Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council on Oct. 11, 1962. Three years of preparatory work had set the stage for a rare five-hour pageant, as 2,500 Catholic bishops, every vested in white cope and miter, processed into the Vatican basilica. They sat in tiered, upholstered bleachers that crammed the huge nave of St. Peter’s from Bernini’s baldacchino above the excessive altar to the pink porphyry disk close to the narthex on which Pope Leo III topped Charlemagne as holy Roman emperor.
The biggest legislative physique in human historical past would start its formal work on Oct. 13, after a day pondering John XXIII’s magisterial opening deal with. In that 37-minute Latin discourse, the pope challenged the church to heal the injuries of a world that had virtually destroyed itself in two world wars—and to take action by proclaiming Jesus Christ as the reply to modernity’s quest for an genuine humanism.
