on 8 December of the same year. Suenens was created Cardinal Priest of S. Pietro in Vincoli by Pope John XXIII in the consistory of 19 March 1962. Suenens was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1963 papal conclave which selected Pope Paul VI. He also voted in the conclaves of August and October 1978, and finally resigned from his post in Mechelen-Brussels on 4 October 1979 after seventeen years of service. Second Vatican Council When Pope John called the world's bishops to Rome for the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), he found in Suenens a man who shared his views on the need for renewal in the Church. When the first session fell into organizational chaos under the weight of its documents, it was Suenens who, at the invitation of the Pope, rescued it from deadlock and essentially set the agenda for the entire Council. Paul VI made him one of the four moderators of the council, along with Cardinals Gregorio Pietro Agagianian, Julius Döpfner, and Giacomo Lercaro. Suenens was also believed to be a decisive force behind the Conciliar documents Lumen gentium and Gaudium et spes. Death Suenens died from thrombosis in Brussels at age 91, and was buried at St. Rumbolds Cathedral. At the time of his death he was one of the four living Cardinals elevated by Pope John XXIII. After his death, Belgian police drilled into his tomb and that of Cardinal Jozef-Ernest Van Roey, searching for documents connected to the sex abuse scandal, which had supposedly been buried with the cardinals. Views Reforms After the council, Suenens committed himself to implementing its reforms, although not without controversy. Dialogue with the modern world Dialogue with other Christian denominations as well as with other religions, the proper role of the laity, modernization of religious life for women, collegiality, religious liberty, collaboration and corresponsibility in the Church were among the causes he advocated at the council. His successor, Godfried Danneels, described him as an excellent weather-forecaster who knew from which direction the wind was blowing in the Church, and an experienced strategist who realized that he could not change the wind's direction but could set the sails to suit it. Pope John Paul II himself later attested that "Cardinal Suenens had played a decisive part in the Council". Relations with the Curia In May 1969, an interview he gave to the French Catholic magazine Informations