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On that evening, the “good pope” got here to the window of the Apostolic Palace and delivered his well-known “moonlight speech” to the hundreds who had gathered under. Whereas pre-Vatican II popes often spoke in formal phrases, John shocked the group with an impromptu, pastoral speech urging the trustworthy to go house to their kids and provides them a hug and inform them “that is the caress of the pope.”
The council would final for one more three years and outlive John, who died in 1963 of abdomen most cancers.
However when it was over, council fathers had agreed to main modifications within the lifetime of the church, corresponding to permitting Mass to be celebrated in native languages somewhat than Latin and strengthening the position of laity within the on a regular basis lifetime of the church. The council additionally inspired efforts to enhance relations amongst Christians and revolutionized the church’s relations with Jews, together with eradicating the phrase “perfidious Jews” from the liturgy.
Francis, 85, is the primary pope to have been ordained after the council, and his priorities are very a lot impressed by it.
“Above all peace, above all of the poor church,” stated Vatican II historian Alberto Melloni informed The Related Press about Francis.
Melloni additionally pointed to Francis’ insistence on a “synodal” or decentralized church, with an emphasis on lay Catholics somewhat than clerics. The lay-centric imaginative and prescient of the church is clearly evident in Francis’ resolution to permit laypeople, together with ladies, to move Vatican places of work and within the the two-year “synod” course of through which bizarre Catholic trustworthy have joined a world session on the life and mission of the church.
However Vatican II nonetheless very a lot divides the church, with progressives seeing it as a break from the previous and conservatives seeing it as absolutely in keeping with church custom and chafing on the “spirit of Vatican II” progressive learn of it. Francis has exacerbated these divisions by reimposing restrictions on the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass.
His synod workplace, which is organizing subsequent 12 months’s culminating summit, pointed to the “spirit of the Second Vatican Council” as inspiring its work, saying a lot of what Vatican II taught has but to be absolutely understood or applied.
Conservatives have bristled at Francis’ synod course of, with German Cardinal Gerhard Meuller asserting it quantities to a “hostile takeover of the Catholic Church.” He informed the EWTN broadcaster that Vatican II reaffirmed that divine revelation couldn’t change and that some other interpretation was not solely misguided however harmful.
“John XXIII didn’t convoke Vatican II to reinvent Catholicism,” writes church historian George Weigel in his new e-book “To Sanctify the World: The Very important Legacy of Vatican II.”
“As he put it in his opening tackle, the council’s ‘biggest concern’ should be the simpler presentation of Catholic reality in full” via a brand new language and vocabulary that might be understood within the trendy world, Weigel wrote.
Vatican II coincided with the Cuban Missile Disaster, when the US and Soviet Union got here as shut as they ever needed to nuclear battle. Looking forward to Tuesday’s anniversary of Vatican II, Francis famous over the weekend that Russia is threatening to make use of its nuclear arsenal in its battle in Ukraine.
“Why can’t we be taught from historical past?” Francis requested. “Even in these occasions, there was grave battle and tensions, however they selected the trail of peace.”
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