Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service

Vatican City — Blessed John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council in the conviction that it was necessary for the Catholic Church, yet without pre-conceived ideas of what it would accomplish, said Vatican II participants who recalled the event half a century later.

The men spoke in exclusive interviews featured in a forthcoming Catholic News Service documentary film, "Voices of Vatican II: Council Participants Remember." Blessed John had come to a "conviction that something ought to be done in order to make the Church more responsive to this modern world, in order to make the modern world more responsive to the Church. And that intuition went far beyond his intellectual preparation," said Jesuit Fr. Ladislas Orsy, a "peritus" — or expert theological adviser — at the council.
Cardinal Loris Capovilla, who served as Blessed John's private secretary during his pontificate, was privy to some of the pope's first remarks, made only a few days after his election in 1958, about what would become Vatican II.

Cardinals and bishops had presented the new pontiff with a litany of challenges before the Church — "not doctrinal but pastoral problems," Cardinal Capovilla said — in areas that included liturgy, diplomacy, and the education and discipline of priests.

"My desk is piling up with problems, questions, requests, hopes," Blessed John told his secretary. "What's really necessary is a council."

When the secretary refused to comment, the pope interpreted his silence as disapproval.

"You think I am old," Blessed John told him. "You think I'll make a mess out of this enormous task, that I don't have time. ... But that's not how you think with faith. ... If one can only begin with the preparatory commission, that will be of great merit. If one dies, another will come. It is a great honor even to begin."

Blessed John died June 3, 1963, after the council's first session, and the remaining four sessions took place under his successor, Pope Paul VI.

Yet Blessed John's ideas greatly influenced the outcome of Vatican II in certain areas, including liturgy.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, who served as a peritus at the council, said Blessed John believed "liturgy better expresses the mystery of the Church insofar as everyone takes part, so the more who take part, the better."

Yet the pope who called the council refused to define it for the bishops who would actually serve as its fathers. When asked what Vatican II was, Cardinal Poupard recalled, Blessed John would reply: "On the subject of the council we are all novices. But when all the bishops are there, the Holy Spirit will be there and all will go well."