L’Osservatore Romano devoted a page of its October 26 edition to Storia del Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II, a new history of the Second Vatican Council by Piero Doria, an historian who works for the Vatican Secret Archives.The newspaper published strongly positive remarks about the book by Caterina Ciriello, a professor at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, as well as excerpts from the book’s preface, written by Archbishop Marcello Semeraro of Albano.
Archbishop Semeraro, who serves as secretary of Pope Francis’s Council of Cardinal Advisers, said that the Council was an “event and prophecy.”
Citing Father Karl Rahner, the prelate said that the Council was an “event” that helped foster the “passage to a new paradigm of a Church of world dimension.”
Recalling St. John XXIII’s opening address to the Council (with his reference to the “medicine of mercy”) and Blessed Paul VI’s closing address (with his reference to the Church as a Good Samaritan), Archbishop Semeraro also said that Vatican II is a prophecy of the current pontificate, with its emphasis on mercy.