In 1966, the wind of changes started blowing in Vatican, the center of Catholicism. On April 9, the so called Index Librorum Prohibitorum – the list of books forbidden by the Catholic Church issued since 16th century – was abolished. So people could read the books by Galilei, Kopernik, Pascal, Kepler, Spinoza, Voltaire, Rousseau, Leibniz, Kant, Defoe, Dumas, Stendhal, Zola, Hugo, Maupassant, and many others without being afraid of excommunication. The last, 32nd edition of the list came out in 1948. It included 4,000 books containing the elements of heresy, immorality, pornography, and other things inappropriate for a good Catholic. However, even after Vatican abolished the Index of Forbidden Books, the good Catholics were not released from obligation of neither reading nor selling the books that can undermine the faith and morality.
