Pope John Xxiii (Thorndike Press Large Print Biography Series) - Hardcover

Cahill, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786239018 ISBN 13: 9780786239016

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2002

Synopsis

Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli was an unexpected choice to follow the ultra conservative Pope Pius XII in 1958. At seventy-six years old, 'a fat old man with twinkling eyes and a seductively resonant voice', neither a well-known public figure nor a highly trained theologian, he was at first regarded as a transitional pope. During his brief but unforgettable reign as Pope John XXIII, however, he astonished the world with the seminal and unprecedented change he brought about in the Catholic Church. He was a deeply political man and played an important part on the world stage, helping to defuse the Cuban missile crisis of 1963. He also rewrote litury to avoid any crude condemnation of the Jews, tens of thousands of whom he had saved from the Holocaust when he was an apostolic administrator in Turkey.

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Review

'A brilliant blend of imagincation and scholarship.' (GOOD BOOK GUIDE (1.2.04) )

From the Back Cover

'John had trouble with the papal We and commonly slipped into I and me. He was often engaged in trying to get visitors to stop kneeling in his presence... After trying for his first week in office to eat alone, as protocol had prescribed since the days of Pius V, he... soon widened the circle of dinner guests... He gave out that the best tip he had for weight reduction was to stand next to Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, by far the largest of the cardinals. "Then I feel that I am as thin as a rail." Catching a glimpse of himself in a full-length mirror, he murmured with a chuckle, "Lord, this man is going to be a disaster on television." Life in the Vatican was beginning to resemble a high-spirited Italian comedy... and these anecdotes and many more like them filtered out to the international press, delighting the world at large but especially Catholics, who wondered why they had been content till now with humourless popes who had made the life of the spirit seem an oppression.' Thomas Cahill

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0786239018
• ISBN 13: 9780786239016
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 348