Second Vatican Council
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , addressed relations between the Catholic Church and the modern world. The council, through the Holy See, was formally opened under the pontificate of Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and was closed under Pope Paul VI on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December 1965.
Theology of Pope Francis
It is suggested that the pontificate of Pope Francis will be looked back upon as the "decisive moment in the history of the church in which the full force of the Second Vatican Council's reformist vision was finally realized". Francis returned to the Vatican II theme of "ressourcement," making the church "more faithful to the original sources in scripture and early traditions than to the social, political, and cultural aspects of more recent times". In contrast to John Paul II who emphasized continuity with the past in Vatican II's teachings, and reconciling discontinuities, Francis' papacy from the start emphasized discontinuities: a "church that is poor and for the poor"; "disposal of the baroque trappings" in liturgical celebrations; revision of the institutional aspects of the church, and emphasizing mercy; the need to go into the margins of the world, with a bias toward appointing cardinals from the southern hemisphere; and implementing "one of the original proposals of Vatican II" in constituting a council of eight cardinals who would be above the Roman Curia.