Product Description
Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli was an unexpected choice to follow the ultra conservative Pope Pius XII in 1958. At seventy-six years old, 'a fat old man with twinkling eyes and a seductively resonant voice', neither a well-known public figure nor a highly trained theologian, he was at first regarded as a transitional pope. During his brief but unforgettable reign as Pope John XXIII, however, he astonished the world with the seminal and unprecedented change he brought about in the Catholic Church. He was a deeply political man and played an important part on the world stage, helping to defuse the Cuban missile crisis of 1963. He also rewrote litury to avoid any crude condemnation of the Jews, tens of thousands of whom he had saved from the Holocaust when he was an apostolic administrator in Turkey.
All of our books are second hand, and while you may not get the exact copy shown in the picture, all of our books are in very good condition. Removing stickers from a book may damage it, so we refrain from doing so. If you see a price sticker on a book, please ignore it.