In this, he was assisted by "a [then] progressive firebrand" who was "dissatisfied with many of the answers offered by the Church's official authorities", a young theological advisor named Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then Pope Benedict XVI.

[6][verification needed] The acrimony felt by such liberal members of the council against Ottaviani spilled out into international news in a dramatic incident on 8 November 1963, in which Protestant observer Robert McAfee Brown described as having "blown the dome off St. Peter's"; in a working session of the council, Frings declared Ottaviani's dicastery a "source of scandal" to the whole world.

[4] With continued worldwide interest in Vatican II another incident, in which Ottaviani breached the council's rules for debating procedure, found its way into international news.

When Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini of Palermo presided over the 11 November session, he announced that "Ottaviani had been grieved by the 30 October incident" and asked council fathers to refrain from voicing approval or disapproval with applause.

[7] As he was president of the Theological Commission responsible for amending the schema on sources of religion, Ottaviani returned to the working session to champion the position of those the Associated Press called "the static traditionalists".

[7] Ottaviani was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1963 papal conclave, which elected Giovanni Battista Montini as Pope Paul VI.

Pope Paul VI accepted the resignation and appointed Cardinal Franjo Seper of Yugoslavia to take his place as pro-prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In dramatic fashion, it signified the move of the half-billion-member church away from rigid conservatism toward new experiments in modernism and changing relations with Communist countries.

"[9] In 1970, when Paul VI restricted voting in papal conclaves to cardinals under the age of 80, Ottaviani, already 80, said the Pope's action was "an act committed in contempt of tradition that is centuries old" and that he was "throwing overboard the bulk of his expert and gifted counsellors".

[12] On 25 September 1969, Ottaviani and Cardinal Antonio Bacci wrote a letter to Paul VI in support of a study by a group of theologians who criticized the new Order of Mass and the new General Instruction.

In 1962, as head, under the Pope, of the Holy Office, Ottaviani signed its document known by its incipit Crimen sollicitationis, which had as subtitle On the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of the Crime of Sollicitation.

It laid down detailed rules about the procedure for ecclesiastical tribunals to follow if a priest was accused of making sexual advances connected in any way with the sacrament of confession.

[21][22][23] In fact, the 69-page document was sent to "all Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops and other Local Ordinaries, including those of Eastern Rite" and was to be found, even if after forty years it was generally forgotten, among the papers in their successors' offices.

On 6 March 1959, the Holy Office issued a notification that forbade circulation of "images and writings that promote devotion to Divine Mercy in the forms proposed by Sister Faustina" (emphasis in the original).

"[28] It was with Ottaviani's approval that Archbishop Karol Wojtyła of Kraków began in 1965 the informative process on Faustina's life and virtues,[27][28] and the ban on her work was reversed by Pope Paul VI in 1978.

Carinci and Bea facilitated a meeting between the Servite Order priests and Pope Pius XII, and the event was announced in L'Osservatore Romano.