I have thought for a long time that Vatican2 was perhaps the most important council in church history since at the first council in Jerusalem where it was decided that the kergyma was also meant for and included Gentiles too.

Over the last five decades, the inability of the exhausted and compromised hierarchy to seize the historic moment has been on public display, really ever since the election of JP2.  The primitive incentive of the hierarchy to engage in self-preservation has held sway  - until the conclave that produced Papa Francesco and his season of mercy.

Jorge Bergoglio is a man who came of age with the Jesuits when the spirit of Vatican2 swept through the church, especially in religious communities of women and men.  Did the conclave make a mistake?  I don't think so.

Papa Francesco is the kind of pope that embodies the vision of Vatican2: Papa Giovanni told us at the beginning of the council that its purpose was "to restore to the church the face of Christ."