Five most recent popes

In January 1959, a few months after being elected, John XXIII declared that he was convening an ecumenical council.  When Cardinal Montini of Milan [the eventual Paul VI] heard the stunning news, he phoned a friend:

“This holy old boy doesn’t know what a hornet’s nest he’s stirred up.”


John Paul I, the "September Pope" of 1978 who suddenly died one month into his tenure, was the first ever to use the pronoun “I” instead of the royal “we” – his motto was “Humilitas.”  This is how he began his remarks on his first full day in office:

“Yesterday morning I went to the Sistine Chapel to vote tranquilly.  Never could I have imagined what was about to happen…”


George Weigel, the biographer of John Paul II, interviewed Joseph Ratzinger in 1996 [the German cardinal became Benedict XVI a decade later] on his impressions of his boss:

“The principal theme of the Holy Father, when he was professor and also when he was pope, has been anthropology…
“His study of philosophy was always centered on and guided by this anthropological interest…
“For me, his first encyclical, ‘Redemptor Hominis,’ is really a synthesis of his thinking.  Here we can meet this passion for anthropology as not merely intellectual, but as a total passion for man… This is a key text for understanding the Holy Father as a spiritual and intellectual figure.”