Religion: Council of Renewal

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John is best known to the world for the warmth and frequency of his audiences. He makes no rigid effort to bone up on the background of visitors, though he occasionally asks for a fill-in by his thin, intense private secretary, Venetian Monsignor Loris Capovilla, 46 (whom some jealous churchmen call "the Assistant Pope"). Like many other statesmen, the Pope has worked up set speeches appropriate to certain groups. Families are told that he recites a decade of the rosary each night for all children born that day. Journalists are compared to the scribes who took down the words of the child Jesus in the temple, "listening and writing down carefully what they hear, not what they have in their own minds.''

Uncomfortable with interpreters, Pope John speaks most freely to his fellow Italians, rambling along in freewheeling, joke-laden talks. Little of this bubbling humor shows through the heavily edited transcripts that appear in L'Osservatore Romano. "I often change the Holy Father's words," admits one editor of the Vatican daily. "Many times he will say something that would cause raised eyebrows or excitement in some quarters. I have been around here longer than he has, and I know-how to fix his words. Sometimes he is surprised, but I know what I am doing."

"About Everything." The inspiration for another Vatican Council, the Pope once said, "came to us as a flower that blooms in an unexpected springtime." Early in his reign, he was discussing some problems of the cold war with the late Domenico Cardinal Tardini, his first Secretary of State. What, John asked himself, should the church do? "Suddenly," the Pope said, "our soul was illuminated by a great idea which we felt in that instant and received with indescribable trust in our Divine Master. A word, solemn and binding, rose to our lips. Our voice expressed it for the first time: 'A council!' To tell the truth, we feared that we had aroused perplexity if not dismay . . . But a clear expression appeared on the cardinal's face. His assent was im mediate and exultant, the first sure sign of the Lord's will."

On Jan. 25, 1959, the Pope sprang his idea on the cardinals, after attending Mass in his favorite Roman church, the patriarchal basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls. The response, from Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians alike, was overwhelming approval—although there were a few dissenters. Some German bishops, who felt that many of the questions likely to come up before the council had not yet been sufficiently clarified by the theologians, asked the Pope to postpone Vatican II for at least 15 years. Many Curia professionals made no secret of their dismay, seemed to have no clear idea of what the Pope wanted the council to do. A reporter once asked Cardinal Tardini what the council would be about. "About everything,'' he answered, "and a few things besides.''

But with no choice except to obey the Pope's marching orders, the Curia set out to make Vatican II what John believes is ''the best prepared council in history." Requests for agenda items were sent to every Catholic bishop, to religious orders and theological faculties at Catholic universities. About 75% of the