Vatican II: Time Magazine's front row seat ...

(Vatican Radio) - Robert Blair Kaiser, a former Jesuit, was a front row witness at the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council in his capacity as Time Magazine correspondent.

A well known author and journalist from the United States, he sat down with Veronica Scarisbrick in Vatican Radio's studios for a lengthy interview in which he shares an inside look of those landmark years in the history of the Catholic Church. Shining the spotlight in a special way on the key role the media played in telling the Church and the world what the Council Fathers were discussing behind the closed doors of Saint Peter's Basilica.

In Part 1 in this series Kaiser paints a lively picture of Saint Peter's Square as the participants spilled out from the Basilica at the end of a morning session producing an image of the universality of the Church never seen before.

Recounting how at the time journalists broke the secrecy of the Council, Kaiser recalls how: .." a few of us broke the secrecy of the Council by our actions and by getting the bishops to cooperate with us.."

Asked what he believed were some of the most revolutionary ideas discussed at the Council , Kaiser replies: ..'they wanted to make it a people's Church, it was too clerical ...the people were in Chapter 3 , they put them in Chapter 1... I don't know how they did it because they were all clerics and here they were trying to give the power and the responsibility to the people. That's a strain that runs through all the documents... ".

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