São Paulo, Brazil (Tuesday, 11/11/2014, Gaudium Press) Next year, the Catholic Church will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, considered to be one of the most remarkable events of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century.

The Archbishop of Sao Paulo, Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer, writes in his latest article that “the celebration of this anniversary is an occasion to remember important personalities which took part of the council, as Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI; but also to remember the great insights and guidelines of that “general assembly” of Catholic bishops from around the world. “

“In Brazil, several events have been conducted in academic and ecclesiastical spheres, in the last three years to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Council. Scheduled for 2015, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) is promoting a broader reflection on a popular level, about the Council, through the Fraternity Campaign (CF). With the theme – “Brotherhood: Church and Society” and the motto “I came to serve”, the campaign addresses the relation between church and society in the light of the Catholic faith and the guidelines of Vatican II,” he said.

According to the cardinal, “the Christian faith, lived by the Catholic Church, is a religion based on history and not just on wisdom” because “besides imparting lessons to be welcomed personally, the church’s proposal are intended to a social and historical practice, where its beliefs and teachings are translated into expressions of culture and forms of social interaction. “

“The self-understanding of the Church appears especially in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church “Lumen Gentium” (Light of the people): the church is constituted by all who accept Christ by believing in His Gospel and accepting His baptism; more than a legal structure, which she actually is, it is the ‘people of God’, among all peoples and nations around the world, not overlapping them, but inserting itself among them, as the salt in the food, or the yeast in the bread dough” he continues.

For the cardinal the Church “is the community of the baptized, the disciples of Jesus Christ and the witnesses of His Gospel”.

“Pope Francis is recalling this constantly in his homilies: she needs to be ‘a church on the go’, a ‘Samaritan community’, or as a’ field hospital ‘, to aid and assist the wounded” he reflected. (LMI)

Gaudium Press, with information from the Archdiocese of São Paulo