The Second Vatican Council

Date

11 October 1962 – 8 December 1965

Category

Religion & ideology

Region

Vatican City

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII and continued under Pope Paul VI, met in St. Peter's Basilica in four sessions from 11 October 1962 to 8 December 1965.

Gathering more than two thousand bishops from around the world, it was the largest and most consequential ecumenical council in modern Catholic history. Conceived as an aggiornamento, or updating, of the Church for the modern world, the Council reformed the liturgy by permitting the celebration of Mass in vernacular languages rather than exclusively Latin, redefined the Church as the pilgrim People of God, and emphasised the role of the laity. It issued landmark declarations on religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), affirming the right of individuals to follow their conscience in matters of faith, and on relations with non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate, promulgated 28 October 1965), which repudiated the charge of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Christ, condemned antisemitism, and called for respectful dialogue with Jews, Muslims, and others. The Council also strongly endorsed ecumenical engagement with other Christian churches. Its decisions transformed the practice and outlook of the world's largest religious body, comprising hundreds of millions of Catholics, and reshaped Catholicism's relationship with modernity, other faiths, and the secular world for the remainder of the century and beyond.

Empires active in 11 October 1962 – 8 December 1965

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE – 1962 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE – 1974 CE

Related religion & ideology events

• Ayatollah Khomeini Issues the Rushdie Fatwa
  1989
• Demolition Of The Babri Masjid
  1992
• Marx and Engels publish The Communist Manifesto
  21 February 1848
• Founding of the Muslim Brotherhood
  March 1928
• Founding of the Tablighi Jamaat
  c. 1926
• The Azusa Street Revival and the Birth of Pentecostalism
  1906–1909

Further reading

A Little History of Religion

The wider story

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.

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