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instituting reforms that made Serbia first among equals in the new Yugoslavian Federation. This was accomplished only over the objections of other groups, notably the Croats under Stjepan Radic´. The new Vidovdan Constitution was then adopted that conferred a centralized administration scheme favoring the Serbs and also abolished all autonomous regions. Such changes stimulated tremendous unrest through the six major nationalities comprising Yugoslavia but Pasˇic´’s view prevailed. By the time he retired from office for the last time in March 1926, the new nation was fatally flawed by ethnic divisions that would prove its undoing by the end of the century. Pasˇic´ died in Belgrade on December 10, 1926, having dominated Serbia’s political landscape for nearly 50 years. Historians still remain divided as to his culpability in the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 and the conflagration it engendered. Further Reading Cox, John K. The History of Serbia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Dragnich, Alex N. Serbia, Nikola Pasˇic´, and Yugoslavia. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1974. Fryer, Charles. The Destruction of Serbia in 1915. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1997. Lyon, James B. “Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914.” Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of California– Los Angeles, 1995. Matic, Natasa M. “Nikola Pasˇic´ and the Radical Party, 1845–1941.” Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 2000. Pavlowitch, Stevan K. Serbia: The History behind the Name. London: Hurst and Co., 2002. Skoric, Sofija. “The Populism of Nikola Pasˇic´: The Zurich Period.” East European Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1980): 469–485.
Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini) (1897–1978) pope of Catholic Church Giovanni Battista Montini was born in Concesio, Lombardy, Italy, on September 26, 1897, into a highly religious, aristocratic family. His parents were politically active Catholics and impressed upon the young man the need for piety and devotion to the poor. Montini studied at local Jesuit schools and he attended a seminary in 1920. He was ordained four years later and sub-
sequently studied canon law at Gregorian University in Rome before being assigned to the Vatican secretary of state. In this capacity he came to the attention of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future POPE PIUS XII, who appointed him to his personal staff in 1930. Montini also spent nearly a decade working with various Catholic university student organizations to combat the rise of Italian fascism. During World War II he was entrusted to various relief agencies and also tended to the diplomats isolated in Vatican City. Afterward Pius XII offered to elevate Montini to the rank of cardinal, but he declined in favor of becoming archbishop of Milan. Here he gained considerable renown as a man of the people, constantly visiting churches and workers to instill and enrich their faith. Because Milan was also a center of Italian communism, he was frequently abused by activists, but though such efforts Montini acquired a reputation as “archbishop of the workers.” In 1958 Pope JOHN XXIII elevated Montini to cardinal, the same year that he summoned the famous Vatican II Council to modernize church doctrine. Montini enthusiastically welcomed the change and served as an adviser to the pope during the initial sessions of 1962. When John XXIII died in June 1963 Montini was elected by the college of cardinals to serve as the new pope under the name Paul VI. Paul VI assumed power at a critical juncture in church history. He immediately announced that the work of his predecessor would continue during the remainder of Vatican II. This proved a monumental event in church history, for it totally revamped existing approaches to ecumenical practice. Henceforth Latin masses were dropped in favor of local languages, and the laity was invited to participate in local church affairs. But Paul VI also reaffirmed longstanding tenets of church doctrine, especially in regard to birth control and clerical celibacy. His encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae was a strongly worded document demanding that Catholics refrain from using artificial contraception out of respect for the dignity of human life. In many respects his unwillingness to modify his stance disappointed more liberal members of the church but it underscored Paul VI’s basic conservatism. The means of imparting church doctrine could be modernized but the message it imparted remained the same. This determination to preserve basic elements of church belief later served as a source of tension between conservative and reform elements. In 1965 he successfully concluded the