John Paul I

Albino Luciani, a bricklayer's son from the Dolomites, was bishop of Vittorio Veneto for eleven years and patriarch of Venice for nine before a conclave that wanted a pastor rather than a diplomat elected him on 26 August 1978, on the fourth ballot, within a single day. He took the first double name in papal history to honor the two popes of the council, and then did away with the coronation: on 3 September he received the pallium at a plain inauguration Mass, ending a rite of crowning that reached back to the Middle Ages. He spoke of himself as "I" rather than the royal "we", quoted Mark Twain and Pinocchio at his general audiences, and had already published Illustrissimi (1976), a book of open letters to Dickens, Chesterton, Pinocchio, and Jesus. The press called him the smiling pope.

On the evening of 28 September 1978 he complained of chest pain and declined to call a doctor; the next morning he was found dead in bed, thirty-three days into the reign. The Vatican's clumsy first account, which said a secretary had found him rather than the nun who actually did, fed decades of conspiracy theories about poisoned coffee and Vatican Bank intrigue. The documented record, assembled for his beatification cause and published by Stefania Falasca in 2017, is more ordinary and more affecting: a man with a history of circulatory trouble, worn down by a job he had not sought, who died of a heart attack. Francis beatified him on 4 September 2022. His remains the shortest pontificate since Leo XI's twenty-seven days in 1605, and the one that handed his successor a template of warmth to inherit.