Born of a farming family in Sotto il Monte in northern Italy in 1881, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was ordained a priest in 1904. After serving in World War I as a stretcher-bearer, he was later made national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. In 1925 he became a papal diplomat, serving in Bulgaria, Turkey, and in France. With the help of Germany's ambassador to Turkey, Roncalli helped save an estimated 24,000 Jewish people during World War II. Named a cardinal and appointed patriarch of Venice in 1953 by Pope Pius XII, he was elected pope in 1958 at age seventy-eight. He took the name John after his father and the two patrons of Rome's cathedral, St. John Lateran. He convoked (1959) the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965); his most famous encyclicals were Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963). "Good Pope John" died of stomach cancer 3 June 1963. His feast day, 11 October, recalls the day of the first session of the Second Vatican Council (1962). Declared a Blessed in 2000, he was canonized, together with Pope John Paul II, by Pope Francis on 27 April 2014.