4 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
took greater account of the world around it than any previous
council and assumed as one of its principal tasks dialogue or con-
versation with that world in order to work for a better world, not
simply a better Church.”
Following the nineteen-year pontificate of Pius XII, who had
held the reins of the Holy See through both World War II and the
start of the Cold War, the seventy-seven-year-old Angelo Cardi-
nal Roncalli was expected to be no more than an interrex. And
yet, in the course of a reign lasting only five years, he marked
the Church more than almost any of his predecessors. Pope Fran-
cis described his icon’s influence thus as he canonized the “Good
Pope” on April 27, 2014: “In convening the Council, John XXIII
showed an exquisite openness to the Holy Spirit. He let himself be
led, and he was for the Church a pastor, a servant-leader. This
was his great service to the Church; he was the pope of openness
to the Spirit.” 9
Yet Francis gave this speech to honor not only John XXIII,
but also the Polish-born John Paul II, who achieved recognition
as a saint at the same time as the pontiff who had called Vati-
can II. Though Catholic and secular media alike at the time of the
two popes’ canonizations mostly emphasized how different they
were, a few voices made a case for the fundamental continuity
between them. After all, John Paul II, as both a pastor and a phi-
losopher, was a product of the council that his predecessor had
called. The forty-two-year-old bishop from behind the Iron Cur-
tain arrived in Rome in 1962 as a Council father. Over the next
three years, Karol Wojtyła would prove himself a living link be-
tween what Pius XII had termed the “Church of Silence”10—bear-
- Ibid., 62.
- Pope Francis, Homily for Holy Mass and Rite of Canonization of Blesseds
John XXIII and John Paul II (April 27, 2014), at http://w2.vatican.va/content/fran-
cesco/en/homilies/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140427_omelia-canonizza-
zioni.html; accessed June 1, 2014. Italics in the original. - Quoted in Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch, The Vatican and the