In a Spanish television interview, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg said that the Second Vatican Council “saved the Church.”

The Jesuit cardinal—who has been chosen by Pope Francis to be relator general for the Synod on Synodality—said: “If we did not have that point of reform that was the Second Vatican Council, the Church today would be a small sect, unknown to most people.”

Cardinal Hollerich said that resistance to the changes proposed by the Council continues, and “the strongest comes from the traditionalists, who curiously are also a postmodern phenomenon.”