page_title: Pope Paul VI
section_title: Foreign travels
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Paul VI / Papacy / Relations and dialogues / Foreign travels
caption_attribution_description: English: Foreign trips of Pope Paul VI Deutsch: Auslandsreisen von Papst Paul VI.
context_page_description: Pope Paul VI was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his death in 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms, and fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements.
  Montini served in the Holy See's Secretariat of State from 1922 to 1954. While in the Secretariat of State, Montini and Domenico Tardini were considered as the closest and most influential advisors of Pius XII, who in 1954 named him Archbishop of Milan, the largest Italian diocese. Montini later became the Secretary of the Italian Bishops' Conference. John XXIII elevated him to the College of Cardinals in 1958, and after the death of John XXIII, Montini was considered one of his most likely successors. Upon his election to the papacy, Montini took the name Paul VI.
  He re-convened the Second Vatican Council, which had automatically closed with the death of John XXIII.
context_section_description: Pope Paul VI became the first pope to visit six continents. He travelled more widely than any of his predecessors, earning the nickname "the Pilgrim Pope". He visited the Holy Land in 1964 and participated in Eucharistic Congresses in Bombay, India and Bogotá, Colombia. In 1966, he was twice denied permission to visit Poland for the 1,000th anniversary of the introduction of Christianity in Poland. In 1967, he visited the shrine of Our Lady of Fátima in Portugal on the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions there. He undertook a pastoral visit to Uganda in 1969, the first by a reigning pope to Africa. On 27 November 1970 he was the target of an assassination attempt at Manila International Airport in the Philippines. He was only lightly stabbed by Benjamín Mendoza y Amor Flores, who was subdued by the pope's personal bodyguard and travel organiser, Monsignor Paul Marcinkus. Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to visit the Western hemisphere when he addressed the United Nations in New York City in October 1965. As the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was escalating, Paul VI pleaded for peace before the UN:
  Our very brief visit has given us a great honour; that of proclaiming to the whole world, from the Headquarters of the United Nations, Peace! We shall never forget this extraordinary hour. Nor can We bring it to a more fitting conclusion than by expressing the wish that this central seat of human relationships for the civil peace of the world may ever be conscious and worthy of this high privilege.
  No more war, never again war. Peace, it is peace that must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind."
caption: The countries visited by Pope Paul VI
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