The Second Vatican Council Opens

On 11 October 1962, a procession of roughly 2,400 Catholic bishops crossed Saint Peter's Square after heavy rain to open the Second Vatican Council. Pope John XXIII had surprised senior churchmen by announcing the gathering in January 1959, less than three months after his election at age seventy-six. Intended to bring Catholic life up to date, an effort captured by the Italian word aggiornamento, the council was tasked with internal renewal, promoting Christian unity, and addressing contemporary global challenges. In his opening address, John XXIII urged the assembly to employ the medicine of mercy rather than condemnation, explicitly distancing the gathering from those he termed prophets of doom.

The council took up theological work that had gathered momentum across the preceding decades, notably through biblical scholarship relying on original Greek and Hebrew texts and a French and Belgian theological current known as ressourcement, which favored early Christian sources over textbook scholasticism. Several theologians who had faced restrictions or teaching bans under Pope Pius XII in the 1950s, including Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac, were appointed as council advisers. The gathering also resumed questions left open after the First Vatican Council abruptly halted in 1870, particularly the role of the episcopate and the place of the laity in church governance.