On August 26, 1978, Albino Luciani was elected Pope, taking the name
John Paul I. His pontificate lasted only 34 days, but already in his
“Urbi et Orbi” Radio Message of August 27, delivered the day after his
election, the new Pontiff clearly outlined the guiding principles of his
pontificate.
One of his priorities was evangelization as a central dimension of the
Church’s mission. “We wish to remind the whole Church that her first
duty remains that of evangelization,” the Pope said, explicitly
referring to Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi.
The
Church, he added, “animated by faith, nourished by the Word of God, and
sustained by the heavenly nourishment of the Eucharist,” must “study
every path, seek every means, 'opportune importune,' to sow the Word, to
proclaim the message, to announce salvation.”
In his Radio Message, John Paul I expressed his determination to
continue the legacy of the Second Vatican Council and that of his
predecessors, structuring his program around six “we want”: implementing
the Council; safeguarding the Church’s “great discipline”; placing
evangelization first; pursuing the ecumenical commitment; fostering
serene and constructive dialogue; and promoting whatever could “protect
and advance peace in our troubled world.”
In the Radio Message, the
Pope, alongside the other “we want,” pointed to a Church called to
“unceasingly pursue the legacy of the Second Vatican Council.”
This was a reflection deeply rooted in the Church’s Tradition and,
precisely for that reason, highly relevant today.
“He had already
assimilated during his priestly formation that vision, dear to the
Fathers of the first millennium of the Church, expressed in the
mysterium lunae: a Church that does not shine with its own light, but
with reflected light; a Church that is not the property of Churchmen,
but Christi lumine. ‘Fulget Ecclesia non suo sed Christi lumine’ (the
Church shines not with its own light, but with that of Christ),” writes
Stefania Falasca, a scholar of John Paul I, postulator of the cause and
vice president of the John Paul Vatican Foundation, in an article
published in L’Osservatore Romano on August 25. Stefania Falasca notes
that, like Paul VI, Luciani had taken this image from St. Ambrose.
It
was “an image of the nature of the Church and of the action appropriate
to it” that had permeated the documents of the Second Vatican Council
and become decisive and fruitful in Albino Luciani’s pastoral ministry,
long before he was elected to the See of Peter.
The central importance he gave to the Church’s missionary vocation had
already marked his ministry as Bishop of Vittorio Veneto and Patriarch
of Venice, as highlighted in a 2009 essay by Professor Roberto Morozzo
della Rocca entitled L’orizzonte missionario di Albino Luciani (“Albino
Luciani’s Missionary Horizon”).
For the Pope, proclamation was not entrusted solely to specialists or
ecclesial structures. John Paul I spoke of “all the sons and daughters
of the Church,” called to be “tireless missionaries of the Gospel,” so
that “a new flowering of holiness and renewal” might emerge in a world
“thirsty for love and truth.”
The Pope urged the faithful not to conform
“to the customs of the world,” nor to “the allurements of easy
applause,” but to be ready to give an account of the hope that is within
them.
The Church, he continued, is called to offer the world that “surplus of
soul” of which it stands in need, at a time when technological progress
risks reducing “the earth to a desert, the human person to an automaton,
and fraternal coexistence to a planned collectivization.”
Addressing
missionaries, he greeted “the whole missionary Church” and the men and
women working “on the frontiers of evangelization.”
A month later, on September 28, 1978, in an address to a group of
Filipino bishops making their ad limina visit, he further clarifies his
thoughts. “Among the rights of the faithful, one of the most important
is the right to receive the Word of God in all its integrity and purity,
with all its demands and its power,” he said. The baptized, he
insisted, must be offered the Word of God “in all its integrity and
purity.”
The Pope stressed that “one of the great challenges of our day
is the full evangelization of all those who have been baptized.”
Evangelization, he continued, entails explicit teaching about “the name
of Jesus, his identity, his teaching, his Kingdom and his promises.”
Among these, “his principal promise is eternal life.”
He also recognized
“the great vocation of the Philippines” to be “the light of Christ in
the Far East,” called to proclaim “his truth, his love, his justice and
salvation in word and example” to the peoples of Asia.
As early as his 1966 journey to Burundi, Luciani had demonstrated a
concrete understanding of the encounter between the Gospel and cultures.
He recognized the decisive role of local clergy, called to guide
Churches rooted in the language, history and mentality of their peoples,
and he urged missionaries to serve them with humility.
At the same
time, he rejected ideological oppositions between “foreign” missionaries
and indigenous Churches: “There is work for everyone,” he wrote,
invoking the Pauline principle: Dummodo Christus annuntietur — “as long
as Christ is proclaimed.”
Before the Filipino bishops, he also described Radio Veritas as a
“privileged instrument” for proclaiming, together with the whole Church,
“that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.”
Pope John Paul I was deeply attentive to the development of the means of
communication. In his address to representatives of the international
press on September 1, 1978, he pledged “frank, honest and effective”
cooperation with the instruments of social communication, while
acknowledging the risks of “massification and leveling” for the inner
life of the human person and his or her capacity for judgment.
He first asked journalists to present the Church “with a love of truth
and respect for human dignity,” and then to “comment, at times, on our
humble ministry,” again “with a love of truth and respect for human
dignity, because such is the purpose of all social communication.” The
Church, however, remained his first concern.
On September 4, 1978, addressing the Special Missions present for the
beginning of his pontificate, he explained: “We shall endeavor to carry
out this service using language that is simple, clear and confident.”
The Church, he reminded the Filipino bishops, was irrevocably committed
to alleviating poverty and material needs; but her pastoral charity
would remain incomplete if she failed also to point to humanity’s
“higher needs.”
The biography Io sono la polvere. Biografia ex documentis (“I Am Dust: A
Biography from the Documents”) further shows how, as Patriarch of
Venice, John Paul I had already addressed the relationship between
evangelization and human promotion, defending the primacy of Christian
proclamation without separating it from responsibility for people’s
concrete needs.
In L’Osservatore Romano, Stefania Falasca recalls that John Paul I
emphasized that the Pope and the Holy See did not possess “miraculous
solutions to the great problems of the world,” but could “nevertheless
give something very precious: a spirit that helps to resolve these
problems and places them within their essential dimension, that of
openness to the values of universal charity.”
For Luciani, support for
building a possible peace, inseparable from the Church’s proper mission,
was the guiding principle of his entire, brief pontificate.
“Examining Pope Luciani’s pontificate as a decisive passage in the
exercise of the Petrine ministry, with enormous repercussions for the
life of the Church, helps not only to reconstruct John Paul I’s profile
in its entirety, but also to understand the challenges with which the
Church was and is called to engage,” Falasca emphasizes, indicating the
perspective from which to re-read the legacy of the Venetian Pope.
The re-reading of the six “we want” and their relevance today will be at
the heart of the international academic conference “John Paul I:
Iustitia et Pax. Protecting and advancing peace in this troubled world,”
scheduled for October 13, 2026, at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
The Foundation, established to preserve and promote Luciani’s
documentary heritage, now serves as an international reference point for
research and scholarship based on the sources relating to his
magisterium and ecclesial journey.
The archival sources acquired and
made available today — the result of the omnino plena research supported
for more than a decade by the Cause for the Canonization of Albino
Luciani–John Paul I and collected since 2020 by the John Paul I Vatican
Foundation — “have opened a new chapter in historiography,” Stefania
Falasca writes in L’Osservatore Romano.
These sources, she adds, make it possible to shed light on “the genesis
of a project for the governance of the pontificate” and to present the
teachings and memory of John Paul I with greater precision.
“Through the Study Days promoted by the Foundation in collaboration with
the Pontifical Gregorian University and dedicated to the sources of
John Paul I’s Magisterium, the Foundation has continued its scientific
research, focusing precisely on the six volumus of Pope Luciani’s
program for his pontificate. Each of them will be the subject, over the
years, of a dedicated academic conference,” explains the Foundation’s
vice president.
The conference is promoted by the John Paul I Vatican Foundation in
collaboration with the Pontifical Gregorian University and the
Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, and will be attended by
Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, President of the Foundation.
“Examining Pope Luciani’s pontificate as a decisive passage in the
exercise of the Petrine ministry,” Falasca says, “with enormous
repercussions for the life of the Church, helps not only to reconstruct
John Paul I’s profile in its entirety, but also to understand the
challenges with which the Church was and is called to engage.”
