Before he became pope, scarcely anyone outside the Vatican had heard of him. By the time he died, less than five years later, he was one of the best-loved men in the world. The son of simple peasants who worked a stony tenant farm in a northern Italian village, the man born Angelo Roncalli and destined for sainthood as Pope John XXIII never forgot his humble beginnings nor lost his innate love of humanity. He was a brother to all men, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, and was revered by men of every faith and philosophy. His climb up the hierarchical ladder was slow and often painful. Conservative forces within the church suspected him of modernist tendencies, and he was shunted off to the backwaters in the Balkans. Then, after two decades of obscurity, he was suddenly thrust into the mainstream of events as papal nuncio in Paris, the Vatican's most prestigious diplomatic post. Consecrated as cardinal at the age of seventy-two, he resigned himself to living out his days quietly as Patriarch of Venice - only to be called to the ultimate position of Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, spiritual leader of 500 million Catholic souls. In preparing this exhaustive biography, Lawrence Elliott has traveled widely, talking in depth with the men and women who knew John best - cardinals and canons, friends and family-gathering stories never before told.