History in Colour: Death of Pope John XXIII

by Admin · June 24, 2021

This month 58 years ago –

A snapshot from the past, colourised exclusively for The Southern Cross

The body of Pope John XXIII is carried in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican during his funeral on June 6, 1963.

Pope John had died three days earlier at the age of 81.

As Patriarch Angelo Roncalli of Venice, he had been elected to the papacy at the age of 76 in October 1958 to succeed Pope Pius XII. Initially regarded as a caretaker pope, John XXIII changed Church history when he called the Second Vatican Council, which opened in 1962 and concluded in 1965, two years after his death.

In his short pontificate of four-and-a-half years, the son of a sharecropper from near Bergamo in northern Italy made a huge impact, on domestic and global politics, on relations with other Churches, on modernising pastoral roles, and more. “Good Pope John” was beatified in 2000, and canonised by Pope Francis alongside St John Paul II on April 27, 2014.

Original photo by Giancarlo Giuliani, Catholic Press Photo/CNS. Colourised for The Southern Cross.

History in Colour appeared in the June 2021 issue of The Southern Cross magazine

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