In recent times, various voices have emerged denying the Second Vatican Council, the greatest spiritual event in the history of faith and a guide (compass) for the Church in this century, as the Popes teach us; going against these contemporary saintly Popes like Saint John Paul II or others like Francis and his magisterium, creating polarizations and ideologizations of one kind or another, etc.

As Benedict XVI states, “Saint John Paul II writes: ‘I feel more than ever the duty to point out the Council as the great grace that the Church received in the twentieth century. With the Council, we have been offered a sure compass to guide us on the path of the century that is beginning’ ( Novo millennio ineunte , 57). I think this image is eloquent. The documents of the Second Vatican Council, to which we must return…are, even for our time, a compass that allows the barque of the Church to go out into the deep, amid storms or calm and serene waves, to sail safely and reach its destination.”

True Catholic faith, continuing the Tradition of the Church with its Holy Fathers and Doctors, as Benedict XVI continues to demonstrate, has this Council as its essential reference point and horizon, leading us to the God revealed and incarnate in Jesus Christ: the Truth, the Way, the Life, and the Resurrection. These holy and contemporary Popes, such as Francis and now Leo XIV, strive to further develop the spirit and teachings of this event of Vatican II.

This is a faith and a church that, grounded in the Triune God of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, following Jesus, lives and bears witness to the spirituality of holiness. A church, therefore, at the service of the evangelizing mission, announcing, celebrating, and serving the Kingdom of God, which brings us the grace of its liberating and integral salvation, the gifts of faith, hope, and charity, love, and justice for the poor of the earth.

It is a Church, as in another Council such as Nicaea, that proclaims the central truth of our faith. That is, the kerygma, with the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, humble, poor, and crucified, who, with his merciful and compassionate love, embraces all of humanity, reality, and history, even unto death on the cross, to save it and free us all from evil, sin, death, and all forms of slavery and injustice. The faith and the Church transmit and bear witness to this complete truth, the Good News of the Kingdom, as children of the Father in the Son Jesus Christ, who gives us a humanizing, dignified, honorable, spiritual, moral, eschatological, and eternal life. We celebrate all of this in the liturgy with the sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist, channels of grace, the source and summit of mission, holiness, and all spirituality.

It is the Church in Christ, a sign of communion with God, with all humanity, and with the holy, faithful people of God—a synodal community that journeys together in this history of salvation, with shared responsibility for the mission in its diversity of charisms and ministries. It is the Church of the Father, following Christ through the Spirit, living by the grace of holiness in charity, as a poor Church, in this communion of love, life, faith, hope, resources, and action for justice with the poor.

A missionary church that goes out to the peripheries, a Samaritan and poor with the poor, free, liberated, and liberating in its entirety from all sin, selfishness, spiritual worldliness, and bourgeois individualism with its idolatries of money, wealth, power, and violence. A faith and a church that, in its mission, engages in dialogue and encounter with culture, with other churches in its ecumenical action, and with religions in its interreligious horizon, in this pursuit of fraternal coexistence, forgiveness, and peace.

This holiness, which follows the path of merciful love and peace in justice with the poor, a gift of the Kingdom of God manifested in Christ and his Beatitudes, reveals to us the constitutive social and public dimension of faith, of the kerygma, and of mission. It is this essential political charity that seeks the civilization of love, the most universal common good, and the globalization of fraternal solidarity.

This political charity, which we must all exercise through our theological life in the Spirit, is further embodied in the specific vocation and mission of the laity. This identity of the laity, in order to attain holiness, is the most direct and immediate means of managing and transforming the world, with all its social and historical realities, such as politics and economics, so that they may be conformed to the Kingdom of God and its justice, peace, and transcendent life.

As can be seen, the dissemination and implementation of the Church’s social doctrine (CST) is inherent and indispensable for holiness and the entire evangelizing mission. CST is an essential element of proclaiming the faith and practicing charity, and it is inseparable from the liturgy and sacraments, such as the Eucharist. This CST transmits to us the moral and anthropological truth about the human person, expressing the commitment to justice that faith presupposes and demands.

The Social Doctrine of the Church communicates to us those values ​​and principles that must guide the spiritual, social, and historical existence of humanity. It affirms the sacred and inviolable life and dignity of the person in all its phases, from conception, as science teaches us, in each of its dimensions and aspects. It is integral development and ecology that makes visible this relationship and communion with God, with others by listening to the cry of the poor, with all of creation by heeding the cry of our common home, planet Earth, and with the entire cosmos. Integral ecology, with its scientific and global bioethics, also reveals to us the gift of the body, inseparably linked to the sexuality and affection of man and woman, open to life through children, which constitute marriages and families. These are domestic churches and lay realities, sanctuaries of life, love, socialization, virtues, and shared responsibility for the common good.

The Social Doctrine of the Church (SDC) points to this entire human, ecological, bioethical, integral, and solidarity-based development through an ethical economy at the service of the needs and capacities of peoples. Its key principle is the universal destination of goods, which takes precedence over private property, with its intrinsic solidarity and social character. This entails a real economy with fair trade and ethical banking, in contrast to financial speculation and usury with their unjust loans and interest rates, which are very serious sins. Herein lies another key aspect of work: the dignified life of the worker, with their rights, such as a fair wage for themselves and their entire family, which takes precedence over capital. This requires a social economy enterprise that makes the socialization of the means of production possible.

Therefore, nation-states with their civil societies, and the people with the poor and their popular movements, are the protagonists of this mission, responsible for its promotion and management of all social, political, and economic life, including the market and government authorities. And may they thus serve the natural-moral law, the life and dignity of the person, the common good, and social justice, transforming personal, social, and structural sin; those (social and historical) structures of sin with their culture of death, of exclusion, and of the globalization of indifference.

In conclusion, as we have already indicated, everything discussed so far has been borne out by that model for faith and the Church who is the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, and by the saints who are true pioneers of the mission, the new evangelization, and Catholic Social Teaching. For example, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint John of the Cross, whose respective anniversaries we celebrate this year. As Pope Leo of Assisi affirms: “It was he, eight centuries ago, who sparked an evangelical revival among Christians and in the society of his time. The young Francis, once rich and arrogant, was deeply affected by his encounter with the reality of the marginalized. The impulse he provoked continues to stir the hearts of believers and many non-believers, and ‘has changed history.’ The  Second Vatican Council itself , in the words of  Saint Paul VI , is on this path: ‘the ancient story of the Good Samaritan has been the paradigm of the Council’s spirituality.’ I am convinced that the preferential option for the poor generates an extraordinary renewal both in the Church and in society, when we are able to free ourselves from self-referentiality and succeed in listening to their cry” (DT 7).