FACTOID #151: The five countries with the highest coffee consumption are also the five countries whose citizens trust one another the most. Coincidence? Probably.
Elected pope on 5 months after the death of Leo VIII, as a compromise candidate, with the agreement of Emperor Otto I. John's behaviour and foreign backing made him disliked in Rome. There was a revolt resulting in his temporary banishment occurring in December 965, John only returning November 966.
After John's restoration he worked with Otto towards ecclesiastical developments, including the creation of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg. He also developed other Archbishoprics in southern Italy, reducing the influence of the Byzantine Empire and Eastern Orthodox Church there.
Christmas 967 John crowned Otto I's son Otto II as coemperor. Otto II was afterwards married to the niece of the Byzantine EmperorJohn I Tzimisces, as part of the ongoing attempt to reconcile Eastern and Western Churches.
Of his time in France, John later related in a humorous account that, when a woman wearing a daringly low-cut dress arrived at a reception which he was attending, the people assembled in the room did not watch the woman, but, rather, him to see if he was watching the woman.
After the long pontificate of John's patrician predecessor, the cardinals chose a man whom they presumed, because of his advanced age and personal modesty, would be a short "stop-gap" pope.
Pope John XXIII died of stomach cancer on June 3 1963, at the age of 81.
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