Paul VI, Saint (1897-1978), was elected pope of the Roman Catholic Church in 1963. He immediately pledged to continue Vatican Council II, called by John XXIII, the previous pope. Paul presided over the council, which ended in 1965 and which brought widespread reforms to the church. See Vatican Council II .
In 1964, Paul traveled to Jerusalem, where he met with the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras I. The Eastern Orthodox Churches give the highest honor to this official. At the Vatican Council, the two leaders issued a joint statement removing the excommunications issued by the Eastern and Western churches against each other in 1054. In 1965, Paul flew to New York City—the first papal visit to the United States—to plead to the United Nations for world peace.
Paul wrote several encyclicals (pastoral letters). They dealt mainly with dialogue among Catholics, non-Catholics, and non-Christians and with the need for social justice within nations and between richer and poorer nations. But Paul is perhaps best remembered for Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), issued in 1968. This encyclical upheld the church’s traditional prohibition against artificial means of birth control.
During his reign, Paul was often criticized as an extreme conservative. Today, many church historians consider him far more moderate than his critics recognized. After Vatican Council II, Paul had to skillfully steer the church on a middle course between liberals and conservatives. The liberals wanted to reform the church further than Paul thought was possible, while the conservatives rejected the council’s reforms altogether.
Paul was born on Sept. 26, 1897, in Concesio, Italy, near Brescia. His given and family name was Giovanni Battista Montini. He was ordained a priest in 1920. After graduate studies in Rome, Paul served in the papal secretariat of state, with only a brief interruption, from 1922 to 1954. In 1954, he was appointed archbishop of Milan. John XXIII made him a cardinal in 1958. Paul died on Aug. 6, 1978. In 2018, he was canonized (declared a saint) by Pope Francis .
