| Dates | 25–28 October 1958 |
| Location | Sistine Chapel, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City |
| Dean | Eugène Tisserant |
| Vice Dean | Clemente Micara |
| Camerlengo | Benedetto Aloisi Masella |
| Protodeacon | Nicola Canali |
| Ballots | Pope elected after 11 ballots |
| Elected Pope | Angelo Roncalli (took name John XXIII) |
The Papal conclave of 1958 occurred following the death of Pope Pius XII on 9 October 1958 in Castel Gandolfo, after a 19-year pontificate. The conclave to elect his successor commenced on 25 October and ended three days later, on 28 October, after eleven ballots. The cardinal electors chose Angelo Roncalli, then Patriarch of Venice, as the new pope. He accepted the election and took the regnal name of John XXIII.
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The conclave was held from 25 to 28 October, at the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. In the absence of the popular Giovanni Battista Montini (who would become Pope Paul VI in 1963 but was not yet a cardinal at the time of this conclave), the papabili included the conservative Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, and the liberal Giacomo Lercaro, Archbishop of Bologna.
Because Pope Pius XII had held only two consistories (in 1946 and 1953) during his tenure, the College of Cardinals—whose maximum size, as set by Pope Sixtus V in the sixteenth century, was then seventy—was noticeably short of members. There were fifty-three cardinal electors, of whom twelve had been elevated by Pope Pius XI, but due to travel restrictions imposed by their Communist governments, József Mindszenty and Aloysius Stepinac were not able to travel to Rome. Hence, there were fifty-one electors who participated in the conclave, and thus a potential Pope needed only thirty-five votes.
Pope Pius had to that point been the longest reigning pope in the twentieth century; Pope Leo XIII, though he died in the beginning of the century, had begun his reign and spent most of it in the nineteenth century. With the election of a 77-year-old cardinal, many churchmen interpreted the choice of Roncalli as picking a "pope of transition".[1] John XXIII himself said, when he took possession of the Lateran Basilica on 23 November 1958: "We do not have the right to see a long way ahead of us."[2]
Unlike 1939, when Eugenio Pacelli was the overwhelming favourite, or 1963, when Giovanni Battista Montini was favored, the 1958 conclave had several papabili but no favourite candidate. That may explain the unusual length of the conclave. Roncalli was among the persons mentioned by the media at the time. The mild-mannered former diplomat, of rural origins, took the name Pope John XXIII. He was like Pope Pius X before him: the second Patriarch of Venice to be elected Pontiff in the 20th century. (The third was Pope John Paul I in 1978.) Roncalli had been for many years Nuncio to Bulgaria, Turkey and France. Other candidates had been Valerio Valeri, Alfredo Ottaviani, Ernesto Ruffini, and the Armenian Patriarch of Cilicia, Grégoire-Pierre Agagianian. However, Agagianian's non-Italian heritage and young age (63) greatly hindered his chances for election. Also relatively young were 52-year-old Giuseppe Siri and the Archbishop of Milan Giovanni Battista Montini, with the latter, although mentioned, not being a cardinal.
It is believed by some, mostly in traditionalist Catholic circles, that Cardinal Siri, the long-serving and conservative Archbishop of Genoa, was actually elected Pope in the 1958 papal conclave, on Sunday 26 October, even taking the name of Gregory XVII, but that his election was then suppressed, duress having been applied to him, especially by the French Cardinals led by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Eugène Tisserant, who would have brought up the threat of anti-Catholic turmoils in USSR dominated Eastern Europe, if Cardinal Siri, considered a rabid anti-Communist, became the new Pope. This belief is known as the Siri Thesis Greater weight is given to it because two cardinals who arrived for the conclave, Cardinals Costantini and Mooney, died on 17 and 25 October, respectively, shortly before the conclave began. Mooney allegedly died of a heart attack mere hours before the conclave began. The chances that two cardinals out of 53 electors would die of "natural causes" just prior to the conclave were minute indeed.
Roncalli's selection was a surprise to all, most particularly to Roncalli, who arrived in Rome with a return train ticket to Venice and who hoped for a short conclave so that he could return home.
Allegedly, French cardinals came to Rome determined to elect a man some had dismissed as over-the-hill. The Frenchmen held their votes together even when Roncalli’s candidacy seemed to slip, gathered allies, and eventually got their candidate elected. It is reported, perhaps apocryphally, that one elderly and confused cardinal kept voting for Achille Ratti (the then already long-deceased Pope Pius XI) throughout the balloting.
Roncalli accepted the election and when asked what his regnal name would be, he responded, "We choose John...a name sweet to Us because it is the name of Our father, dear to Us because it is the name of the humble parish church where We were baptized, the solemn name of numberless cathedrals scattered throughout the world, including Our own basilica...We love the name of John because it reminds Us of John the Baptist, precursor of our Lord...and the other John, the disciple and evangelist...Perhaps We can, taking the name of this first series of holy Popes, have something of his sanctity and strength of spirit, even—if God wills it—to the spilling of blood".[3] However, confusion was aroused as to what number pope Roncalli was to choose this name, but he impatiently insisted that he was to be known as John XXIII.[4]
He became the first pope since Benedict XV to bestow his scarlet zucchetto on the Secretary of the conclave—in this instance, Alberto di Jorio—immediately after his election and thus make him a cardinal.
The newly-elected Pope John, with his brand new white cassock too tight on his portly figure, appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica after Nicola Canali had announced his election. It is said that Pope John had actually been given the medium-sized cassock by mistake (there are 3 sizes of robes, small, medium and large, available because the tailor does not know who the new pope will be); his measurements had been used for the large-size robes.
In His book The Making of the Popes: 1978, Andrew Greeley states in the endnotes that a cardinal left the conclave with the vote totals written in pencil on his sleeve.
| The balloting according to Father Greeley | ||||||
| Ballot: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | final |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ernesto Cardinal Ruffini | 17 | 17 | 15 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| Grégoire-Pierre Cardinal Agagianian | 13 | 13 | 12 | 8 | 6 | 1 |
| Angelo Cardinal Roncalli | 7 | 7 | 8 | 15 | 20 | 38 |
| Benedetto Cardinal Aloisi Massella | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani | 2 | 5 | 8 | 16 | 15 | 9 |
Giovanni Battista Montini had been one of the stars of the Roman Curia in the 1930s and 1940s. A skilled diplomat and the Substitute (or deputy) Secretary of State, many presumed that he would surely be raised to the College of Cardinals in one of Pope Pius's consistories. For most of his reign, with the exception of the five years Luigi Maglione was Secretary of State, Pius himself acted as his own Secretary of State, a position that he had held under the previous pope, Pius XI. Unexpectedly, Pius removed Montini from the Curia in 1955 and appointed him as the Archbishop of Milan, one of the most senior dioceses in Italy, and one which had produced many popes. Milanese archbishops are invariably made cardinals at the next consistory, which in this case took place in 1958 after the death of Pius XII. Pius XII had only two consistories during his pontificate, in 1946 and 1953. At the Secret Consistory in 1952, Pope Pius revealed to the assembled cardinals that two (Tardini and Montini) were at the very top of his list but turned it down.[5] Tardini and Montini did not get the red hat during the pontificate of Pius XII, who did not have a third consistory before his death in 1958. This meant that some archbishops who could expect the honor because of tradition and importance of their city did not get the red hat then: Montini (Milan), O’Hara (Philadelphia), Cushing (Boston), König (Vienna), Godfrey (Westminster), Barbieri (Montevideo), Castaldo (Naples), Richaud (Bordeaux), and others.
Possibly Montini declined the red hat because his counterpart as the Substitute Secretary of State, Msgr. Domenico Tardini, had already declined elevation to the cardinalate. As Montini felt that he could not accept it as long as Tardini had not, he declined the promotion. Whatever the reason he was not promoted, the situation persisted as a stalemate between the two men's promotion until Montini was promoted to be the new Archbishop of Milan in 1955. Both Montini and Tardini received the regalia of bishops, without being ordained at the time. Tardini remained in Rome as Pro-Secretary of State. Montini was ordained in St. Peter by Cardinal Tisserant, while Pope Pius XII delivered a eulogy from his sick bed over the radio. It was only after Pius XII's death in 1958 that Tardini himself, already of poor health and very much against his own will, was promoted to Secretary of State in his own right, and was created cardinal as well. He died within three years.
For whatever reason, Montini, who was widely tipped as the likely next pope, had he had been a member of the College of Cardinals, was excluded, though even as Archbishop of Milan he still managed to pick up some votes, given that the cardinals are not restricted to choosing a pope from among their ranks. Montini was made a cardinal by the new Pope John XXIII and succeeded him as Pope Paul VI. As a sign of his admiration—and some say also his sympathy for his friend's exile to Milan—Pope John XXIII listed Montini at the top of his list of his first consistory of cardinals. This gave Montini the privilege of being the individual who would celebrate the yearly mass, at the pope's own pleasure, which would commemorate the pope's election as Supreme Pontiff. John XXIII would also go on to consult closely with Cardinal Montini about all his plans concerning the planning and execution of the upcoming Second Vatican Council, whose first session began in 1962.
| Duration | 4 days |
|---|---|
| Number of ballots | 11 |
| Electors | 53 |
| Present | 49 |
| Absent | 2 |
| Africa | 1 |
| Latin America | 9 |
| North America | 3 |
| Asia | 3 |
| Europe | 32 |
| Oceania | 1 |
| Italians | 16 |
| DECEASED POPE | PIUS XII (1939–1958) |
| NEW POPE | JOHN XXIII (1958–1963) |
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