Description

Angelo Roncalli, intelligent, modest, joyful and from the humblest of origins, became Pope aged 78. Yet his short papacy (1958-1963) inaugurated the most significant event in Church life for centuries: the Vatican Council II. The moving spiritual journey told here – his ambitions and failures, his family and the years overseas as a papal representative – reveal the gentle heart of a true pastor.

Pope St John XXIII was canonised alongside Pope Joh Paul II in 2014.