Vatican II: Reforming the Catholic Church

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2019

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pope John XXIII wanted to modernise the Catholic Church. In January 1959 he announced a council of all the world's Catholic bishops and cardinals in Rome. It led to sweeping reforms, including allowing the Mass to be said in languages other than Latin and an attempt to build relationships with other denominations and faiths. But not everyone was happy with the changes. Msgr John Strynkowski was a student priest in Rome at the time and told Rebecca Kesby about the excitement and controversy surrounding the council that became known as 'Vatican II'.

(Photo; Pope John XXIII at the Vatican. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.2	Hello and thank you for downloading our witness history program from the BBC World Service
0:34.8	with me Rebecca Kessby. And today we journey back to the late January day in 1959 when Pope John
0:41.9	the 23rd made an announcement that would radically change the Catholic
0:46.0	Church.
0:47.0	He said he wanted to call all the world's Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals to a council
0:52.0	in Rome to discuss the future of the faith.
0:55.6	It became known as Vatican II.
0:58.0	Rome where this week there opens the Vatican Council, the largest and perhaps the most important of any of the
1:04.4	conferences in the whole 2,000 years of the history of the Roman Catholic
1:08.1	Church. Vatican too is probably the most important religious event of the 20th century.
1:14.0	It was absolutely revolutionary, no question about that.
1:16.5	Monsignor John Strinkowski was a student of theology in Brooklyn, New York,
1:21.5	when Pope John the 23rd made the somewhat surprise announcement,
1:26.0	just a couple of months after he was elected.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.