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.
History of the papacy
With the accession of Pope John Paul II after the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I (who only survived as pope for 33 days), the church had, for the first time since Pope Adrian VI in the 16th century, a non-Italian pope. John Paul II has been credited with helping to bring down communism in eastern Europe by sparking what amounted to a peaceful revolution in his Polish homeland. Lech Wałęsa, one of the several founders of the Solidarity worker movement that ultimately toppled communism, credited John Paul with giving Poles the courage to rise up. The last Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged publicly the role of John Paul II in the fall of Communism. The pope himself stated after the fall of Communism that "the claim to build a world without God has been shown to be an illusion" (Prague, April 21, 1990).