Labels:text | human face | person | smile | clock | letter OCR: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ John XXIII John XXIII The most influential reforming pope since the Counter- Reformation and among the best-loved of 20th-century pontiffs, John XXIII was born of poor peasants in northern Italy. He spent World War I as a sergeant in the medical corps, and as an army chaplain. During more than 25 years in the Vatican diplomatic corps, which he joined in 1925, he gained valuable experience of the Orthodox and Muslim faiths; and in World War II used his position to help thousands of Jewish refugees escape persecution. In 1953 he was made patriarch of Venice. Elected pope five years later, at age 77, he was wrongly assumed to be a stopgap choice. However, he used his pontificate to emphasize the importance of achieving greater John XXIII, unity with other Christian churches. His religious leader and pope, crowning achievement was to convoke the 1881-1963 second Vatican Council, which updated Catholic thinking on religious liberty, church unity, and the church's responsibility for supporting efforts to improve economic and social conditions. CHRONOLOGY
