“The [Second Vatican] Council was a visit of God to his church. It was one of those things that God produces in history through holy people,” Pope Francis said in an interview published in Belgium on Feb. 28.
He said St. John XXIII, the pope who convoked that council, was “a man who was open to the inspirations of the Lord, and it is through such persons that God speaks to his people. And he has spoken to us too in this way.”
Francis said the council, which ran from 1962 to 1965, “not only brought about a renewal of the church. It was not just a problem of renewal it was a question of making the church ever more living. Not renewal but rejuvenation.” The council “opened the door to a more mature dimension, more mature and more in accord with the signs of the times.” He recalled that the dogmatic constitution on the church, “Lumen Gentium” was something “very traditional and at the same time very modern, because in the building of the church the traditional is always modern when it is true, because Tradition grows, it develops.”
“The [Second Vatican] Council was a visit of God to his church. It was one of those things that God produces in history through holy people,” Pope Francis said.
He recalled what the fifth-century French monk St. Vincent of Lérins said regarding the development of dogma: “It has to develop but according to this methodology: becoming firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age.”
“The council took this step forward,” the pope said, “without breaking from the roots, because it cannot do that, but rather ensuring that the fruit continues on.” Indeed, he said, “the council is the voice of the church for this whole time. And we are in the moment of putting it into practice.” He recalled that “historians say it takes a century to implement a council. We have still 40 years to do so!”
Pope Francis said this and much more in an interview he gave to Emmanuel Van Lierde, the former editor in chief of Tertio, a Belgian Christian weekly, on Dec. 19, 2022, two days after he celebrated his 86th birthday and a day after Argentina won the World Cup. The text of the interview appears in Dutch in a book reviewing the 10-year pontificate of the pope written by Mr. Van Lierde, entitled Paus Franciscus: De conservatieve revolutionair (Pope Francis: The conservative revolutionary) as well as in the weekly Tertio.
In the interview, conducted in Spanish, Francis spoke about synodality as a way of implementing the council and a fruit of that historic gathering. He recalled that when the council ended in 1965, Pope Paul VI “wanted to show that the church in the West had almost lost the synodal dimension while the Eastern Catholic churches retain it. And so he announced the creation of the synod of bishops with the intention of promoting synodality in the church.” Francis said that over the past 60 years, the synod began to enter into people’s consciousness, and questions were raised about who could vote in the synod and whether women could vote. “Bit by bit, things began to be clarified,” he said, and at the synod on the Amazon in 2019, “there was an awareness that the thing (situation) was mature.”
Pope Francis recalled that “historians say it takes a century to implement a council. We have still 40 years to do so!”
He recalled that after that synod the world’s bishops were consulted about the theme for the next synod, and they proposed “priests” as their first preference and “synodality” as their second. The latter was “a social theme” and, he said, all the bishops felt that “now is the moment” for such a consultation.
Francis repeated what he has said on other occasions regarding synodality: “The synod is not a parliament. It is not an opinion poll from here to there. No! The main character of a synod is the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is not there one cannot have a synod.”
He explained that the Holy Spirit has “two ways of proceeding, one after the other. First, he creates some confusion. Think of the morning of Pentecost and the confusion there was. Afterward, however, he does not create order, he creates harmony, which is a more sublime order.”
“To consider the synod a parliament is an error,” Francis said. “A synod is a gathering of the faithful, a reunion of faith conducted by the Holy Spirit and also tempted by the evil spirit.”
Francis recalled that at synod gatherings there are regular periods of silence for prayer to ask for the intervention of the Holy Spirit. “To consider the synod a parliament is an error,” Francis said. “A synod is a gathering of the faithful, a reunion of faith conducted by the Holy Spirit and also tempted by the evil spirit.”
While the first part of the interview was devoted to Vatican II and synodality, Pope Francis also answered questions raised by Mr. Van Lierde about the wars in Ukraine and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the situation of a church in decline in Belgium, the throwaway culture of modern day society and “the economy of the Gospel” in the light of the grave economic crises in the world today.
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Francis said: “This war is terrible, it is one of shocking cruelty. … There is torture, and torture of children.” He said he has met many Ukrainian children “but [has] never seen one of them smile. Why do these children not smile? What have they seen? It is frightening. It is terror.”
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Francis said: “This war is terrible, it is one of shocking cruelty. … There is torture, and torture of children.”
Francis said that from the beginning of the war both he and the Holy See acted. He recalled his visit to the Russian embassy and spoke of his readiness to go to Moscow, so far to no avail. “We do what we can to accompany them from here, to accompany these people. But their suffering is great,” the pope said. He said President Volodymyr Zelensky sends delegations to him “to talk,” and he has sent cardinals to Ukraine “to accompany the Ukrainian people.”
“We also do not forget to talk to the Russian people to try to do something,” the pope added. He denounced the war as “insane” and said, “when an empire begins to weaken, it needs a war to survive, according to imperial categories, and it prepares arms for this.” He denounced the arms industry as “the industry of destruction, the industry of war” and repeated that “the world is at war.” He mentioned other wars, too, in Myanmar, Yemen and Syria. “In just over a century we have had three world wars: 1914-1918, 1939-1945, and now this one,” Pope Francis said. “War is a failure. But we do not learn. We do not learn. Now that the war is near, I pray to God that we learn a little.”
In response to a request by Mr. Van Lierde and three Dutch journalists, Pope Francis in the interview expressed his full support for naming St. Titus Brandsma a patron of journalists. Father Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite friar and journalist, was executed by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp in 1942 and was canonized by Pope Francis last year.
In this interview, and in an earlier one granted to Mr. Van Lierde on Nov. 17, 2016, it emerged that Francis knows a good deal about Belgium from his time as Jesuit provincial in Argentina (1973–79). As provincial, he was also chancellor of the Jesuit-run university in Cordoba and there got to know an association of Belgians led by Jean Sonet, S.J., a Belgian Jesuit, that supported the university financially. As provincial, Jorge Bergoglio went to Belgium to express his gratitude for the financial assistance and subsequently maintained contacts there.
