Read the documents of Vatican II for yourself, former Vatican spokesman advises
December 17, 2025
» Continue to this story on L'Osservatore Romano (Italian)
CWN Editor's Note: In a foreword to a new book on the Second Vatican Council, a former director of the Holy See Press Office praised the authors for “rekindling the desire to personally read the Council documents in their original and complete text.”
Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, president of the Joseph Ratzinger—Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation, said that the conciliar documents “are not hermetic writings for specialists ... In fact, we probably understand them better if we read them ourselves rather than having them explained to us by others.”
Father Lombardi also praised the authors—Dariusz Kowalczyk and Enrichetta Cesarale, who teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University—for avoiding polemics. “It is right to avoid, indeed to reject without hesitation, a ‘hermeneutic of rupture,’ in order to share that of ‘reform in continuity,’” wrote Father Lombardi, citing Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 Christmas address to the Curia.
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