Paul VI

Paul VI ( Giovanni Battista Montini) (b. 26 Sept. 1897, d. 6 Aug. 1978). Pope 1963–78 The son of a wealthy landowner, he was ordained in 1920 and went to the Gregorian University in Rome. In 1923 he joined the papal diplomatic corps, and for the following thirty years was active in the Secretariat of State, whose business he directed from 1944 onwards. He became Archbishop of Milan in 1954, and was widely tipped to become Pope in 1958, though eventually John XXIII was elected. However, John XXIII made him a cardinal in the same year and promoted him wherever possible, for example through giving him an important role at the Second Vatican Council in 1962. The following year he succeeded John XXIII, and continued his predecessor's drive for the liberalization of the church, e.g. through convening a second session of the Vatican Council within three weeks of his election. He also continued the drive to increase the Church's involvement in the ecumenical movement, and in 1965 the hostility between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches was lifted. At the same time, some of the most sweeping changes of his papacy were to be introduced after the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. In 1970–1, the order of services was restructured, and it became common to celebrate mass in the vernacular instead of Latin. He was also the first Pope to travel outside Europe, a gesture through which he recognized the growing importance of Africa, Asia, and Latin America to Roman Catholicism. At the same time, he was conservative on moral issues, particularly in his opposition to birth control, as expressed through the encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968).