The biography of a Pope cannot be written until his reign is completed. This volume follows the career of a living man from childhood to the papal throne and locates him in relation to historical events, many of them precedent to his birth. Pope John XXIII was dead. The world, Catholic and non-Catholic, waited on the choosing of a successor. The Novendiali for Pope John XXIII ended with the Solemn Mass of 17 June 1963. Another reign was in its beginning. The 262nd Pope had an identity and a name. Men could inquire about him and seek in his origins and in his career for an augury of the future. He was Paul VI and he had been Giovanni Battista Montini, a small boy once in the town of Concesio on the outskirts of Brescia in the Valley of the Po, in northern Italy.