Samuel Ruiz
In 1962, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) convened, focusing on the social responsibility of Christians and on opening the Church to theological development and dialogue. Vatican II encouraged that sermons be translated and read to communities in their local languages and that the Church be more involved in addressing social problems, such as those occurring in Central and South America. For Ruiz, his participation in the Second Vatican Council allowed time for reflection on the decisions and actions carried out under his administration, which brought him a long way from the somewhat naïve enthusiasm which he’d had during his first years as bishop. It was Vatican II which inspired Ruiz to translate scripture into local indigenous languages and into practice, with an emphasis on inculturation.
Roman Catholic (term)
But as the prominent theologian at the Council Karl Rahner pointed out, by the 1960s the Church had made its second major transition. The first had been from Jewish to Western-Gentile. And now this Western church had become a world church. With Vatican II's decision to allow the liturgy in the vernacular, not everything would be so "Roman" anymore. The word "Roman" would be used mainly to designate the liturgy in Latin with its Roman origins. And by fifty years after Vatican II, with only one third of the Catholic church's 1.2 billion members living in the Western world, the large contingent of the hierarchy from the non-Western world was making it truly a world church.