a planned collectivization, often introducing death where God wishes life.” Evangelization and ecumenism can be priorities as well. Finally, he wished to revise the Code of Canon Law, which had been promulgated six a long time earlier and was in serious need of updating.
Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri: “He passed as a meteor which unexpectedly lights up the heavens after which disappears, leaving us amazed and astonished.”
An unexpected death
It was to not be—though a lot of his priorities would develop into those of his successor, John Paul II. On the morning of Sept. 29, 1978, the Vatican announced that John Paul I had been found dead in his bed by a priest who was his personal secretary. A heart attack or an embolism was determined to be the cause, and later reports noted that the pope had complained of chest pains the evening before.
His death became a source of intrigue almost immediately, partially because an Italian wire service reported that the Vatican (presumably to avoid the suggestion of scandal) had lied about who had discovered him dead. It was not his priest-secretary in any respect, but a nun who provided his morning coffee. The Vatican also reported he had been reading The Imitation of Christ, the spiritual classic attributed to Thomas à Kempis, when he died, when in reality he had apparently been going through routine Vatican paperwork.
A 1984 book by the British crime author David Yallop, In God’s Name, argued that Pope John Paul I had been murdered because he planned to research financial corruption within the Vatican. Amongst those Yallop identified as a part of the plot was the American archbishop Paul Marcinkus, head of the Vatican Bank and an influential (and intimidating) figure within the Vatican before and after Pope John Paul I’s reign. (His nickname? “The Pope’s Gorilla.”) Though later writings by John Cornwell and Stefania Falasca (the vice-postulator of his cause for sainthood) debunked a lot of Yallop’s allegations, In God’s Name has sold over six million copies, and his narrative has influenced later representations of the short papacy—including within the film “The Godfather: Part III.”
At Pope John Paul I’s funeral Mass, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Carlo Confalonieri, said “[h]e passed as a meteor which unexpectedly lights up the heavens after which disappears, leaving us amazed and astonished.”
With the Oct. 16 election of Karol Wojtyla, 1978 became “The 12 months of the Three Popes.” Succeeded by a Pole, a German and an Argentinian, Pope John Paul I used to be the last Italian-born pope, breaking a lineage that spanned 45 popes over 456 years.
With the Oct. 16 election of Karol Wojtyla, 1978 became “The 12 months of the Three Popes.”
The beatification cause
In 1990, the bishops’ conference of Brazil asked Pope John Paul II to start the official process for the canonization of Pope John Paul I, citing his growing repute for holiness. The cause stalled, partially because so many modern popes were into consideration for sainthood on the time. In 2002, Bishop Vincenzo Savio, the bishop of Pope John Paul I’s home diocese of Belluno-Feltre, obtained permission to start the method, and in November 2003, Pope John Paul II declared him a “servant of God,” the primary official step toward canonization.
After a few years of gathering evidence and testimonies (including those of Pope Benedict XVI and of Sister Margherita Marin, who was certainly one of the ladies religious serving within the papal household in 1978), his postulators presented a positio of over 3,500 pages to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in 2016. On Nov. 8, 2017, Pope Francis declared Pope John Paul I “venerable,” a second step toward canonization.
A vital a part of the canonization process is proof that the candidate interceded in a miracle after his or her death. Within the case of Pope John Paul I, his postulators presented the miraculous healing in 2011 of a lady who suffered from epilepsy and was dying of septic shock after a priest in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Father José Dabusti, invoked John Paul I in praying for her healing. In October of last 12 months, Pope Francis authorized the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to promulgate a decree recognizing that the healing couldn’t be explained by science, paving the way in which for Pope John Paul I’s beatification.
The following step in the method is canonization, the official declaration that Pope John Paul I is a saint. While the method traditionally took a few years (sometimes centuries), under recent popes we’ve seen a saint’s canonization follow quite shortly after his or her beatification, as was the case with Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa and Óscar Romero. It could not be a surprise if Pope John Paul I is soon recognized to be amongst them as a saint.
For further reading on Pope John Paul I: Joseph McAuley’s “Letter to Albino Luciani” from 2014 and “When quoting a prophet got a pope in trouble” from 2015, and Mo Guernon on “The Forgotten Pope” from 2011.
[Read next: “Pope Francis beatifies John Paul I, the ‘smiling pope’ who governed the church for 33 days in 1978.”]