Pope Paul VI - Early Life

Early Life

Giovanni Battista Montini was born in the village of Concesio, in the province of Brescia, Lombardy. His father Giorgio Montini was a lawyer, journalist, director of the Catholic Action and member of the Italian Parliament. His mother was Giudetta Alghisi, from a family of rural nobility. He had two brothers, Francesco Montini, who became a physician, and Lodovico Montini, who became a lawyer and politician. On 30 September 1897, he was baptized in the name of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini. He attended Cesare Arici, a school run by the Jesuits, and in 1916, he received a diploma from Arnaldo da Brescia, a public school. His education was often interrupted by bouts of illness. In 1916, he entered the seminary to become a Roman Catholic priest. He was ordained priest on 29 May 1920 and celebrated his first Holy Mass in Concesio in the Church Madonna delle Grazie which was near his parental house. Montini concluded his studies in Milan with a doctorate in Canon Law in the same year. Afterwards he studied at the Gregorian University, the University of Rome La Sapienza and, at the request of Giuseppe Pizzardo at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici. At the age of twenty-five, again at the request of Giuseppe Pizzardo, Montini entered the Secretariat of State in 1922, where he worked under Pizzardo together with Francesco Borgongini-Duca, Alfredo Ottaviani Carlo Grano, Domenico Tardini and Francis Spellman.