Pope Francis greets the crowd as he leads the Angelus from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Sept. 26, 2021. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
Catholic News Service
Pope Francis said the Second Vatican Council so shaped his theological and pastoral vision that perhaps he has not been as explicit as he should have been in highlighting those ties, especially when it comes to his contributions to Catholic social teaching.
"In the history of Latin America in which I was immersed, first as a young Jesuit student and then in the exercise of my ministry, we breathed an ecclesial climate that enthusiastically absorbed and made its own the theological, ecclesial and spiritual intuitions of the council and inculturated and implemented them," he wrote in the preface to a new book.
"The council became the horizon of our belief, our language and our praxis, that is, it soon became our ecclesial and pastoral ecosystem," he said. "Quite simply, the council had entered into our way of being Christians and of being church, and throughout my life, my intuitions, perceptions and spirituality were simply generated by the suggestions of the doctrine of Vatican II."
Pope Francis' preface to "Fraternity: Sign of the Times" was released Sept. 28 by Vatican News. The book, to be released in Italian Sept. 30 by the Vatican publishing house, is written by Cardinal Michael Czerny and Father Christian Barone, an Italian theologian.
The English translation, "Siblings All, Sign of the Times: The Social Teaching of Pope Francis," will be published by Orbis Books in 2022.
The book presents a theological reading of the pope's encyclical, "Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship," but also on his social teaching as a whole, emphasizing its continuity with papal social teaching and, especially, the vision of the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church in dialogue with and ministering to the world.
Pope Francis said that now, more than 50 years after the council concluded its work, "it is necessary to make more explicit the key concepts of Vatican Council II, the foundations of its arguments, its theological and pastoral horizon, the arguments and the method it used."
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Pope Francis said the Second Vatican Council so shaped his theological and pastoral vision that perhaps he has not been as explicit as he should have been in highlighting those ties, especially when it comes to his contributions to Catholic social teaching.
"In the history of Latin America in which I was immersed, first as a young Jesuit student and then in the exercise of my ministry, we breathed an ecclesial climate that enthusiastically absorbed and made its own the theological, ecclesial and spiritual intuitions of the council and inculturated and implemented them," he wrote in the preface to a new book.
"The council became the horizon of our belief, our language and our praxis, that is, it soon became our ecclesial and pastoral ecosystem," he said. "Quite simply, the council had entered into our way of being Christians and of being church, and throughout my life, my intuitions, perceptions and spirituality were simply generated by the suggestions of the doctrine of Vatican II."
Pope Francis' preface to "Fraternity: Sign of the Times" was released Sept. 28 by Vatican News. The book, to be released in Italian Sept. 30 by the Vatican publishing house, is written by Cardinal Michael Czerny and Father Christian Barone, an Italian theologian.
The English translation, "Siblings All, Sign of the Times: The Social Teaching of Pope Francis," will be published by Orbis Books in 2022.
The book presents a theological reading of the pope's encyclical, "Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship," but also on his social teaching as a whole, emphasizing its continuity with papal social teaching and, especially, the vision of the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church in dialogue with and ministering to the world.
Pope Francis said that now, more than 50 years after the council concluded its work, "it is necessary to make more explicit the key concepts of Vatican Council II, the foundations of its arguments, its theological and pastoral horizon, the arguments and the method it used."
