Pope John Xxiii - Softcover

Cahill, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753817039 ISBN 13: 9780753817032

Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 1958

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.

About this title

Review

The punchy Penguin Lives series is the best thing to hit popular biography in some time, and Thomas Cahill is just the fun and erudite guy to Penguinize Pope John XXIII. He captures both the irresistible character of Angelo "Little Angel" Giuseppe Roncalli, a peasant born in backwards Bergamo, and his place in world and church history. In fact, Cahill shows, as John XXIII, Angelo brought the church into the modern world in the 1960s, upsetting the poisoned apple cart of his nefarious predecessor, Pius X, whom Cahill convincingly likens to a Joe McCarthy with the private meanness of Nixon. John XXIII anticipated liberation theology by seven decades, reached out to Protestants and even non-Christians, and saved thousands of Jews from Hitler by wily machinations Cahill aptly compares to Paul's epistle to Philemon. (Cahill says it's unfair to brand Angelo's immediate predecessor, Pius XII, as Hitler's Pope--though he was a "moral pygmy" next to the giant John XXIII.) Cahill gives a quickie history of the Papacy that generations of cramming history students will thank God for, and includes just enough about Pope John's irreverent wit and way of life--the La Grenouille chef, the Jackie Kennedy friendship, the possibly apocryphal quip to a buxom woman wearing a crucifix ("What a Golgotha!"). An exemplary brief bio of an exemplary man. --Tim Appelo

About the Author

Thomas Cahill is the former director of religious publishing at Doubleday. He and his wife, Susan Cahill, a novelist and anthologist, divide their time between New York and Rome. They have two children, a daughter who is a teacher in Oakland, California, and a son who is a filmmaker in Prague.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Publication date: 1958
• ISBN 10: 0753817039
• ISBN 13: 9780753817032
• Binding: Paperback