Blessed John XXIII launched Vatican reforms

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Although he served as pope for less than five years, Blessed John XXIII left one of the most lasting legacies in the Catholic Church’s history by convening the Second Vatican Council.
A plump, elderly, smiling Italian of peasant origins, the future pope had an illustrious career as a papal diplomat in Bulgaria, Turkey and postwar France.

He became pope amid the dismantling of colonialism, the rise of the Cold War and on the cusp of a technological transformation unlike anything the world had seen since the Industrial Revolution.