On January 25, 1959, on the occasion of a week of prayers for Christian unity, a religious ceremony was held at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, in the Vatican. Pope John XXIII (1881-1963), newly elected, invites the cardinals present to meet after mass. They are only seventeen to have made the trip, the other guests thinking that it was only a small ceremony without importance. But to everyone’s surprise, the sovereign pontiff made a sensational announcement.
“Venerable brothers and dear sons! We make before you, with a certain fear and a little emotion in our voices, but also with a humble resolution of words, the project of a double celebration: a diocesan synod for the City [Rome] and an ecumenical council for the universal Church”he declares to his audience who, according to several testimonies, remain amazed.
The last ecumenical council, Vatican I (1869-1870), was not even a century old and the previous one, the Council of Trent (Italy), dated from the Renaissance (1545-1563). Almost no one expected such an announcement. Three years later, on October 11, 1962, Vatican II opened, a world-wide event whose echo is still felt today.
Why did John XXIII decide to open Vatican II?
Nothing foreshadowed the slightest change within the Church. Certainly, since the 1930s, several voices, in particular theologians, had spoken out to anchor it in modernity and to demand changes in the field of liturgy, ecumenism or the role of the laity. But they had all been strongly condemned by the Vatican, censured and banished from the institution. John XXIII himself distinguished himself by condemning the “worker priests”those ecclesiastics who wanted to get closer to the laity by going to work in the factories.
Beneath the good-natured air of John XXIII was actually hiding a fine diplomat
How then can this sudden decision be explained? In his later writings, John XXIII explains that he had a ” inspiration “, which he attributes to the divine. Several sources report that when his entourage asked him the reasons for his decision, he would have gone to open the windows in response, to “ventilate the Church”.
Cold War, nuclear threat, secularization… The announcement does not occur in just any context. “The problems around the world were immense. We didn’t know each other and we didn’t know the different situations, even in the Catholic world. John XXIII suddenly thinks: there, a council would be needed”remembers Loris Capovilla, the pope’s private secretary at the time, in a documentary broadcast by The Day of the Lord.
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