Pope Paul VI

On November 27, 1970, during his visit to Manila, Philippines, Pope Paul VI was attacked by a crew-cut, cassock-clad man with a knife. Paul VI was accompanied by President Ferdinand Marcos and personal aide Pasquale Macchi and both of them stepped in to protect him. The attacker later turned out to be a 35-year-old artist named Benjamin Mendoza y Amor. A Bolivian expat, he was living in the Philippines at the time. The pope was unharmed and went on to complete his trip.

The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith put out a document titled ‘Persona Humana: Declaration on Certain Questions concerning Sexual Ethics’ on December 29, 1975, reiterating the Church’s stance on pre or extra-marital sex, homosexual activity, and masturbation being sinful. In response, Roger Peyrefitte, a French diplomat and gay rights activist, who had previously published two books where he mentioned that Paul VI was in a long-time homosexual relationship, restated those claims once more.

Peyrefitte dubbed Paul VI a hypocrite who had been in a relationship with an actor. There were speculations that the said actor was Paolo Carlini. The pope address the charges during his speech at St. Peters Square on April 18, 1976, claiming that they were, “horrible and slanderous insinuations" and requested the people to pray on his behalf.

Montini was born on September 26, 1897, in Concesio, Brescia, Kingdom of Italy to Giorgio Montini and Giudetta Alghisi. Giorgio was a man of many talents. He was a journalist and lawyer. He also served as the director of the Catholic Action and a member of the Italian Parliament. Giudetta belonged to a family of rural nobility. They had two other sons, Francesco Montini, who went on to be a physician, and Lodovico Montini, who eventually worked as a lawyer and politician.

Montini was baptized a few days after he was born. He studied at the Cesare Arici School, a Jesuit institution. He was a sickly child and would often not be able to go to school due to bouts of illness. In 1916, he earned a diploma from the Arnaldo da Brescia public school in Brescia.

He soon enrolled at a seminary to be a Catholic priest. On May 29, 1920, he was appointed a priest in his hometown. He went on complete his doctorate in Canon Law in 1920 as well. He then attended the Gregorian University, the University of Rome La Sapienza, and Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici.

Now that his education was completed, he chose to enter the Secretariat of State, where he worked under his long-time mentor Giuseppe Pizzardo. As a result, Montini never had to serve as a parish priest. In 1925, he helped set up the publishing house Morcelliana in his hometown, which concentrated on spreading a “Christian-inspired culture”.

In 1923, Montini began his career in the Vatican as a secretary in the diplomatic service of the Holy See. He was stationed at the office of the papal nuncio in Poland, where he experienced the adverse components of nationalism. He would later state that his experience in the country was “useful, not always joyful”. After he assumed the papal office, he was refused entry into the country by the communist government.

Montini had already built a reputation for his organisational skills and it helped him when he switched to Roman Curia, the papal civil service. In 1931, Eugenio Pacelli, who would later become Pope Pius XII, installed him as a history teacher.

In 1937, he was picked as the Substitute for Ordinary Affairs, which allowed him the opportunity to work directly under Cardinal Pacelli, the Secretary of State. After Pacelli became the pope in 1939, he put Montini as Substitute under the new Cardinal Secretary of State, Luigi Maglione. Subsequently, he closely worked with the pope until 1954.

At the advent of the World War II, Montini emerged as one of the key figures in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. Besides taking care of the “ordinary affairs” of the Secretariat of State, he also served as an unofficial personal secretary to the pope. During the war years, thousands of letters arrived in the Vatican from around the world and Montini answered as many of them as he could.

The pope asked him to set up an information office regarding refugees and prisoners of war. Between 1939 and 1947, it got ten million enquires and 11 million replies were sent out. The government of Benito Mussolini was a long-time critic of Montini for what it considered political meddling but the Holy See remained firm in its support of him. In 1944, he was appointed the joint Secretary of State along with Domenico Tardini.

In 1954, after the passing of the Benedictine Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, Montini was made the Archbishop of Milan. His ascension to the position also made him the Secretary of the Italian Bishops Conference. On 5 January 1955, he officially assumed the ownership of the Cathedral of Milan.

In the first few months of his tenure, Montini reached out to the labour unions and associations, enquiring about the working conditions and labour issues. He deeply believed that in the contemporary society, churches were the only non-utilitarian buildings and that they were quintessential for spiritual rejuvenation. Subsequently, he ordered the construction of 100 new churches.

During his lifetime, most believed him to be a liberal. He requested people to love everyone, regardless of their religious identities. It was later revealed, by Pope Pius XII himself at the 1952 secret consistory, that neither Montini nor Tardini accepted designation to the cardinalate.

After the death of Pius XII, Angelo Roncalli assumed the papal office as Pope John XXIII. He appointed Montini to the cardinalate on December 15, 1958. Three years later, he was designated to the Central Preparatory Commission. At the pope’s request, Montini began living in Vatican City during this period. He served as a member of the Commission for Extraordinary Affairs but never participated in the floor debates.

Even before he became a cardinal, Montini was considered to be Pope John XXIII’s most likely successor by several of his peers. During his official African trip as a cardinal, he went to Ghana, Sudan, Kenya, Congo, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Nigeria and later met with the pope to tell him what he had seen. He also visited Brazil and the USA in 1960.