Pope Paul VI

About Pope Paul VI

Giovanni Battista Montini was born in 1897 near Brescia, the son of a Catholic journalist and member of parliament. He spent thirty years in the Vatican Secretariat of State and then served as archbishop of Milan, where he went into the factories to talk with workers who had not set foot in a church for years.

Elected in 1963, he inherited a council half finished and decided to see it through, which meant stitching together agreements between wings that barely spoke to each other. He closed Vatican II in 1965 and spent the rest of his pontificate applying what it decided, including the reform of the Mass.

He was the first modern pope to travel by plane: he went to pray in the Holy Land, met the patriarch of Constantinople after nine hundred years of rupture, and addressed the United Nations calling for war never again. He wrote Populorum Progressio, on the development of peoples, and Humanae Vitae, the most debated document of his pontificate. He died in 1978 and was canonised in 2018. His feast is 29 May.

A message from Paul VI is sent to those who follow Church life closely and for parish and community occasions.

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