Here’s my post for the Evangelium Institute Blog on the Memorial of Pope St. John XXIII.

Pope Pius XII died on October 9, 1958 having shepherded the Church through World War II and into the early stages of the Cold War. The rising Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Battista Montini, was not yet a cardinal, so the Cardinals chose Angelo Cardinal Roncalli as a kind of “stop gap” pope. Little did they know that he would be so consequential.

Click here for the rest.