On October 11th Pope Francis presided over the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, commonly known as the Second Vatican Council. Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Representative of the Armenian Church to the Holy See was invited to be present to this historic event.

The Second Vatican Council, was opened on 11 October 1962 by Pope John XXIII and was closed on 8 December 1965 by Pope Paul VI. Pope John XXIII called the council because he felt the Church needed “updating”. In order to connect with 20th-century people in an increasingly secularized world, some of the Church’s practices needed to be improved, and its teaching needed to be presented in a way that would appear relevant and understandable to them. Many Council participants were sympathetic to this, while others saw little need for change and resisted efforts in that direction. But support for aggiornamento won out over resistance to change, and as a result the sixteen documents produced by the council proposed significant developments in doctrine and practice: an extensive reform of the liturgy, a renewed theology of the Church, of revelation and of the laity, a new approach to relations between the Church and the world, to ecumenism, to non-Christian religions and to religious freedom.

The Second Vatican Council was the Catholic Church’s response to God’s love and to Jesus’ command to feed his sheep, Pope Francis said, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the council’s opening.

The council reminded the church of what is “essential,” the pope said: “a church madly in love with its Lord and with all the men and women whom he loves,” one that “is rich in Jesus and poor in assets,” a church that “is free and freeing.”

Pope Francis concluded his homily with an impassioned plea for unity in the Church. God, he said, “wants us to see the whole” and this is the third way of looking at the Church. The Pope lamented the tendency of Christians to “choose sides” in the Church, instead of being servants to all. “We are His sheep, His flock,” the Pope said, “and we can only be so together, and as one.” “Let us overcome all polarization and preserve our communion!”

 Finally, Pope Francis thanked the Lord “for the gift of the Council,” and prayed that He might “free us from the presumption of self-sufficiency and from the spirit of worldly criticism… to lead us forth from the shadows of self-absorption… [and] save us from the forms of polarization that are the devil’s handiwork.” The Pope thank the participants of the sister churches for their presence.

In modern history, inter-church relations received a completely new development after the Second Vatican Council. In 1963, at the invitation of Pope Paul VI, Bishop Pargev Gevorgyan and Mr. Gevorg Bekmezyan from the Catholicate of All Armenians, and Bishop Karekin Sarkisian and Bishop Artavazd Trtrian of the Catholicate of the Great House of Cilicia, took part in the council as observers.

This began a new chapter in Armenian-Catholic relations. One bit of evidences was the May 8-12, 1970 visit to the Vatican of the Supreme Patriarch of All Armenians Vasken I, accompanied by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Archbishop Yeghishe Derderian, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, His Beatitude Archbishop Shnork Kaloustian. At the end of that historic event, a Joint Declaration was signed¹.

In that declaration, the two Supreme Heads “invite all Christians, especially those of the Catholic Church and the Apostolic Armenian Church, to respond with greater fidelity to the call of the Holy Spirit, stimulating them to a more profound unity which will accomplish the will of our common Savior, and will render fruitful service to the world by Christians.” They hoped that a closer collaboration in all possible domains of Christian life, to find authentically Christian solutions to the problems of the world, would prove to be the means to advance the search for full unity.

In response to these agreements, dialogues were initiated between the theologians of the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church.