Religious Liberty at Vatican II

The contribution offers an historical excursus of the complex elaboration of the conciliar declaration on religious freedom, "Dignitatis humanae", from the moment when the thorny question of religious liberty was put on the conciliar agenda by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, at the demand of WCC, up to the promulgation of the document, on December 7, 1965, which inaugurated a new paradigm in the way the Catholic Church stands before modern democratic societies and their founding values. It then dwells on the post-conciliar reception of the declaration, with particular attention to Karol Wojtyla's reading of it, first as conciliar father and bishop of Krakow, then as pontiff.