Vatican II, was a council of the Roman Catholic Church opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI in 1965. A total of four sessions were held where topics related to the Church in the modern world were discussed. Some of the important outomces of the council were a reaffirmation of the core doctrine of Catholicism, the encouragement of the laity to personally study the Bible, the permission for use of local languages in place of Latin in the liturgy and a move towards pluralism.