April 23, 2026

It is not that I want to become a pope or a cardinal, but rather that I want to become a saint." — Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Journal of a Soul

Roncalli wrote these words as a young seminarian in the early twentieth century, long before the world would know him as John XXIII, the beloved pope who opened the windows of the Church with the Second Vatican Council. He was an ordinary boy from a farming family in Bergamo, not destined by any earthly measure for greatness, and yet he trained his whole interior life toward a singular, quiet ambition. This simplicity of desire is itself an act of gratitude — it says that what God has already given, a soul capable of love and holiness, is enough, and more than enough.