On October 11, 1962, more than two thousand bishops from around the world solemnly entered St. Peter’s Basilica to take part in the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The date chosen by Saint John XXIII carried a meaning that went beyond the organizational needs of an assembly of such dimensions: that day the Church was celebrating the feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Marking 64 years since that inauguration, the Pontiff’s own documents allow us to reconstruct the reasons for a choice that linked the new council with one of the great doctrinal events of Christian Antiquity: the Council of Ephesus, held in 431, where the Church solemnly defended the legitimacy of calling Mary Theotokos, Mother of God.
John XXIII wanted Vatican II to begin under the Virgin’s protection and with the mystery of Jesus Christ as its fundamental reference. He himself explained this when he officially set the opening date, and decades later Benedict XVI—who had personally taken part in that assembly as a young theologian—would recall it.
A deliberately chosen date
The convocation of Vatican II had been announced by John XXIII in January 1959. After several years of preparation, on December 25, 1961, the Pope promulgated the apostolic constitution Humanae salutis, formally summoning the council for the following year.
The day of its inauguration still had to be determined. The decision came on February 2, 1962, when John XXIII signed the motu proprio Consilium, establishing that the solemn opening would take place on October 11.
The text leaves no doubt about the Pontiff’s intention. John XXIII explained that he had chosen that date especially because of its connection with the memory of the great Council of Ephesus, to which he attributed exceptional importance in the history of the Church.
The reference was deeply significant. In 431, the Fathers gathered at Ephesus had defended the unity of Christ’s Person and confirmed Mary’s divine maternity against the controversies stirred by Nestorius. Fifteen centuries later, Pius XI had instituted a liturgical feast dedicated to the Divine Maternity of the Virgin, fixing it on October 11.
John XXIII chose precisely that celebration to inaugurate the new council.
The memory of the Council of Ephesus
Mary’s divine maternity occupies a central place in Catholic doctrine because it expresses an essential truth about Jesus Christ. The Virgin is not the mother of the divinity considered in itself, but of the Person of the eternal Son of God, who assumed a true human nature in her womb.
By proclaiming Mary Theotokos, the Church confessed that the Child born in Bethlehem is truly God made man. The Marian title thus safeguarded the unity of Christ and recalled that the Incarnation cannot be understood as the external union of two distinct persons.
The relationship between Ephesus and Vatican II was later explained by Benedict XVI. In a meditation delivered on October 11, 2010, he recalled that John XXIII had wished to entrust the council to the maternal hands of the Virgin. He added that the title Theotokos summarizes a fundamental teaching about Christ, Mary, and the Redemption.
Two years later, on the fiftieth anniversary of the council’s opening, Benedict XVI returned to the same memory. He explained that John XXIII had chosen that date to commend the assembly to Mary’s maternal goodness and to place its work firmly within the mystery of Jesus Christ.
The opening in St. Peter’s Basilica
On October 11, 1962, the conciliar Fathers entered the Vatican basilica in a solemn procession. The presence of bishops from numerous countries offered a visible image of the Church’s universality, gathered around the successor of Peter.
John XXIII inaugurated the council with the address Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, whose opening words expressed the Church’s joy at the assembly’s commencement. The Pontiff attributed that day to a singular gift of Providence and expressly recalled that the council was beginning under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, whose divine maternity was being liturgically celebrated that very day.
In his inaugural address, the Pope stated that the council’s principal concern was to guard and teach ever more effectively the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine. At the same time, he stressed the need to present that doctrine in a manner suited to the circumstances of the age, distinguishing between the substance of the faith and the forms used to express it.
The reference to Mary’s divine maternity thus placed the council’s opening in continuity with the great doctrinal definitions of the ancient Church. The council that was beginning in Rome was not born apart from that history, but within the same Church that had confessed Christ’s divinity at Nicaea and defended his personal unity at Ephesus.
A day that marked the contemporary history of the Church
Vatican II took place between 1962 and 1965, over four periods of sessions. John XXIII presided at its inauguration, and after his death in June 1963, Paul VI assumed responsibility for continuing and bringing it to completion.
Its constitutions, decrees, and declarations addressed fundamental questions of the Church’s life, from the liturgy and divine Revelation to the nature of the Church, the episcopate, missionary activity, and relations with the contemporary world.
The reception and interpretation of its documents have given rise, in the decades that followed, to wide-ranging theological and pastoral debates. Benedict XVI insisted especially on the need to understand the council within the continuity of the Church, rejecting a reading that would present it as a rupture with its doctrinal tradition.
Yet beyond later discussions, the choice of October 11 allows us to recover an explicit intention of John XXIII that is often obscured in accounts of that period: the Pope wished to open the council on a Marian feast closely linked to the confession of Jesus Christ’s true identity.
Sixty-four years later, the original documents clearly preserve that purpose. John XXIII chose the day of the Divine Maternity to place the assembly under the Virgin’s protection and to recall, from its very inauguration, that the Church’s mission finds its foundation in the mystery of Christ, true God and true man.