United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

30 THE SIXTH

COMMANDMENT: MARITAL FIDELITY

YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY —CCC, NOS. 2331-2400

ST. PAUL VI: A SHEPHERD FOR THE RENEWAL OF THE CHURCH

The Second Vatican Council was a major event in the life of the Catholic Church in the twentieth cen tury. From 1962 until 1965, it brought together approx imately 2,500 bishops from all over the world for four sessions in Rome—each session lasting about three months—to discuss and make decisions about the life of the Church in the modern world. St. John XXIII had convoked the Council and presided over its first session. When he died in June of 1963, the College of Cardinals elected as his successor Cardinal Giovanni

Battista Montini, who took the name Paul VI. St. Paul VI presided over the next three sessions of the Council and guided the Church through the time of change and renewal that followed the Council. Giovanni Battista Montini was born in northern Italy in 1897. He was ordained a priest in 1920 and two years later began service in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. He worked very closely with Pope Pius XII until 1954, when he was named Archbishop of Milan. In 1958 St. John XXIII named him to the College of Cardinals. His knowledge of the universal Church through his service in the Holy See, his intellectual abilities and wide reading in theology, and his pas toral experience in Milan all served him well when he was elected pope. His constant concern was to maintain the unity of the Catholic Church even in times of considerable controversy. He guided the Church through