Anybody can be Pope; the proof of this is that I have become one.

He did not live to see it to completion dying in 1963 four-and-a-half years after his election and two months after the completion of his final encyclical Pacem in Terris. My time on earth is drawing to a close. Cardinal Giovanni Montini who later became Pope Paul VI remarked to a friend that "this holy old boy doesn't realise what a hornet's nest he's stirring up".

He was ordained a priest in 1904 and served in various posts including appointment as Papal Nuncio in several countries including France (1944). Pope John was beatified on 3 September 2000. John XXIII (Latin: Ioannes PP.