At a press conference on 17 Sept. 2012, Bishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, presented a special initiative for the Year of Faith: a documentary on Vatican Council II, made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Council, which opened on 11 October 1962.
“The objective of the film is to tell the history of the Council to those who did not live it or who know very little about it,” said Cardinal Celli, “and to help them perceive its richness. It attempts to reconstruct the historical, theological, cultural and emotive climate of an event that has profoundly marked not only the history of the Church but of the whole contemporary world.”
The footage of the 12-hour documentary was drawn from the Vatican Film Library and is enriched by interviews with 14 cardinals, patriarchs and archbishops from various parts of the world. “It was the cardinals themselves who indicated the keys for reading the most important documents of the Council,” continued the prelate, “thus making a very rich ecclesial-cultural contribution to the film.”