That's So Second Millennium

John Paul I: This is an image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch National Archives, and Spaarnestad Photo, donated to Wikimedia in the context of a partnership program.

John Paul II: https://audrey-shark.blogspot.com

 

John Paul I [Albino Luciani] 1978

John Paul II [Karol Wojtyla] 1978-2005

 

From Claude:

Here are the conclaves since 1900, with length counted inclusively from the first day of voting to the day the pope was elected:

Year	Pope elected	Dates	Days	Ballots
1903	Pius X	Jul 31 – Aug 4	5	7
1914	Benedict XV	Aug 31 – Sep 3	4	10
1922	Pius XI	Feb 2 – 6	5	14
1939	Pius XII	Mar 1 – 2	2	3
1958	John XXIII	Oct 25 – 28	4	11
1963	Paul VI	Jun 19 – 21	3	6
Aug 1978	John Paul I	Aug 25 – 26	2	4
Oct 1978	John Paul II	Oct 14 – 16	3	8
2005	Benedict XVI	Apr 18 – 19	2	4
2013	Francis	Mar 12 – 13	2	5
2025	Leo XIV	May 7 – 8	2	4

This is from memory, and I haven't checked it against a source. The dates and ballot counts for the modern conclaves are well documented. The counts for the early ones, especially 1903 and 1914, can differ by a ballot or so between sources, because records of older conclaves are less precise. Day counts also depend on whether you count inclusively, as I did, or count the nights elapsed.

The 1922 conclave was the longest of the period at 14 ballots, and 1939 the shortest at 3.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From vatican.va:

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE LIFE OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL I

1912, 17 October Born at "Forno di Canale" (Belluno), (actually at Canale d'Argordo), son of Giovanni Luciani and Bortola Tancon; was baptized the same day at home, by the midwife, as he was in danger of death.

19 October Baptism was formalized in the Church by the curate, Don Achille Ronzon.

1918 October Began elementary school.

1919 26 September Was confirmed by Bishop Giosuè Cattarossi.

1923 October Entered the minor seminary in Feltre.

1928 October Entered the Gregorian Seminary at Belluno.

1934 Ordained as sub-deacon.

1935 2 February Ordained as deacon.

7 July Ordained to the priesthood at St. Peter's Church of Belluno.

9 July Named curate of the parish at Canale d'Agordo.

18 December Transferred as curate of Agordo and named instructor of religion at the Technical Institute for Miners in Agordo.

1937 July Named vice-rector of the Gregorian Seminary in Belluno (1937-1947).

October Began his service as instructor.

1947 27 February Graduated from the Gregorian University in Rome with a doctorate in Sacred Theology, his thesis being, "The origin of the human soul according to Antonio Rosmini".

November Nominated chancellor of the diocese of Belluno by Bishop Girolamo Bortignon.

16 December Nominated Monsignor. Nominated Secretary of the Diocescan Synod.

1948 2 February Nominated Pro Vicar-General of the diocese of Belluno.

Nominated Director of the Catechetics Office of the Diocese.

1949 December Published Catechetica in briciole.

1950 March Published his doctoral thesis.

1954 6 February Nominated Vicar-General of the Diocese of Belluno.

1956 30 June Nominated Canon of the Cathedral.

1958 15 December Named Bishop of Vittorio Veneto by Pope John XXIII.

27 December Consecrated Bishop by John XXIII at St. Peter's Basilica together with the newly consecrated bishops, Gioacchino Muccin and Girolamo Bortignon.

1959 11 January Took possession of the diocese of Vittorio Veneto

17 June Began his pastoral visit.

1962 8 October - 8 December Was present for the opening of the Vatican Council II in Rome; returning to his diocese only for a few days.

1963 28 September - 4 December Returns to Rome for the 2nd Session of the Vatican Council II; returning to his diocese only for a few days.

1964 13 September - 21 November Returns to Rome for the 3rd Session of the Vatican Council II.

1965 13 September - 9 December Returns to Rome for the 4th Session of the Vatican Council II.

1966 16 August - 2 September Traveled to Burundi on mission for the diocese of Vittorio Veneto.

1969 15 December Named Patriarch of Venice by Pope Paul VI .

1970 1 February Received honorary citizenship of Vittorio Veneto.

8 February Officially entered the City of Venice as Patriarch.

25 October Began his pastoral visit.

1971 12-14 June Made a pastoral visit to Switzerland, returning by way of Savoy.

28 September - 5 November Participated in the II Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome regarding "The Ministerial Priesthood and Justice in the World", returning to his diocese from 23 to 31 of October.

1972 12-17 June Was elected Vice President of the Italian Bishops Conference, holding this position until 2 June 1975.

16 September Received Pope Paul VI in visit to Venice.

1973 5 March Created Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

1974 27 September - 26 October Participated in the III Ordinary General Assembly in Rome of the Synod of Bishops regarding "Evangelization in the Modern World".

1975 18 May Traveled on Pastoral Visit to Germany.

6-21 November Completed a Pastoral Visit to Brasil where he was given the honorary degree of "honoris causa" from the state university of "S. Maria a Rio Grande do Sul".

1976 January Published: Illustrissimi.

10-13 September As an official representative of the Italian Episcopal Conference, participated in the commemorative celebration at Spalato, Yugoslavia.

1977 30 September - 29 October Participated in the IV Ordinary General Assembly in Rome of the Synod of Bishops regarding "Catechetics in Our Time".

1978 6 August Death of Pope Paul VI.

10 August Left for Rome.

26 August During the second day of the conclave, elected Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, choosing the name John Paul I.

27 August Gave his first radio message «urbi er orbi».

3 September Ceremony that initiates his pastoral service.

28 September Died.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

John Paul I - A strange, indeed unique figure in the history of the Papacy. Other Popes have had very short ministries (he himself would probably not appreciate me using the term "reigns"); others have had controversial deaths that might have been foul play (I have not studied the matter); but it would seem that none has introduced himself to the world with two names, nor has any other appended the ordinal "First" to his assumed name. Francis, famously, did not do so a few decades later. In this strange and quiet way he marked out his own milestone in the Church's shift from the conventions of the second millennium to the third. He obviously broke ground for Francis by taking a new name, and he was a man of such influence that his very different successor took up his implied directive and his name.

Given the shortness of his pontificate John Paul I did not contribute a papal document to the Church's social teaching; rather, his life was a kind of embodiment of it. (The source I am following here is the introduction to Lori Pieper, OFS, A Passionate Adventure: Living the Christian Life Today, which is otherwise a collection of writings from Albino Luciani's career as a bishop and cardinal.)

As a geologist I will stop to comment that Albino Luciani was born and grew up in a village in the Dolomite Alps. They have that name because they are composed largely of very pale dolomite, which is usually used as both a mineral name and the name of a rock composed dominantly of that mineral, although you will find that carbonate geologist who will employ the term "dolostone" for the latter. It's an odd name. Dolomieu is a town in France, adjoining another part of the Alps much further west. That town's most famous citizen was Deodat de Dolomieu, a late 18th century naturalist for whom dolomite is named. Prior to the 19th century these Dolomite Alps in northeast Italy were apparently called by a name that roughly translates "Pale Mountains," which is much like the range of quartzite mountains in Wyoming called the "Snowy Range," but these Dolomite Alps were renamed officially in the 1860s.

Albino's father was a laborer who left the Church for socialism for a while in his youth; he was a young widower with two deaf daughters when he married Albino's mother, who convinced him to come back to the Church. Albino would become the "smiling Pope" and apparently his father had been a smiling workingman. A number of times in his life he had to seek work in nearby countries (Switzerland, Germany, France). Albino later recollected that he was struck by the grandness of the organ and the church in his little village, and specifically that it seemed to welcome him and his fellow poor village boys as if they were princes--that this testified to him about the nature of the Church of Christ which acknowledges great dignity in the poor. A Capuchin preacher one Lent prompted his vocation to the priesthood. Supposedly his father said in reply from France, "I hope that when you become a priest you will be on the side of the workers, for Christ Himself would have been on their side."

Albino served a short time as a parish priest in his own village and neighboring parishes, but his intellectual ability led his bishop to put him to work teaching in the seminary. In fact, the need for this was apparently so urgent that rather than send him to Rome to get the usually required licentiate, he was retained in the Veneto and eventually the Gregorian University agreed to let him earn his doctorate "remotely" as we now say. (It was also 1941 and things were rather unsettled.) In 1943-1945 he was part of the underground during the Nazi occupation of northern Italy after the coup against Mussolini and the Allied invasion.

Albino knew Angelo Roncalli, who admired him and appointed him bishop of Vittorio Veneto shortly after becoming Pope. Paul VI eventually made him Patriarch of Venice (where both John XXIII and Pius X had also been before him). When Paul VI died in 1978, there was an unexpectedly swift conclave--only four ballots--and Albino emerged as Pope despite his own belief that a Third World cardinal should be elected and that he himself was not a great candidate.

Albino actually is on record as saying simply that John XXIII made him bishop and Paul VI made him cardinal and therefore he took both those names. This seems incredibly ingenuous to me--but perhaps in keeping with Albino's whole career of preaching and public pronouncements. Apparently his parish priest gave him a gentle rebuke for using too many complicated words in a text meant for the parish bulletin, and young Albino took this very much to heart, cultivating a very simple style meant to be comprehensible to everyone, poor as well as educated. Nevertheless he was a very capable intellectual, a theologian capable of careful reasoning, and a document largely drafted by him was used by Paul VI for some critical passages in Humanae Vitae. So what he was concealing beneath this simple explanation for upending the entire tradition of papal regnal names may have been rather deep and subtle, although no doubt the truth of this will never be known.

John Paul II - The thought of doing justice to his influence in this space overwhelms me. I have spent a great deal of time on John Paul I because, despite the ephemeral nature of his papacy, he broke such new ground in terms of papal names. The fact that John Paul II implicitly agreed to take up the "burden" of a double name then cemented this legacy as he would carry it for over 26 years as a Pope who was a public figure of the first magnitude--his own legacy and hopefully not even his greatest one.

From Magisterium AI:

Karol Wojtyła’s Love and Responsibility was first published in Polish in 1960.

16 October 1978 — Election to the papacy. The Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected pope and took the name John Paul II. 1

1979 — Redemptor Hominis. His first encyclical set out a central theme of his pontificate: the human person understood in the light of Christ. The supplied sources identify his major encyclicals as a defining part of his teaching, though they do not give this document’s date or contents.

1981 — Attempt on his life. He was shot in St Peter’s Square on 13 May and later forgave his attacker (Mehmet Ali Agca).

1981 — Familiaris Consortio. Following the 1980 Synod of Bishops on the family, this apostolic exhortation gave a systematic direction to the Church’s pastoral care of family life.

1983 — Promulgation of the revised Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church. The new Code was among the major instruments of Church governance promulgated during his pontificate.

1983 — Year of Redemption. John Paul II proclaimed this special year as part of the spiritual preparation that later led toward the Great Jubilee.

1985 — World Youth Day begins. John Paul II’s initiative to bring young people together became a lasting feature of his pastoral ministry.

1987–1988 — Marian Year. This was another major spiritual observance in the preparation for the Jubilee of 2000.

1990 — Promulgation of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. Together with the Latin Code, it was a major contribution to the law and organization of the Catholic Church.

1 May 1991 — Centesimus Annus. Issued for the hundredth anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, this social encyclical revisited the Church’s teaching on social and economic life in light of recent history, including the collapse of the Soviet system. It affirmed democracy and economic initiative while stressing that both must be judged by moral principles and solidarity.

1992 — Catechism of the Catholic Church. John Paul II promulgated the Catechism as a comprehensive presentation of Catholic doctrine.

6 August 1993 — Veritatis Splendor. I can’t verify its date or summarize its teaching from the materials available here; they contain no text or reliable reference for this encyclical.

1995 — Evangelium Vitae and Ut Unum Sint. These encyclicals addressed the dignity and protection of human life and the pursuit of Christian unity.

2000 — Great Jubilee

2002 - World Youth Day in Toronto.

2 April 2005 — Death. The Jubilee was a high point of his pontificate. He died in Rome on 2 April 2005, after serving for more than 26 years.