The Second Vatican Council

"Opening the windows"

When the cardinals elected Angelo Roncalli as John XXIII in October 1958, they expected a short, quiet "caretaker" pontificate. He was 76, plump, cheerful, the son of poor farmers from near Bergamo, a former papal diplomat in Bulgaria, Turkey and France. In Istanbul during the war he had helped Jewish refugees escape the Holocaust. Three months after his election, in January 1959, he stunned the cardinals by announcing an ecumenical council, the first since Vatican I in 1870 (see Rome Against the Modern World).

Why? John spoke of Aggiornamento, Italian for "updating" or "bringing up to date." He wanted the church to present its unchanging faith in ways the modern world could hear. He reportedly gestured at a window and said he wanted to let in some fresh air. In his opening speech in October 1962, he criticized "prophets of gloom" who saw only disaster in the modern world, and he made a key distinction: "The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another."

The council

The Second Vatican Council met in St Peter's Basilica in four autumn sessions from 1962 to 1965. About 2,500 bishops attended, from every continent, including many from Africa and Asia. Earlier councils had been dominated by Europeans. Protestant and Orthodox observers were invited and given good seats. Theological experts (periti) played a major role. They included the Germans Karl Rahner and the young Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), the French Dominican Yves Congar and the Jesuit Henri de Lubac. Several had been silenced or suspected under Pius XII. Their movement, called ressourcement ("return to the sources"), wanted to renew the church by going back to the Bible, the church fathers and the early liturgy.

In the first session, the bishops rejected the conservative draft documents prepared by the Vatican bureaucracy and demanded new ones. It was a sign that the council would not simply rubber-stamp Rome's existing views. John XXIII died of cancer in June 1963, beloved worldwide. His successor, Paul VI, carried the council to its conclusion and steered between progressives and conservatives to achieve near-unanimous votes.

Vatican II's key documents

Document (Latin title = first words)	Subject	Key change
Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963)	Liturgy	"Full, conscious, active participation"; local languages allowed
Lumen Gentium (1964)	The church	Church as "People of God"; collegiality of bishops; universal call to holiness
Dei Verbum (1965)	Revelation & Scripture	Scripture and Tradition from one source; encourages Bible reading and scholarship
Gaudium et Spes (1965)	Church in the modern world	Dialogue with the world; human dignity; peace and justice
Unitatis Redintegratio (1964)	Ecumenism	Other Christians are "separated brethren"; work for unity
Dignitatis Humanae (1965)	Religious freedom	Every person has a right to religious liberty
Nostra Aetate (1965)	Other religions	Respect for other faiths; rejects blaming Jews for Christ's death; condemns antisemitism

What the council taught

The council produced sixteen documents. The four "constitutions" were the most important.

Worship: Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963)

The liturgy is the "source and summit" of the church's life. The faithful should take "full, conscious and active participation" in it. The council allowed local languages (the vernacular) in the Mass, more Scripture readings, and simplified rites. In practice, after the council the whole Mass came to be said in local languages, usually with the priest facing the people. The new Roman Missal (1969–70) replaced the Tridentine Mass of 1570 (see Catholic Reformation). For ordinary Catholics, this was the most visible change in four hundred years.

The church: Lumen Gentium (1964)

The church is described first as a mystery and as the People of God, all the baptized, before it is described as a hierarchy. All Christians share in a "universal call to holiness," not just clergy and religious. Bishops together form a "college" with the pope, sharing responsibility for the whole church (collegiality), balancing Vatican I's emphasis on the pope alone. The permanent diaconate, open to married men, was restored. The church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church, a deliberately open phrase that allowed recognition of real elements of the church in other Christian communities.

Scripture: Dei Verbum (1965)

Revelation is God's self-communication, handed on through Scripture and Tradition, which flow from the same source. The council encouraged biblical scholarship using modern methods and urged all Catholics to read the Bible: "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ," it said, quoting Jerome. This was a dramatic reversal from the anti-Modernist era.

The modern world: Gaudium et Spes (1965)

Its famous opening reads: "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ." It addressed marriage and family, culture, economics, politics, war and peace, condemning total warfare and the arms race. The church must read the "signs of the times" and engage the world in dialogue, not condemnation.

Freedom, ecumenism and other religions

Three shorter documents were perhaps the most revolutionary, given the church's past:

• Religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae, 1965): every person has a right to religious freedom, grounded in human dignity. No one should be forced to act against conscience. The American Jesuit John Courtney Murray, once silenced for such views, was a key influence. This reversed the 19th-century condemnations of religious liberty in the Syllabus of Errors. Conservatives fiercely opposed it.
• Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio, 1964): Protestants and Orthodox are "separated brethren," and Catholics should work and pray for unity (see The Ecumenical Movement).
• Non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate, 1965): the church "rejects nothing that is true and holy" in other religions. It speaks respectfully of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Above all, it declared that the Jews are not to be blamed collectively for Christ's death, that they should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, and that the church "decries" antisemitism. After nineteen centuries of anti-Jewish teaching (see The Fall of Jerusalem), this was a historic turning point.

After the council

The years after Vatican II were turbulent. The council coincided with the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Tens of thousands of priests and nuns left their vocations. Mass attendance in Western countries began a long decline. Some blamed the council, and others blamed the times.

In 1968 Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the ban on artificial contraception, against the majority recommendation of his own advisory commission. Many Catholics in the West simply ignored it. It became a symbol of the gap between official teaching and lay practice.

On the right, the French Archbishop Marcel Marcel Lefebvre rejected the council's teaching on religious freedom and ecumenism and the new Mass. He founded the Society of St Pius X and was excommunicated in 1988 after consecrating bishops without papal permission.

Debate over the council's meaning continues. John Paul II (1978–2005) and Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) (2005–2013, the former Joseph Ratzinger) promoted a "hermeneutic of continuity." They read the council as renewal within tradition, and they reined in what they saw as excesses. Francis (2013–2025), the first pope from Latin America, emphasized mercy, the poor, the environment (Laudato Si', 2015) and "synodality," a church that listens and walks together. He saw himself as implementing the council's vision more fully. In May 2025, after Francis's death, the cardinals elected the American-born Robert Prevost, a missionary bishop in Peru, as Pope Leo XIV.

A global church

Vatican II helped the Catholic Church become truly global, not just European. Allowing the Mass in local languages encouraged inculturation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The council's emphasis on the poor and on justice inspired Latin American bishops at Medellín (1968) to proclaim a "preferential option for the poor," and it helped give birth to liberation theology (see The Global South). Today about two-thirds of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics live in the Global South.

Two figures embodied the post-conciliar church's concern for the poor. Teresa of Calcutta of Calcutta (1910–1997) founded the Missionaries of Charity to serve the "poorest of the poor." In America, Dorothy Day (1897–1980), a former radical journalist, had already founded the Catholic Worker movement of hospitality houses and pacifist activism in 1933; her witness gained new influence after the council.