John XXIII
5
6.4
- proper noun
- When John XXIII became pope, he sought to promote peace and unity among different Christian denominations.
- Pope John XXIII
Examples
-
Paul had followed his predecessor John XXIII, who had first convened the modernizing Vatican council, and he represented the "new" Church, one that had jettisoned all the old relics and rituals.
Academic text (2014) -
Pope John XXIII led significant changes in the Catholic Church during his papacy from 1958 to 1963.
-
When he announced the council, John XXIII included the promotion of Christian unity as a major goal.
Academic text (2014) -
Then came the electrifying election of a different kind of pope, John XXIII, upon whom it was possible to look with sympathy and admiration.
Academic text (2014) -
Finally, I was ordained a priest, completed my studies, and returned to the U.S. John F. Kennedy was president, John XXIII was still pope, and the council would open on October 11, 1962.
Academic text (2014) -
When Isaac visited John XXIII in 1960, the pope promised him that the council would redefine the Church's relationship to Judaism.
Academic text (2014) -
A year later, I received a letter signed by Pope John XXIII appointing me as peritus at the Secretariat for Christian Unity.
Academic text (2014) -
1 Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII: Shepherd of the Modern World (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1985), pp. 323-324.
Academic text (2014) -
That day, my question to my classmates on the bus was why the man who had been elected as Pope John XXIII only three months before had just announced he was convening an Ecumenical Council, one of the rarest meetings held throughout Christian church history.
Academic text (2014) -
While I do not recall learning much in detail about the council, I have a distinct memory of reading Pope John XXIII's encyclical addressed to all persons of good will, Pacem in Terris, and of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."
Academic text (2014)
Synonyms
318
3.2
A religious leader in Rome who leads the Roman Catholic Church worldwide
3
6.0
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church
2
6.9
A Catholic leader who was pope from 1958 to 1963 and called the Second Vatican Council
1
3.9
A person who leads the Roman Catholic Church and is the Bishop of Rome
An Italian church leader who was Pope John XXIII and started the Second Vatican Council
Surface Forms
Morphology
John + XXIII
The compound is a proper name combining the given name 'John' with the Roman numeral 'XXIII', so a learner who knows the parts will understand it as 'John the twenty-third' and thus as a named person. However, the constituents do not indicate the specific identity or role (that this John was the pope from 1958–1963), so the full referential meaning is not derivable without prior knowledge. The regnal/ordinal numeral pattern is cross-linguistically common, giving partial but not complete transparency.
Etymology
John XXIII comes from the Catholic custom that a newly elected pope takes a new name; he chose John, and the Roman numeral XXIII (23) shows he was the twenty-third pope to use that name, so the name tells us which pope he was.