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Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hello, Sprouts. Today is Friday, October 11th, 2024, and today we celebrate the Feastay of St. John the 23rd. My name is Father Andrew Hamilton of the Diocese of Greensburg, Pennsylvania,

and this is our last day together, talking about

the signs and symbols of the faith and their deeper meanings. But first, we talk about St. John

23rd. He was born Angelo Roncalli in a small northern Italian village. He came from a

materially poor but spiritually rich family

of tenant farmers who worked in vineyards and cornfields

and tended cattle.

He was the fourth of 13 children.

As he would rise through the ranks of the church,

he would never forget his humble upbringing

in that small northern Italian town

in a large family. An interesting part of Pope John the 23rd's life was that he served in the

First World War. In 1915, as a priest, Father Roncalli was drafted into the Italian army,

where he would serve as a medic and then as a chaplain for soldiers.

He was well respected in his roles there and helped many men in the midst of the horrors of war.

This would later influence him as Pope as he would write about harmony and peace in some of his papal letters,

talking about the need to avoid war and

the terrors that come from it. Pope John 23rd famously opened up the Second Vatican Council,

a council in the modern world which sought to better understand how the church could proclaim

the good news of salvation to modern man.

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