[Poor Papa. Even the writer of this article is commenting on how tired he looks. And he still has Mass and Urbi et Orbi on Easter. Since he is so youthful in his thinking and demeanor, it is easy to forget how much his age must weigh on him, especially during all these lengthy ceremonies.]


Pope Benedict XVI Leads Easter Vigil Mass

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI ushered in Easter services late Saturday with a dramatic, candlelit vigil in St. Peter's Basilica, saying Christ's resurrection was "the most crucial leap" in the history of mankind.

The bells of St. Peter's tolled across Rome as midnight approached to herald in Easter, when the faithful celebrate the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion on Good Friday.

This year, Easter Sunday also coincides with Benedict's 79th birthday.

At the start of Saturday night's lengthy vigil, Benedict entered the darkened basilica in silence, holding in front of him a single white candle. Its flame was then shared with others until slowly the whole basilica began to twinkle with candles held by the thousands of faithful gathered for the chant-filled service.

During his homily, a tired-looking Benedict said some people wrongly believe that the miracle of Jesus' resurrection did not concern ordinary men.

"If we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution, it is the greatest 'mutation,' absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order which does concern us, and concerns the whole of history," he said in response.

Benedict had just a few hours to rest before he celebrates Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square on Sunday.

After the Mass, he will move to the central balcony of the basilica to deliver the traditional "Urbi et Orbi" speech — Latin for "to the city and to the world" — and give a blessing and greetings.

Benedict led a Good Friday Way of the Cross evening procession at Rome's Colosseum in which he denounced "threats" to the institution of the family and lamented the divide between the world's rich and poor.

The busy Holy Week ceremonies were Benedict's first since being elected pope a few weeks after Easter in 2005. After they end, he planned to take a few days rest at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, in the hills south of Rome.

Last year, the ailing John Paul was forced to sit out Easter ceremonies for the first time in his papacy, which began in 1978. John Paul tried to speak but failed from his window overlooking the square on Easter, 2005. In one of his last public gestures, he blessed the faithful with his hand but was unable to utter a word.

[Lord help us if there are a bunch of year-end round-ups like this one. I can't even begin to list my complaints. But just to give everyone an inkling of what to expect in the article, when did Papa go on his two ski trips??? Oy.]


Blessings all round from the iPod Pope

A year ago Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was billed as 'God's rottweiler' when he succeeded the charismatic John Paul II. Instead he has surprised us with his taste for iPods, Prada and a gentle message of 'all you need is love'. Here, as Benedict XVI delivers his Easter message to the world from St Peter's, a leading Catholic writer judges his first year in office

Peter Stanford
Sunday April 16, 2006
The Observer

Sitting in a BBC studio on 19 April last year as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger emerged all in white on to the papal balcony, high above St Peter's Square, to be proclaimed as Pope Benedict XVI, I confess I groaned audibly. Of all the candidates that I and fellow pundits had been discussing since the death of John Paul II (and for a good few years before that), he seemed the worst option as leader of a troubled Catholic church, an elderly man of conservative views, rooted in the ancien régime where his job had been to enforce doctrinal orthodoxy.
Many Catholics assumed he could only maintain the gulf between the unbending teachings of our church and the realities of our lives by continuing the divisive policies on matters of personal and sexual morality handed down by John Paul II. And he would do so without the mitigating ingredients of the Polish pontiff's charisma and a personal authority forged by his long and public battle with Parkinson's disease.

Headlines about 'God's rottweiler' and a cartoon in Italian paper L'Unita showing Benedict on the papal balcony saying: 'Tonight, when you go home, I want you to give your children a spanking and tell them this spanking comes from the pope', seemed to sum up the widespread disillusion among Catholics and the anticipation of a draconian new regime.

As prefect, under John Paul II, of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the new, less inflammatory name for the church department that used to run the Inquisition - Cardinal Ratzinger had been one of the late pope's senior officials for 20 years and was responsible for some of the least attractive aspects of the old papacy.

There was his campaign to silence the liberation theologians of Latin America who argued that the gospels demand the church sides with the poor. He summoned giants like outspoken Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff to Rome, tore them off a strip, dismissed the pleas in mitigation of their bishops and then served a gagging order on them, forbidding them to teach or preach. There was his statement in July 2003 which labelled state recognition of homosexual partnerships 'the legislation of evil'. And in September 2000, there was the papal pronouncement 'Dominus Iesus', believed to have been written by Ratzinger for his ailing boss, which described all other religions as 'gravely deficient'. The document's Latin title was translated by some as 'Why We Are Better Than You'.

On the key issues that divide Catholics - inter-church dialogue, homosexuality, contraception and abortion, the use of condoms in combating Aids, the role of women in the church - there seemed little hope that Pope Benedict would alter Rome's firm response of 'no' to pleas from reform-minded Catholics for more than simply blanket condemnation in all these areas.

Benedict's public prayers on Good Friday as he led his first Stations of the Cross ceremony at Rome's Colosseum, appeared at first glance to confirm that he had brought his well-established antipathy towards the modern world to the papal office. He condemned genetic manipulation as 'insane, risky and dangerous', attacked 'the clots of callousness' that are destroying family life, and damned secular society as awash with 'satanic mores'.

But the Catholic church has long been fiercely critical of many aspects of modernity, so Benedict's words - written for him by a senior assistant -should not be taken as proof that the new papacy is simply more of the same.

One year on, as Pope Benedict prepares on his 79th birthday to deliver his first traditional papal Easter Sunday 'Urbi et Orbi' speech from St Peter's, the gloom and pessimism of many who greeted his election with groans seems, miraculously, to have evaporated. Indeed, liberal Catholics are smiling benignly on a pope who, according to them, has spent 12 months healing a church that had been left by his predecessor in a state of semi-schism between Rome's rulings and Catholics' exercise of their conscience in many areas of morality.

It is not so much that he has so far budged on any of the fundamental points that divide the church. Rather, Benedict has been busy giving out positive signals of his wish to be inclusive and listen to other viewpoints. So he has, for instance, held 'good-natured' talks with Swiss academic Father Hans Kung, a leading intellectual force behind liberal Catholicism and, for the Polish pope, virtually the antichrist.

Benedict's chosen method so far for disarming the attacks of those within his church who would cast him in the role of arch-traditionalist has been simple: to accentuate the positive in its teaching, most notably with 'Deus Caritas Est', his first encyclical (teaching document), which extolled love, including the physical variety, without adding any of the usual Catholic conditions about enjoying it only when you are married, straight, in the missionary position and using no contraception. 'Sex please, we're Catholics,' was the considered response to the document of influential weekly, the Tablet

In contrast, the traditionalists who celebrated Benedict's election as a fatal blow to the hopes of all those who argued that the church needed to update its views are walking round today with very long faces. One of their leading lights, Father Richard John Neuhaus, academic and editor of First Things, an ultra-conservative American publication, has written of his 'palpable uneasiness' at the way Benedict is conducting himself.

It is inside the Vatican, though, that you get the most accurate appraisal of progress so far. Or lack of it. Despite its chosen image as God's business address on Earth, an oasis dedicated to higher spiritual matters, the headquarters of the church is constantly awash with gossip and intrigue. It's the Westminster village without the sex. 'The Vatican is a court, a palace of gossipy eunuchs,' an unnamed bishop once told British author John Cornwell in his book debunking the idea that Pope John Paul I was murdered after 33 days in office. 'The whole place floats on a sea of brilliant bitchery.'

Few of those clerics who talk so freely over a carafe or two of wine are willing to be quoted, but Vaticanologists - that strange breed of writers whose trade is watching everything that goes on in Vatican City - confirm the prevailing sense of benign bewilderment within the Leonine Walls that enclose it.

'The most important pope story of the year,' says John Allen, doyen of the corps and correspondent of America's National Catholic Reporter, 'is what hasn't happened. Benedict's first year has not produced the swift, hardline action many expected. No theologian has been publicly censured, there have been no en masse firings of personnel, there is no discernible drift towards conservative figures and there has been no earthquake in either liturgy or doctrine.'

This Easter, in the corridors of the various palazzos that double as administrative blocks for the church's many commissions, councils and secretariats, there is a palpable sense of relaxation after 12 months of anticipating the new broom that has failed to materialise. Cardinal Ratzinger and Papa Ratzinger have turned out to be two different prelates, one well-placed archbishop explains, and no one knows where Benedict is planning to take the church, though, so far, the journey has been untraumatic. Some voices even doubt that the new pope has a final destination in mind and mischievously suggest that he is just enjoying being at the wheel at last, a perfect role to fill out his declining days after a lifetime's obedient service to the church.

He has certainly shown little interest in imitating his predecessor's travels. There has been a trip home to Germany and another planned for Poland, but little more. Rumours of a visit to England were quickly scotched. Instead, he seems to prefer to potter around the Vatican, finally master of all he surveys. When he dropped in on Vatican Radio, the church's attempt to rival CNN and the BBC, he agreed to sign copies of his encyclical letter - something unthinkable under John Paul II - and even looked keen on the iPod staff gave him as a present (a gift that prompted the Sun to speculate that among the tunes he would download would be 'Cracklin' Rosary' and 'You're Sistine, You're Beautiful and You're Mine').

In his early appearances as pope, Benedict had looked uncomfortable, the backroom boy apparently dazzled by the limelight. There was the day after his election, for instance, when he summoned the world's press to the papal audience hall, looked aghast at how many had turned up, said a polite thank you (with no apparent hint of irony) for their covering of recent events so faithfully and then wandered off the stage amid a sea of minders, leaving behind bemused correspondents who had expected, at the very least, some indication of his plans.

Perhaps his air of bemusement had something to do with the speed with which the cardinal electors made up their mind to choose him (most pundits had predicted a drawn-out round of ballots). Or maybe he was surprised that he had won after so many had written off his chances because he was too old and too tainted by association with the old order. Or it may just have been his ill-fitting white cassock.

The Roman ecclesiastical outfitters of Annibale Gammarelli, tailors by papal appointment since 1792, had supplied one large and one small garment for whichever cardinal topped the papal vote in the Sistine Chapel. Ratzinger, though, was a medium and so the hem of the small version he chose hovered somewhere just below his knee, exposing his dainty feet in white plimsolls and making him look more like a mincing Hercule Poirot than Supreme Roman Pontiff of a global church of 1.1 billion souls. In one of his first acts, however, Benedict sacked Gammarelli and switched his business to a new, more cutting-edge outfit, Euroclero.

It is not just his official uniform, though, that has been updated. Twice last year on skiing trips, the pope posed for the cameras in a Nike hat, quilted white jacket, designer Serengeti sunglasses and even sported a Cartier watch. And, it has been noted, he has a penchant for Prada shoes.

John Paul, you always got the impression, wouldn't have noticed if he wore sackcloth and ashes every day. He would often rage against the consumerism that had, in his eyes, polluted the soul of Western civilisation. So his successor's apparent love of shopping has inevitably drawn criticism. Most of the fire, however, has been directed not at him but at his controversial secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein.

John Paul's chosen gatekeeper was a quiet, almost faceless Polish priest, Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was packed off back to Krakow by Benedict soon after his master's death. In his place, Ganswein, 49, has all too often become the story. Known to Vatican colleagues at 'Don Georgio', to the Italian media as 'the Black Forest Adonis' and to Italian Vanity Fair as Monsignor Clooney because of his alleged similarity to the Hollywood star, he even shared one photocall with Benedict on the ski slopes of Val D'Aosta, both in matching hats.

But does this new style papacy have any substance? The answer among the monsignori collected in the bars and restaurants that surround the Vatican is a qualified yes. Some Vatican-watchers described the past 12 months to me as a kind of phony war, still predicting that a conflict is imminent with more liberal elements in the church, but accepting that, for the time being, Benedict is allowing a last summer of peace.

It feels like too pessimistic a view, but they pointed to some of Benedict's headline-grabbing policy initiatives and accused them of lacking any real doctrinal purpose, either liberal or traditionalist. Much debate centred on the encyclical, 'Deus Caritas Est'. Yes, the doubting Thomases accepted when I raised it as a cause for celebration, it was written in accessible language (as opposed to the dense, often impenetrable outpourings of John Paul who, for example, tended to characterise sexual love as 'genital expression'). And yes, they conceded, its basic message of 'love your neighbour, even make love to your neighbour, but love God above all' was inclusive and attractive. But, they stressed, it did not advance a jot the debate within Catholicism about sexual ethics. They were reserving any judgment on Benedict's papacy until he made his first concrete move into this difficult area.

Some believed that moment had come back in November last year when Benedict produced guidelines on excluding gay men from entering the priesthood, but conservatives like Neuhaus are now critical that, so far, he has done absolutely nothing to attempt to enforce this ruling or tackle dissenters. Where is the strategy?

For every church official who will tell you that leopards do not change their spots, and that Benedict will strike one day soon to enforce orthodoxy with the same singlemindedness he employed at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there are others who told me that holding my breath is pointless. A man of almost 79, they say, with a history of heart trouble that has had even Mgr Clooney suggesting that his boss make more use of a wheelchair, does not bide his time. If he was going to do something, it would have happened by now.

These different interpretations all go back to that first appearance on St Peter's balcony and the smile he gave the crowds. Was it the smug look of a ruthless man who had finally made it to the top and had long been planning his programme - the Gordon Brown option - or the dazed beam of one who had believed himself too old and too tainted to be elected - the Michael Howard/caretaker scenario?

There is, as yet, no hint that Benedict is an old man in a hurry. Rumours go round Vatican corridors almost every week that the church's bureaucracy, the curia, is about to be given a radical overhaul, but so far changes have been made cautiously.

Benedict has gathered around him a few of his closest collaborators. They constitute the kitchen cabinet that is, in effect, running the church. So as well as gorgeous Georg as private secretary, Papa Ratzinger leans heavily on Josef Clemens, currently Secretary to the Pontifical Council for the Laity. Clemens spent two decades as Benedict's secretary at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and is said to be regarded by Ratzinger as the equivalent of a son. Also in his inner circle in the papal apartments is Cardinal William Levada. Before his recall to Rome by the new pope, he served spells as a bishop in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco where he was credited with tackling head-on the paedophile priest scandal there.

None of these close advisers is doctrinaire. And yet Benedict is hardly outing himself as a pragmatist. His much-hailed encyclical letter insisted on referring to humanity as mankind. There have been no concessions yet on inclusive language or a greater role for women in the church. And last December, Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury was banned from performing in the Vatican because she had backed an anti-Aids campaign that supported the use of condoms.

There remains undisturbed that fundamental antipathy to change in Catholicism, a reluctance at the highest level to tailor the ideals it preaches for human behaviour with a corresponding understanding that individuals' lives usually fall short of moral perfection. John Paul II, too, had a honeymoon period at the start of his papacy when the world hailed him as a breath of fresh air in a musty old institution. It was often said that had he died at the hands of assassin Mehmet Ali Agca in 1982, he would have gone down in history as a liberal pope. He survived and revealed an unbending conservatism on many matters of personal morality that created a silent schism in Catholicism which persists today.

Benedict XVI is very unlikely to match John Paul's 27-year reign. If the honeymoon is to come to an abrupt halt, then we should expect it sooner rather than later. But for this Easter at least he can enjoy a broad measure of support and approval from his flock that few would have believed possible a year ago.

· Peter Stanford is a former editor of the Catholic Herald. His latest book is Why I am Still a Catholic (Continuum)


[A better title for his book would be: Why am I Still a Writer?]

[Modificato da benefan 16/04/2006 4.19]

This is the first really horrid Year-1 assessment of the Pope we have yet seen, and will be emblematic of what unreconstructed Ratzinger-haters will come out with, those of them who are still around.

Mr. Stanford is a most egregious example of the "gossipy eunuchs" and "brilliant bitches" that he claims to inhabit the Vatican, and of Catholic liberalism at its most detestable.

God forgive him for the utter condescension and near-contempt with which he writes about Benedict, for his unadulterated gall, and for being a disgrace to journalism!

Meanwhile, up yours, Mr. Stanford!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2006 4.42]

Here is an antidote and a refresher after the poison of Mr. Stanford:

The cultural impact
of Benedict's Papacy

ROME, 15 April 2006 (ZENIT.ORG) –When he was a professor, students queued up to listen to his lectures. As a bishop, the faithful flocked to hear his homilies. When he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his books sold in impressive numbers. Now that he is Pope Benedict XVI, he brings in pilgrims by the tens of thousands.

But what is the cultural impact of Benedict XVI on the world? ZENIT interviewed Andrea Monda, professor of religion, journalist and author of books on J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. Monda also works with the Pontifical Council on Culture and writes on the Papacy for the newspaper Il Foglio not as a reporter but from a cultural and theological standpoint.

What do you think of the first year of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate?
First let me give a “quantitative” answer: The influx of the faithful to the Wednesday audiences and to all other public encounters, which were record numbers with John Paul II, has increased rather than diminished. Even though Ratzinger is not, on the surface, as “communicative” as Wojtyla. But there is something else, that cannot be just the “high wave of emotion” that followed the death of the Polish Pope, which attracts the faithful to the figure of the Pope, to every Pope, to this Pope in particular.

Qualitatively, I would say that Benedict has chosen continuity with his predecessor. I am thinking of specific aspects like the relationship with young people (WYD in Cologne, his catechesis with the children, his dialogue with the students), the importance of ecumenical relations with other Christian confessions (particularly the orthodox Christians), inter-religious dialog (particularly with the Jews), the defense of truth, and the critique of relativism. All this in the style and rhythm of a man who became Pope at 78, 20 years older than his predecessor was when he was elected.

What are the principal differences between this Pontificate and John Paul II’s?
Some differences are ‘procedural.’ John Paul II was a Pope who did not spare himself, never. Benedict, by necessity, has to. Therefore, he has understandably reduced his public engagements and those related to his role as Chief of State. A great example: returning the celebration of beatifications to the Congregation for the Cause of Sainthood.

Also, Benedict is a Pope who is pushing hard for collegiality, but this will mean even more work, participation and efficiency in the Roman Curia and in the College of Cardinals, who now find themselves “lovingly constrained” to work more and coordinate better with the Pope. This is a choice Benedict has made of both style and substance.

I would say that he is very ‘ecclesiological’ Pope. If John Paul II was a Christologic Pope (“Open your doors to Christ!”), Benedict XVI is an ecclesiological Pope -“Open your doors to the Church!” could well be his motto. It is a challenge that in some ways is even more difficult, because the sentiment “Long live Jesus, down with the Church” is becoming more widespread.
[I think this is a quite artificial distinction here. Benedict XVI is by no means any less Christ-centered than John Paul II!]

Finally, Benedict is a “fisherman” Pope rather than a “shepherd “ Pope. In the sense that after the “force” of the shepherd who guided Catholics towards a new sense of belonging and healthy pride, knocking down walls everywhere in the world, it is now time for the gentleness of the fisherman – it is now time to sew up the nets, weave in repairs, lay down bridges, put together a network, with the calm and reflective patience of a fisherman. It’s a role appropriate for Papa Ratzinger, a refined man of dialog, open to all and disarming, thanks to his humble intelligence and to his sweet gentleness.

How much can a Pope with the high intellectual profile of Benedict XVI influence culture?
Ratzinger comes across as a gentle, scholarly interlocutor, which inspires great sympathy, both on the popular level and among the intellectual elite. The simple and open manner in which Benedict is able to dialog with everybody is demonstrated by at least two newsworthy examples. The fact that he has received privately persons as diverse as Oriana Fallacci and Hans Kueng (who was never received by John Paul II), shows he is a great force who penetrates and moves forward the contemporary cultural debate, which was otherwise almost stagnant.

He is a Pope who can ‘move the world', a task for the Church as Chesterton said, in reply to someone who reproached the Church for failing to move at the pace of the world. The world does not move unless it is moved by the Church, according to this great English writer, who is greatly admired by the German Pope.

What can you say of Deus caritas est?
In one word, I would say: essential. That is the style and content of this first year of Benedict’s pontificate, a year of teaching the essentials. Some observers, like Vittorio Messori, have said that Wojtyla was a mystical Pope compared to this theologian-Pope who is more intellectual.

But Wojtyla never wrote an encyclical directly about love, about eros and agape. It is the intellectual Pope who has done so. Because even with Benedict (and the choice of this name is very significant indeed) we find ourselves in front of a mystical Pope.

The release of this brief and intense encyclical refuted the entire mass-media fabrication of the German Panzer Pope, stern guardian of orthodoxy. Here we find someone who is in love with Christ and who wants to transmit His joy to all the world. That he pronounces the “g” in “gioia” like a “ch” is the only ‘hardness’ I can find in this Pope who is ‘dolce,’* open, serious and strict, but above all, kind and welcoming.
[I decided not to translate the word dolce, which with tenere (tender, sensitive), is the adjective most frequently used by the Italians (journalists as well as our colleagues on this forum) to describe the Pope. There is no single word to translate it in English because the dictionary meaning covers the connotations of sweet, mild, gentle, pleasant, kind.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2006 6.40]

Teresa, hear, hear.
After hearing the Gospel readings this week of the Passion, and then reading rubbish like this, some things never change. Now the taunts and insults, not to Christ but to His Vicar, are words on a page. Forgive them indeed. They just don't get it.

And after having a good old chuckle at your last comment,
Happy Birthday to Benedict the Blessed, and Happy Easter to all.

Here is AP's Easter round-up which leads with the Pope's Easter message.



Pope urges diplomacy
in first Easter message
by FRANCES D'EMILIO


VATICAN CITY, Sunday, April 16, 2006 (AP) -- In his first Easter message as pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged nations to use diplomacy to defuse nuclear crises _ a clear reference to worries over Iran _ and prayed that Palestinians would one day have their own state alongside Israel.

On Christianity's most joyous day _ which happened to fall on Benedict's own 79th birthday _ the pontiff also prayed for Iraq's relentless violence to cease.

From the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, Benedict reflected on the globe's troubled regions shortly after he celebrated Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square, which was packed with 100,000 pilgrims and tourists on a breezy, hazy day.

"Today, even in this modern age marked by anxiety and uncertainty, we relive the event of the Resurrection, which changed the face of our life and changed the history of humanity," Benedict said in the traditional papal "Urbi et Orbi" message _ Latin for "to the city and to the world."

On Easter, Christians celebrate a core belief of their faith _ that Jesus rose from the dead following his crucifixion. Orthodox Christians in Russia and elsewhere will celebrate Easter on April 23.

Benedict made note of recent developments that have raised fears Iran might be working toward building a nuclear arsenal.

"Concerning the international crises linked to nuclear power, may an honorable solution be found for all parties, through serious and honest negotiations," Benedict said without naming any country.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently said his country had successfully enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges, a significant step toward large-scale production of material that could be used to fuel nuclear reactors for generating electricity or to build atomic bombs.

Iran insists it only wants the peaceful use of nuclear power, but Western nations suspect Tehran wants to develop weapons and are demanding a halt to enrichment activities.

Pilgrims marking Easter also filled the streets of Jerusalem's Old City. The alleys were more crowded than in recent years, reflecting a drop in Palestinian-Israeli violence.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, who is the leading Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land, celebrated Mass in the dark, incense-filled Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the spot where many Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross.

After leading black-robed priests into the church singing the Lord's Prayer, the Palestinian-born patriarch lit worshippers' candles, which gradually illuminated the painted dome ceiling erected in the Crusader era.

"This is like a dream come true for us to be here in the Holy Land," said Rona Arida, 29, a Philippine worker in Israel, after praying with her friends at the church. "I prayed for all of my family back home."

At the Vatican, Benedict was interrupted by applause when he said of Iraq: "may peace finally prevail over the tragic violence that continues mercilessly to claim victims."

"I also pray sincerely that those caught up in the conflict in the Holy Land may find peace, and I invite all to patient and persevering dialogue, so as to remove both ancient and new obstacles," the pontiff said.

There has been heavy pressure from abroad on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, which was elected in January, to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

"May the international community, which reaffirms Israel's just right to exist in peace, assist the Palestinian people to overcome the precarious conditions in which they live and to build their future, moving toward the constitution of a state which is truly their own," Benedict said.

The pope lamented that the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Darfur region was "no longer sustainable."

He denounced the "deplorable scourge of kidnappings" in Latin America, where, he said, millions of people should have better living conditions and democratic institutions need to be "consolidated in a spirit of harmony."

As Mass began, a brisk breeze ruffled the pope's gold-colored vestments and the crimson feathers atop the helmets of Swiss Guards as he strode up the center to the square to take his place at a canopied altar on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica.

The pope offered holiday wishes in 62 languages and gave his blessing.

Among the prayers read by faithful during the Mass was a wish, in French, that the pope receive a birthday gift of "serene" days.

Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, died six days after Easter last year, and was so weak he was unable to address faithful in the square on Easter, only raising his hand in blessing.

Benedict looked tired during Sunday's Mass. He had had only a few hours to rest after leading a long Easter vigil ceremony Saturday night in St. Peter's Basilica that lasted past midnight.

After a packed schedule of Holy Week ceremonies, Benedict was heading to the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, a hill town near Rome, where he planned to give pilgrims and tourists his blessing Monday at the start of a brief vacation.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2006 3.41]

This is the second of a series of interviews conducted by ZENIT with Vatican correspondents who were asked to assess the first year of Benedict XVI's pontificate.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Interview With Vatican-watcher
Andrea Tornielli

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 16, 2006 (Zenit.org).- This Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

In this interview with ZENIT, Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican-watcher for the newspaper Il Giornale, and author of "Benedict XVI, Custodian of the Faith," assesses the first year of this pontificate.

What are the main differences between the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI?
There are objective differences, due to age and formation. Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope at 78, and Karol Wojtyla at 58. Ratzinger is a theologian who had lived in the Curia for 23 years, and Wojtyla a philosopher who came from a diocese.

The difference that most impresses me is Benedict XVI's attempt to make the light of Christ shine; not the Pope's light, as he said the day after his election, in his message delivered before imparting the blessing "urbi et orbi" [to the city of Rome and the world], read in the Sistine Chapel.

This means reducing the Pope's public appearances, for example, no longer presiding at beatifications and, above all, introducing a practice such as Eucharistic adoration at the end of important celebrations, as occurred, for example, on World Youth Day.

Benedict XVI has also changed the manner of governing the Curia: He personally studies all the dossiers of the episcopal appointments. He has reintroduced the meetings with heads of dicasteries to discuss topics that especially concern him.

Sometimes he deals directly with congregations, which have recovered their roles, without going through the Secretariat of State.

Wojtyla spoke more with gestures, Ratzinger with words. Wojtyla was more communicative, Ratzinger more restrained. Wojtyla was more projected in a global dimension. Ratzinger seems to look more toward Europe and the risk that it might lose its identity.

However, from the doctrinal point of view, there is absolute continuity.

What will be the essential lines of Benedict XVI's pontificate?
I believe they are the proclamation of the Christian faith as an event of salvation and not as a series of dogmas, moral norms, prohibitions and rites. We saw it in Cologne last year. The outstanding item is joy, of which the new Pope speaks continually.

Christianity is an encounter with beauty, it is the possibility of a more authentic, more beautiful, more exciting life. A Christian doesn't reject anything of what is really human; he does not have to give something up, but finds a fuller life.

In this connection, how do you assess the encyclical Deus Caritas Est?

It has been an exceptional beginning. Many of those who wished to "recruit" Benedict XVI, to make him a symbol of political projects oriented to reaffirming Europe's identity, erecting walls against Islam, were expecting a programmatic encyclical against relativism or in favor of Christian identity.

On the contrary, the Pope surprised everyone by speaking of the love of God. Love and mercy are the other side of the word joy.

How will the governance of the Curia change?
He has said it and written about it on several occasions: The Roman Curia has become too large and is too bureaucratized. There are bodies that have to publish documents to justify their existence and, in this way, the mountain of paper grows. "The Word was made paper," says a joke that may be applied to the Church of our day.

Benedict XVI, who in a television interview announced that he doesn't want to write many documents, believing that his task is to assimilate his predecessor's magisterium, did not publish this year the "Letter to Priests on the Occasion of Holy Thursday" and yet, he has begun to restructure the Curia, uniting two pontifical councils.

I imagine that he will continue to streamline to free energies that are not used well, and above all to make a "lighter" and more functional Roman Curia.

To go back to Peter Stanford. And the Observer, the Sunday paper which printed his article.

The Observer is left of centre and not known for any particular sympathy with the RCC. Not a lot of people read it. Peter Stanford is a known church liberal who used to edit the Catholic Herald (in the days when I nicknamed it the Socialist Herald). Since his tenure, the paper has come under new ownership and been thoroughly overhauled, it's now very good. But the mark of Stanford is long gone.

The Church liberals spent the last 10-15 years discussing what would happen when JP2 died (not a very pleasant way of looking forward, but they liked to think about his demise). Many of them needed therapy when the Cardinals failed to take their advice last year.

Their mistake is to see Rome in terms of 'vaticanology' - a politicised way of interpreting everything done from the Vatican. They don't appear to make room for the actions of the Spirit.

Thanks for the background, Wulfrune. It helps very much, indeed, for the reader to place Mr. Stanford's obvious biases in context.

Another really rotten article appears in the London Times. It too is full of inaccuracies and insults. I am so amazed that writers for major newspapers aren't made to check their facts and sources before throwing just anything into a story. Benodette on the RFC has posted that article there. I didn't bother to reprint it here since I consider that kind of journalism mostly slander and it says a lot of the same junk as Stanford's article above. Young Rocco's gossip is again quoted as fact, which he is, of course, thrilled with.

[This is pretty typical of year-end stories appearing here in the US.]

Benedict's appeal moves beyond 'caricature'

By Eric J. Lyman Special for, USA TODAY
Mon Apr 17, 7:31 AM ET

Pope Benedict XVI made no groundbreaking statements in his first Easter message as pontiff. He prayed for peace in Iraq, called for an "honorable solution" to nuclear crises - an apparent reference to Iran - and voiced support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Nevertheless, the Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square was fraught with symbolism for the new pope. Easter coincided with the pope's 79th birthday and came three days before his first anniversary as pontiff.

EASTER MESSAGE: Pope reflects on the world's troubled regions

The past year has revealed Benedict as a surprisingly popular and empathetic pontiff, Vatican experts say. That contrasts with the reputation he developed for hard-line theological views in his previous role as prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's top enforcer on doctrinal issues.

"There was a caricature drawn of the Holy Father when he was a cardinal that was never entirely accurate," says the Rev. Thomas Williams, dean of theology at Rome's Regina Apostolorum University. "Almost everyone - liberals and conservatives - saw him this way, and the change has been a surprise to many people."

Different fan base

Benedict's popularity differs from that of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who was accorded almost rock star status by the legions of banner-waving young fans who turned out to see him. By contrast, Benedict's admirers seem to be older, quieter and more introspective.

"I loved John Paul and I love Benedict, but the personality of each man appeals to different sides of the faithful," says Carlo Angelo Sanzio, 43, a worker at a coffee bar who says he has attended most of the Sunday Masses at the Vatican over the past 10 years. "The people here now are less likely to shout and cheer (than those who came to see John Paul) and are more likely to pray and reflect. My friends say you would come to experience John Paul, and you come to listen to and learn from Benedict."

People have been coming to listen to Benedict in large numbers. The crowd at the pope's Easter celebration Sunday - held under clear skies and in cool temperatures - was an estimated 100,000, according to the Carabinieri, one of the police units that provide security at Vatican events. Even Benedict's routine Sunday Masses attract crowds of about 25,000 in good weather, which is similar to the numbers that came to see John Paul before he became ill in the final years of his life. John Paul died April 2, 2005.

"To the extent that the pope's popularity can be judged by straight numbers, the numbers have been growing," police Sgt. Antonio Caldaroni says.

Benedict's reputation as a rigid enforcer of Catholic teachings has softened during the past year as people have watched him closely, Vatican observers say.

"Anyone who has followed Benedict knows he can be a bulldog when it comes to matters of faith and morality," says John Allen, Rome correspondent for the weekly U.S. newspaper National Catholic Reporter and the author of a biography of the pope. "But what is surprising is in other areas, the pope is proving to be softer and more willing to listen."

Controversial acquaintance

Benedict's relationship with Hans Küng, a controversial Swiss theologian barred by John Paul from teaching theology in 1980, shows a forgiving side of the pope. According to Allen's biography of Benedict, Küng had been a colleague and close friend of Joseph Ratzinger - the future Pope Benedict XVI - starting in the early 1960s. The men parted ways in 1968 as Ratzinger became more conservative and Küng more liberal in the wake of student riots that swept Germany that year.

John Paul never met with Küng, but Benedict and Küng arranged to meet within Benedict's first months as pope. It was the first time the two had met in 36 years. In the meeting, the two men disagreed over theological issues but discussed common ground regarding ethics and the need to move the church forward after John Paul's death, according to the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

"That meeting was extraordinarily important because it showed the human and sentimental side of the pope," says veteran Il Messaggero Vatican reporter, Orazio Petrosillo, an author of two books about the Holy See. "This is from a man who was for years seen almost as a machine."

The pontiff has said he will not support the ordination of female priests but is open to other ways of increasing the role of women in the church.

Miranda Bassetti, 39, a retail clerk from Viterbo, north of Rome, says it took time for the pontiff to grow on people. "Benedict is an acquired taste," she says. "His intellectualism isn't immediately appealing."

According to Sergio Ottomanelli, 58, a old deacon who works part time in a hotel catering to pilgrims visiting the Vatican, Benedict's intellectualism is part of his charm. "John Paul was a saint on Earth, but Benedict is different," Ottomanelli says. "Benedict is an example of what a mere human can achieve through extraordinary faith, intelligence and force of will."

Teresa, everyone: check out Amy Welborn's blog, Open Book, with a direct link to this thread, entitled, "Do you want Pope Articles?" ---- Papa Ratzinger Forum, the best place for articles


Um, can someone please insert a link? I'm still Forum challenged :

Also check out her great book, Decoding Da Vinci.

Music, Teresa added the link in a post on the Chatter thread. Thanks for letting folks know.

[Since it is almost Papa's anniversary and since I am tired of reading anniversary articles that are all saying the same dumb old things--Prada shoes, sunglasses, new tailor, good-looking male secretary, discussion with Kung and Pius X group, fluffy hair, etc., etc.-- I decided to post the article below from a year ago. I think it exhibits a nice point of view and is uplifting.]


Why They Ran
The new pope speaks to the inner adult in all of us.

By Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal Opinion Page
Thursday, April 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

There were many moving and dramatic moments in Rome two days ago, but this is the one I think I'll remember: the sight of them running.

Did you see them running to St. Peter's Square as the bells began to toll?

They came running in from the offices and streets of Rome, running in their business suits, in jeans with backpacks over their shoulders. The networks kept showing it in their wide shots as they filled time between the ringing of the bells and the balcony scene.

So many came running that by the end, by the time Benedict XVI was announced, St. Peter's and the streets leading to it were as full as they'd been two weeks ago, at the funeral of John Paul II.

Why did they run? Why did this ancient news--"We have a pope"--representing such irrelevant-seeming truths and such an archaic institution--send them running?

Why did they gather? Why did they have to hear?

The faith is dead in Europe, everyone knows that. So why did they come? You say, "They just wanted to be there. It's history. People are experience junkies. They wanted to take pictures with their cell phones."

That would be true of some. But why did so many weep as the new pope came out? Why did they chant "Benedict, Benedict" as he stood at the balcony? Why were they jubilant?

Why were so many non-Catholics similarly moved? And why in America, where the church is torn in divisions, did people run to the TV and the radio when word spread?

People are complicated. You can hit distracted people with all the propaganda in the world, you can give it to them every day in all your media, and sometimes they'll even tell pollsters they agree with you. But something is always going on in their chests. Some truth is known there; some yearning lives there. It's like they have a compass in their hearts and turn as they will, this way and that, it continues to point to true north.

We want a spiritual father. We want someone who stands for what is difficult and right, what is impossible but true. Being human we don't always or necessarily want to live by the truth or be governed by it. But we are grateful when someone stands for it. We want him to be standing up there on the balcony. We want to aspire to it, reach to it, point to it and know that it is there.

Because we can actually tell what's true.

We can just somehow tell.

John Paul II was a great man. We all knew that. Funny how we all knew. And so when word spread that he was dead, they came running. And because they came running, because four million people engulfed Rome after his death, the eyes of the world were suddenly trained on John Paul's funeral, which was suddenly an event.

Because the world watched the funeral, they noticed the man who celebrated the mass and gave the eulogy. John Paul II had picked him for that role. He spoke with love. He said John Paul, the old man who always came to the window to greet the crowds and pray with them, was now, today, right at this moment, at the window of his father's house. It was beautiful and poetic and people--cardinals--who watched and listened to the speaker thought: Yes, that's true. And the man who was speaking, who even 10 years ago was considered too old and controversial for the job, was suddenly seen by his fellow cardinals, one after the other, as the future pope.

It was impossible. But it happened. No one was really considering Cardinal Ratzinger until that mass.

Those who are pursuing John Paul II's canonization, please note: his first miracle is Benedict XVI.

We are living in a time of supernatural occurrences. The old pope gives us his suffering as a parting gift, says his final goodbye on Easter Sunday; dies on the vigil of Feast of the Divine Mercy, the day that marks the messages received by the Polish nun, now a saint, who had written that a spark out of Poland would light the world and lead the way to the coming of Christ. The mourning period for the old pope ends on the day that celebrates St. Stanislas, hero of Poland, whose name John Paul had thought about taking when he became pope. We learned this week from a former secretary that John Paul I, the good man who was pope just a month, had told everyone the day he was chosen that he wanted to be called John Paul I. You can't be called "the first" until there is a second, he was told. There will be a second soon, he replied.

It is an age of miracles and wonders, of sightings of Mary and warnings, of prophecy, graces and gifts.

The choosing of Benedict XVI, a man who is serious, deep and brave, is a gift. He has many enemies. They imagine themselves courageous and oppressed. What they are is agitated, aggressive, and well-connected.

They want to make sure his papacy begins with a battle. They want to make sure no one gets a chance to love him. Which is too bad because even his foes admit he is thoughtful, eager for dialogue, sensitive, honest.

They want to make sure that when he speaks and writes, the people of the world won't come running.

What to do to help? See his enemies for what they are, and see him for what he is. Read him--he is a writer, a natural communicator of and thinker upon challenging ideas. Listen to him. Consult your internal compass as you listen, and see if it isn't pointing true north.

Look at what he said at the beginning of the papal conclave: It is our special responsibility at this time to be mature, to believe as adults believe. "Being an 'adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties." Being an adult is loving what is true and standing with it.

This isn't radical, or archconservative. And the speaker isn't an enforcer, a cop or a rottweiler. He's a Catholic. Which one would think is a good thing to have as leader of the Catholic Church.
------------------------------

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag".

[Modificato da benefan 18/04/2006 2.24]

[And here is another piece from the Wall Street Journal's Opinion page a year ago. Again, somebody who isn't just parroting but who actually read some of what Papa has written. I love his comment about Papa in white.]


You Have to Love
A Pope Who Loves
St. Augustine

Benedict XVI a "hardliner"? Perhaps. But that's what they called Reagan too.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, April 22, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Here are two things you need to know this week about Joseph Ratzinger, a k a Benedict XVI:

He fulfilled the first requisite for being Pope: He looks good in white. And in Germany his book "Salz der Erde" (Salt of the Earth) dislodged Harry Potter as Amazon's No. 1 bestseller.

Something's happening here.

This pope thing has held the world's attention for three weeks now. The interest in these events--the life and thought of John Paul II, his funeral with its sea of earnest young faces, the papal conclave--has stirred something in the public beast beyond idle curiosity at a televised event.

I keep thinking of Joseph Ratzinger's most compelling words the past week. Not the widely quoted reference to a "dictatorship of relativism," however apt. No, the next pope's most haunting words were the refrain of his funeral homily for John Paul: "Follow me."

These of course were not Joseph Ratzinger's words but those of Jesus to Peter, the first pope. But as the Cardinal repeated them in his compelling funeral oration, I took them to mean that he wanted us to follow his thought-line on the life of Karol Wotyla. Follow me.

Joseph Ratzinger's thought-line is precisely what is at issue this week as his papacy begins. Media shorthand has reduced the whole of the new pope's mind to two words: "doctrinal hardliner." It is possible that this caricature is a media judgment error similar to the one made about Ronald Reagan.

At the moment, Amazon's U.S. tracking list has 11 Ratzinger books in its top 50 sellers. One of the most interesting explorations of the Ratzinger mind is his memoir "Milestones" from Ignatius Press. It is difficult to obtain it this week, but an excellent summary exists in Rev. Richard John Neuhaus's 1999 review, "Joseph Ratzinger, Christ's Donkey," in his valuable journal First Things at www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9901/public.html.

In that book, Joseph Ratzinger describes how he prefers Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, "whose crystal-clear logic seemed to me to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made." Anyone familiar with Augustine and Aquinas would at least pause to reflect on this remark from a man characterized in the press as an inquisitor, rottweiler, enforcer.

Augustine is the more mystical personality, closer in some ways to the "new age" impulses of our times. In the writings of Augustine, arguably the most complex mind Christianity has produced, the exercise of deep faith carries with it the possibility of what I would call a "high" experience in one's pursuit of and relationship to God. That was the Church of the 5th century. In our time, religion has become freighted with correct politics (the Left) or correct morality (the Right), rather than the substance of one's relationship with God.

I get the impression that Joseph Ratzinger--who reveres the early, transcendent Church Fathers (its "founding fathers")--is at heart more a vibrant 5th-century Christian than a stale 19th-century dogmatist; as conceivably was John Paul II, who often let himself slip into an Upward-directed reverie in public. In short, Benedict XVI looks to be very different from the stolid, authoritarian German described this week in the public prints.

His memoir also gives a more complete understanding of the real source of Cardinal Ratzinger's disputes with his enemies--a battle again penciled in as the dogma cop, bunkered in some Vatican redoubt, giving thumbs up or down on new ideas, according to his whim. In fact, Ratzinger's beef is mainly with the post-Vatican II academic theologians who thought they should be writing, or rewriting, the Church's rulebook based on whatever new theories spun out of their heads--not the bishops, the Pope or even the church faithful. The way the political game is now played, if John Paul and he had opened the door on one reform, say contraception, the whole gang would have roared in behind.

"The impression grew steadily," he writes, "that nothing was now stable in the Church, that everything was open to revision"--by these scholars. This is not just some arcane dispute over how many angels dance on the head of a pin. It is precisely the fight over intellectual authority and daily application being fought right now in the U.S. Senate over the Bush judges and Constitutional interpretation. As Joseph Ratzinger put it, he opposes a "reality" that someone has "simply thought up." Sounds like a soul-brother of Antonin Scalia to me. Like the U.S., the Catholic Church is a huge, sprawling, complex institution, and there are real issues at stake here that affect long-term life on the streets and in the pews.

Now Joseph Ratzinger has the bully pulpit of the papacy, and it will be impossible to marginalize him as an unthinking dogmatist. He is not that. He is a formidable advocate for his ideas. He argues, for instance, (again in language redolent of Justice Scalia) that the Church's centuries of liturgical tradition were essentially "demolished" in the late 1960s. And he knows why he thinks roll-your-own liturgies were a mistake: "When liturgy is self-made, then it can no longer give us what its proper gift should be: the encounter with the mystery that is not our own product but rather our origin and the source of our life." Disagree if you will, but this is more than simply, "No."

"Follow me." How far the Church faithful, Europe's unchurched, or his many adversaries will follow Benedict XVI remains to be seen. I know more about the very interesting mind of Joseph Ratzinger than I did a week ago. And on the evidence of the past several weeks--millions of young in the streets of Rome, millions more watching daily on television, and constant thoughtful questions about the meaning of it all from non-Catholic friends--it is clear that this new Pope has an audience. Stay tuned.
--------------------------

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

Thank you, Benefan, for starting with the "retrospectives" - and both EXCELLENT ones I had not seen before!

Everyone, now is the time to post your favorite Ratzinger article(s) from the pre-Conclave and immediately post-election, post-Inaugural Mass period! The more, the better.

Maybe we should post them in THE EXPERIENCE OF APRIL 19,2005, so that we can keep the NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT thread for current items?

When I think back of those days and the feverish searches through the Net to try and read everything one could about HIM...I didn't know or think about saving links then...I just printed out any and all articles that I could find, which was daunting because I was searching the European press as well...
I've been feeling Conclave fever since after the Urbi et Orbi yesterday...

Papa at the Angelus today reminded me a lot of the Papa who went to visit his partment the day after he was elected pope! What did you think?

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/04/2006 3.11]

@Teresa: "Papa at the Angelus today reminded me a lot of the Papa who went to visit his apartment the day after he was elected pope! What did you think?"

Benefan: Yes, he has the same puffy look about the eyes and face, probably from the cold he had then and has now, which makes it difficult to sleep and causes the sinuses to swell. He's had very puffy bags under his eyes for several days. Georg and the 4 sisters better take good care of him or we are going to have to intervene.

Benedict's Papacy
taking unexpected turns
By TRACY WILKINSON
Los Angeles Times

VATICAN CITY, Sunday, April 16, 2006 -- No one would ever accuse Pope Benedict XVI of being overly charismatic.

Benedict clearly prefers quiet study, or the professorial delivery of a homily, over the flashy performances before adoring crowds that his predecessor favored.

In his first year on St. Peter's throne, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has confounded critics and supporters alike and begun to reshape the papacy. In the process, he has emerged slowly but steadily from the shadows of John Paul II, who reigned longer than almost any other pope.

Benedict is fashioning a streamlined pontificate, a more distilled leadership that shuns (or at least dims) the spotlight on himself and focuses instead on reviving the broader Roman Catholic Church.

Where the gregarious John Paul thrived before massive audiences spanning the globe, the more intellectual Benedict has chosen to narrow his exposure. He has reduced the number of meetings and lunches he has with visitors, removed himself from ceremonies beatifying potential saints, plans to limit travel and will do more of his own writing while delegating fewer documents and decisions to his staff.

Many approve

For many Catholics, the shift is welcome. John Paul was so consumed with a globetrotting evangelism that he often neglected some of the more mundane but critical business of the Vatican.

Benedict, many Vatican-watchers say, will be a better hands-on administrator. At the same time, he is reserved and prudent. He has not launched the kind of major overhaul of the Curia, hunting the heads of opponents, that some predicted. Instead, he launched a careful recapture of traditional aspects of the papacy while fighting for a revival of Catholic identity in the increasingly secular West.

"The church needed a rest; the problem of overexposure of [John Paul] was a problem for the church, and Benedict has decided to stay behind the curtain," said Alberto Melloni, Italian historian and author of a forthcoming book on Benedict's first year. [NB: The book is out in Italy and we posted a review of it from Corriere della Sera last week]. "Now we have a sort of 'decanter' pontificate. He will not shock the church with an awful lot of documents and reforms and appointments but will wait and let things settle and go ahead slowly."

In a quarter-century as the Vatican's chief doctrinal enforcer, the German-born prelate earned a reputation as a strict, conservative theologian. Many Catholics expected Benedict would crack down hard on dissent after he became pope. Instead, his papacy has been much more nuanced.

There have been displays of his rigid orthodoxy. Days after his installation, for example, the Rev. Thomas Reese, the highly regarded editor of the Jesuit magazine America, was forced to resign. Under Reese, the magazine had engaged in open discussion of controversial topics such as gays in the priesthood. His dismissal was seen as an attempt by Rome to quiet debate. [Why hasn't anybody read farther than Reese's resignation and see, for instance, what Fr. Kolvenbach, the top Jesuit, said in a recent interview with John Allen about Reese's problem? And what does it say of Jesuit dissidents like Reese when their fellow Jesuits who put out La Civilta Cattolica in Rome are widely considered to speak for the Vatican? ]

Mixed signals

Benedict has given priority to bringing back to the Catholic fold the archconservative group known as the Society of St. Pius X, followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, in part because he agrees with them. They split with the Vatican over church reforms in the mid-1960s, including the decision to allow Mass to be said in languages other than Latin.

And the first major document issued under Benedict's watch [but mainly worked out during John Paul's last years] was a stern reiteration of the church's ban on gay priests. Men with what he called "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should not become priests, the pope declared.

Yet other developments reflected a more magnanimous side.

His first encyclical, the most important form of writing that a pope produces, focused on human love -- without judgmental mentions of contraception and reproduction. And one of Benedict's first meetings was with a church dissident he had censured years earlier, Hans Kueng. The encounter was described as warm and friendly.

He has shown tentative signs of what church officials call collegiality, a willingness to consult with bishops from dioceses near and far over the issues that concern them. Numerous prelates, especially in the United States, have been clamoring for years for just such a dialogue.

It is possible that a pope who is less of a star will have a better chance at repairing the schism between Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox faith, another cherished goal expressed by Benedict. John Paul could never win an invitation to Moscow because leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church suspected he promoted efforts to convert the Orthodox in Russia.

Another shift in this papacy is Benedict's focus on Europe over the rest of the world, and his much harder line on Islam. Both reflect the prime importance he attaches to strengthening Catholic faith and values in all aspects of life, especially in the West.

"The truth is that Ratzinger has always been a Euro-centric thinker," Catholic writer Vittorio Messori said in an assessment of the pope's first year published in the Corriere della Sera magazine.

"He does not have Third World illusions," Messori said. "He knows that, in spite of everything, the future of the church is in play here in Europe. For him, it is worth more to hold the line in a small [Italian] parish, or give new life to the church in Britain, than to win new faithful in African dioceses."

John Paul reached out to his Muslim brothers. Benedict scolded [surely she jests!] them during his first trip abroad, to Cologne, Germany, last summer.

Earlier this year, he in effect demoted the prelate in Rome with the most experience in dealing with Islam. Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, head of the Vatican's office for relations with Islam, was passed over in the naming of cardinals and transferred to Cairo, Egypt, to become the papal nuncio there. He apparently was seen as being too soft on Muslims.

If John Paul could have handpicked his successor, it probably would have been Ratzinger. Yet a year after John Paul's death, the planet's more than 1 billion Catholics are still trying to figure out where the man viewed as his natural heir will take them.
--------------------------------------------------------------

On the whole, Ms. Wilkinson's report is not that bad. Facile commonplaces, much of it, but generally not negative.

And yet, how tiresome these journalists who fail to see - refuse to see probably is more accurate - what Benedict is trying to do with the Church and the faithful: bring us back to the basics of the faith.

Isn't that consistently abundant in everything he has said and written since he became Pope? Don't they listen? Don't they read?
God is love.
To love him means to love our neighbor.
Jesus is the supreme expression of God's love for us.
He is the way, the truth and the life.
Let us put ourselves in Jesus's hands.

John Paul attracted many new members to the Church. His successor is consolidating these gains. He wants to make sure that all Catholics, new and old, know, understand and live the basics of the faith. Numbers alone are meaningless; each Catholic must be a living witness for Christ.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that none of the writers assigned to file a report card on Benedict's first year as Pope has shown any originality, any willingness or initiative to take a fresh look, forget the stereotypes, forget biases, consider the facts. They've all been looking over sach other's shoulder and sticking to the herd mentality in mass media. And so they repeat cliches and commonplaces, without bothering to check out facts, and all come to the same conclusions and inconclusions.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/04/2006 14.36]

Since he wrote and delivered an exhaustive analysis of Benedict's first 11 months as Pope recently, Sandro Magister has chosen to mark the first-year anniversary of the Pope's election with this article on his extraordinary innovation in the Papacy: the practice of speaking without notes (the Italian term for it is 'a braccio'), whether for a homily or when confronting questions placed to him by priests,s children and students, thus far.

An Italian analyst recently pointed out that no Pope has done this before - speak unscripted in public - for fear that they may say something that the theologians may find fault with. But, the writer observed, "Benedict is not worried about a slip of the tongue!" YAYYY, GO PAPA!

Interestingly, I cannot think offhand of any 'year-ender' writer who has taken note of this remarkable fact, and most especially not, I suppose, among the Italian commentators for whom John Paul II remains the Pope, and Ratzinger just someone who happens to be wearing the white Papal robes now!
.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Benedict XVI, One Year Later: What’s New
One of the innovations introduced by Pope Joseph Ratzinger
is special: listening to questions in public
and replying to all of them, off the cuff.
He has done this with young people, priests, children.

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, April 18, 2006 – Among the novelties he has introduced during his first year as pope – which comes to completion this Easter week – there is one that Joseph Ratzinger has a special fondness for. So much so that has repeated it several times.

It is the practice of public discussions in question and answer format. Benedict XVI arrives and greets those present, but doesn’t speak from a prepared text. He simply fields questions. And he responds to each of them, spontaneously.

He did so with the priests of the little diocese of Aosta where he was vacationing, on July 25, 2005.

He did so with the children who had received their first communion that year, in St. Peter’s Square on October 15.

He did so with the priests of the diocese of Rome, on March 3, 2006.

He did so with the young people preparing for World Youth Day, three days before Palm Sunday, on April 6 in St. Peter’s Square.

In all these cases, his words had a strong effect on those present. Even the children listened to him attentively.

And the pope did the same thing behind closed doors on March 23, with the cardinals gathered for the consistory. Cardinal Camillo Ruini remarked upon this in an interview with the weekly Famiglia Cristiana:

“Benedict XVI succeeds in facing difficult problems with immediacy, using simple words to reply to deep questions. We cardinals experienced this during the consistory, during that day of reflection on the problems of the Church.”

But little or nothing of these dialogues between the Pope and his interlocutors reaches the general public. Benedict XVI replies to each question at length and in depth, and so makes it almost impossible to extract short, flashy phrases fit for the newspaper articles.

And the Vatican press office is of little help. In order to be distributed to the journalists, the Pope’s remarks must first be replayed and transcribed, and this usually takes a day to complete. And then they are distributed only in the language in which they were delivered, Italian. The translations in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German arrive many days later and in deranged order.

For example, twelve days after it took place, Benedict XVI’s April 6 conversation with young people was available on the Vatican website only in its Italian version.

And yet these are texts of very noteworthy importance. Because of their spontaneity, they better permit one to enter into the pope’s mind and understand the things that are closest to his heart.

For example, replying to the young people he met on April 6, Benedict XVI explained how to read the Bible and why marriage is not the product of a culture, but a primordial reality inscribed in the creation of man and woman; he reasoned on why a life that eliminates God is “unlivable”; he recounted how his vocation to the priesthood was born; he exalted the “divine beauty” of the liturgy; he had wonderful things to say about the “intelligent” structure of the universe...

Here, in our own translation, is an extensive excerpt of Benedict XVI’s five answers to the five questions posed to him by the young people in St. Peter’s Square on April 6:

[The translation is provided in
www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=50144&eng=y
I am not posting it here because we did a full translation of the dialog the day after, on 4/7/06. It may be useful to compare the translations.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/04/2006 14.55]

Here is a good analysis of Benedict as his own man, that was published in an Australian newspaper on 4/15/06 -
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18813737-28737...


FAITHFUL TO THE CORE
By Stephen Crittenden

IF Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Benedict XVI is playing Mozart while Rome cools down. On the surface his appears to be a do-little papacy, but anything would seem little in comparison with the pyrotechnics of the previous 26 years.

A few minutes after the election of Benedict was announced from the balcony of St Peter's, the following text message came through from one of my best-connected friends in Rome: "Ad maiorem dei gloriam!! Benedict XVI will be a pope of fewer but his own words and deeds."

It was an instantaneous assessment, full of confidence that the Catholic Church's future is in safe hands, but also very shrewd in its predictions. Twelve months on, while the spin doctors are busy emphasising how the stern Panzer Cardinal has metamorphosed into a man of the people, it really seems more important to note how Benedict appears to have slammed on the brakes and even to be swerving off in a different direction entirely from his predecessor.

Anybody who thinks Benedict is a continuation of John Paul II is completely wrong. The former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is a proper conservative. John Paul was neither a liberal nor a conservative but a revolutionary. And somehow, despite the biggest crowds and the biggest funeral in history, he has left the church exhausted and prostrate.

The new Pope's first big hurdle was making up his mind about a document on gays in the seminaries. His decision was to settle for the status quo, a disappointment to those Catholic reactionaries who had been hoping for mass expulsions. That disappointment would have been compounded by the appointment of Cardinal William Levada as Benedict's replacement as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Archbishop George Niederauer as Levada's replacement in San Francisco. Both men have shown that they are prepared to compromise with gay people over civil rights.

But it was the Pope's first encyclical, Deus Caritas est (God is Love), published on January 25, that really confirmed a decisive change of tone. A meditation on human and divine love in which the Pope argues that God loves us like a lover, "with all the passion of a true love", it is relaxed in style, even humorous in places.

Before the encyclical was released, the question was whether it would be full of references to Paul VI's ill-fated birth control encyclical of 1968, Humanae Vitae, and John Paul II's Theology of the Body, in which case Benedict's pontificate would be sunk; or whether there would be no references at all to procreation, Humanae Vitae or the Theology of the Body, in which case they would be sunk.

Well, folks, I think that soft splash you just heard at the back of the boat was Theology of the Body being tossed overboard, when just 12 months ago it was the focus of an entire Catholic academic industry.

Meanwhile, leading Italian journalist Sandro Magister has been writing about a backlash. Benedict is "very isolated" within the curia, he says. "Not everyone in the upper levels of the church is full of love and solidarity for this new Pope. Resistance to his guidance is tenacious and widespread, and in some places it is on the rise."

[NB: This thing about the Pope being "very isolated" is the one Magister statement about Benedict that I have questioned all along, as it makes it appear that the Pope has no allies or friends at all in the Curia, which is certainly not the case! From all accounts, most of the cardinal dicasterial heads, with the probable exception of Cardinal Sodano, supported Joseph Ratzinger for Pope, after all.]

This seems exceedingly strange for a man who has been there for 30 years and is supposed to have supporters everywhere. Magister says the speeches Benedict makes and the documents he publishes have been slow to be translated and disseminated because the Roman curia (Vatican-based bureaucracy) is on some kind of 'go slow' of its own.

Some reappraisal of last year's conclave seems to be in order. At the time, it was almost universally interpreted as a vote for continuity with the pontificate of John Paul II, made by a college that had largely been appointed by him. However, the cardinals apparently lacked the self-confidence to follow the path he had mapped out for them, opting instead for one of only two of their number to have received his red hat from Paul VI.

What if too much continuity with the tumultuous and exhausting pontificate of John Paul II was just what the College of Cardinals did not want? There have been suggestions in the Italian press that one of the more progressive candidates at the conclave - the retired archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, or the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio (my sources say it was Martini) - managed to equal or surpass Ratzinger's vote in the early ballots, only to withdraw, paving the way for him later on.

Is it possible that some kind of deal was done, in which the progressive bloc agreed to vote for Ratzinger on condition that he would undertake to rule from the centre in a renewed spirit of collegiality with his brother bishops and that he would calm down everything? In short, that he would bring to a close the age of Karol Wojtyla and an end to revolutionary Catholicism. If so, it has to be said that Benedict appears to be delivering.

Benedict is far more interested in the institutional church than his predecessor was. Right from the beginning there have been lots of small signs that he wants a more modest papacy. The triple tiara has been removed from the papal coat of arms, as if to say the Pope is Bishop of Rome, not king of the world. The title Patriarch of the West has been dropped. Saints are no longer being delivered to the altars like aristocrats being delivered to the guillotine (in job lots). At the synod of bishops last October he allowed an open session at the end of each day in which there was no agenda, a new experience for the bishops.

Benedict's commitment to collegiality raises an interesting question. Will it inevitably bring him into conflict with the new religious movements championed by John Paul, a conflict not over their orthodoxy but good governance?

As yet, there is no evidence for thinking that Benedict is less enthusiastic than John Paul II about movements such as Opus Dei, but two of the other new movements are under the gun. The Neo-Catechumenal Way, a slightly down-market Opus Dei, has been a divisive presence in many parishes across the world where it has gained a foothold because its members tend to keep apart from other parishioners. They have been directed to reform their practices and to celebrate mass with everyone else. For the time being, at least, the Neo-Cats appear to be resisting these instructions, causing Benedict to issue a veiled public threat. The other new movements are watching.

This brings us to the secretive Legion of Christ and its creepy Mexican founder, Father Marcial Maciel. Maciel is in his 80s and for more than 50 years he has been the subject of multiple allegations, which he denies, of the homosexual rape of children and adolescents while they were in his care as seminarians.

The charges resurfaced in the 1990s when a group of nine accusers went public, three of them professors and one a former president of the Legion in the US, especially devastating when Maciel was apparently being protected inside the Vatican because he was known to be close to John Paul II.

In December 2004, then Cardinal Ratzinger ordered a new investigation and the following month Maciel stepped down as head of the Legion. That investigation is believed to be complete and, given the weight of the evidence, another whitewash seems inconceivable. Most observers expect the findings to be shelved in the hope that Maciel will die soon; the Legion is just too rich and too powerful for any further action to be taken.

One area where it is clear Benedict has a more sceptical approach than his predecessor is in relation to Islam. John Paul II held an unbelievable 60 meetings with Muslims. He prayed in mosques and kissed the Koran. At the World Conference on Population in Cairo in 1994, he led the Catholic Church into what many considered a dangerous alliance with Islamic fundamentalism, when he joined forces with nations such as Iran and Sudan as part of his international culture war against Western secular views on sex education, contraception and the emancipation of women.

Benedict, on the other hand, is known to be opposed to Turkey entering the European Union. When he was in Cologne last August for World Youth Day, he accepted an invitation to visit a synagogue, where he addressed representatives of the Jewish community as "dear brothers and sisters". The next day, he met a Muslim delegation while seated in front of a large crucifix, addressing them as "dear Muslim friends" and pulling no punches about their responsibility to help combat terrorism. The difference between these two modes of address is not accidental and should not be glossed over. It points to two substantially different policies in relation to Jews and Muslims.

There has been a subterranean struggle over Islam in the Vatican in recent months. The president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a distinguished Arabist, has been demoted (or moved sideways) and his organisation absorbed by another Vatican department. It may be that Benedict has a problem with Fitzgerald's view that dialogue with Muslims is "not done to change Islam but for us to change ourselves".

A tougher line on Islam may lead to a more nuanced view of Western secularism, especially secularism in Europe, because in this battle secularism is a big ally. This may surprise some readers after all the Vatican's anti-secularist rhetoric of recent years, but the shift may be discerned in what Benedict is writing. In its essence, he says, Islam "simply does not have the separation of the political and religious sphere which Christianity had from the beginning [he really means after 1789]. The Koran is a total religious law, which separates the whole of political and social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic. Sharia shapes society from beginning to end."

If Benedict's commitment to collegiality means trimming the sails of the new religious movements, and if a more nuanced view of secularism is in order, he will need to get the upper hand with the US Catholic Right; indeed, this may yet prove to be the biggest obstacle of his pontificate. The former master of the Dominicans, Timothy Radcliffe, an Englishman, remarked recently that the ideological divisions in the church in the US strike him as being "deeper than anywhere else in the world".

The Wojtyla papacy thrived on this division, and the American Catholic Right supplied the venom and neurosis. John Paul II was their definite champion and they were able to zoom off to Rome to get whatever they wanted, especially in the later years. They always considered Ratzinger to be one of their supporters and they cheered at his election. But it is by no means certain that his view of the church and the world is the same as theirs.

Stephen Crittenden is writing a book about John Paul II.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/04/2006 15.33]

I picked a number out of the blue and I am being facetious, of course, but I would be so surprised(!) myself if I read a 'year-ender' review of Benedict that does not contain the word surprise. The following story that appeared in the Sunday edition of an Irish newspaper on 4/16/05, is no exception, but it is remarkable for extensive recent quotations from a few men who know the Pope from before he was Pope. The source is
www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqid=13417-qqqx=1.asp

----------------------------------------------------------------
Benedict’s surprising first year
by Kieron Wood

One year ago on Wednesday, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez stepped onto the balcony above St Peter’s Square and announced: ‘‘Habemus Papam’’.

The man chosen by the College of Cardinals to become the 265th head of the Catholic Church was a surprise choice for many reasons.

Unlike Pope John Paul II - the youngest pope in a century - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was well past retirement age: he celebrates his 79th birthday today. His physical health was not robust: he suffered a brain haemorrhage in 1991 and a stroke three years ago. [Now, where on earth did this item come from? - The Irish Post needs a facts checker!]

Liberals regarded the new Pope Benedict XVI as dangerously dogmatic. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), he had been the Church’s doctrinal watchdog for almost quarter of a century.

Conservatives, on the other hand, looked forward to a papal purge of theological and liturgical dissenters. But Pope Benedict has confused his supporters and confounded his critics. One man who knew Pope Benedict well from his time in the Roman Curia was Diarmuid Martin, now Archbishop of Dublin.

‘‘Pope Benedict surprised people, perhaps because many people did not know him,” said Martin. ‘‘Indeed, anyone who did know him was amazed at the appalling stereotype of him proposed repeatedly in some media - and, indeed, ecclesiastical - circles.

‘‘These seemed to ignore the fact that Joseph Ratzinger was, without any doubt, one of the most outstanding theologians of the latter part of the 20th century. I remember his sermons at the Church of the Teutonic College in Rome on Holy Thursday or Good Friday, which were incomparable reflections on the mystery of Christ’s suffering.

‘‘Pope Benedict is not naturally a polemicist, though he defends his positions with vigour.

“He is someone who knows well the philosophical roots of contemporary culture and can stand his own in debate with any opponent.

‘‘This Pope has taken his time in what I believe will be a significant reform of the Roman Curia. He is not a centraliser and he has a healthy scepticism about ecclesiastical bureaucracies.

‘‘He has a clear theological understanding of the place of the Curia as a service to the successor of St Peter and to the Church, which he will - with time - translate into concrete structures.

‘‘Like his predecessor, Pope Benedict devotes a great deal of his time to meeting, listening to and talking to bishops. I have spoken to him about the challenges of being a bishop in a complex modern diocese like Dublin and have drawn comfort from his attention, encouragement and understanding of the nature of the episcopate.

‘‘Another theme he has consistently spoken about is the defence of marriage and the family, and he has articulated his anxieties about how aspects of contemporary culture are undermining something so important in society.

‘‘Many were surprised at the fact that he chose as the theme of his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, God is Love. But this is a theme that he had concretely stressed in many of his comments in his homilies and talks since becoming Pope. Similarly he has spoken about the joy of the Christian life and how its essence has been transposed by some people into a cold rulebook.

‘‘I believe that, by stressing the concept of God’s love which saves, Pope Benedict has opened new directions in our reflection on evangelisation.”

Another man who knows the pope well on a personal level is Dr Vincent Twomey, professor of moral theology at Maynooth and a former colleague of the Pope.

‘‘The night he was elected, I said on RTE’s Prime Time that the new Pope would surprise everyone, conservatives and liberals, since Joseph Ratzinger cannot be pigeon-holed,” said Twomey.

‘‘Perhaps the liberals were the most surprised, since he has not lived up to the negative image created in large part by the media, which invented titles such as Panzerkardinal and German Shepherd.

‘‘Such liberal bastions as the English journal, The Tablet, have been loud in praise of his recent encyclical, for example.

“Most liberals were almost as surprised as [dissident theologian] Hans Kung himself, when the Pope acceded to his former colleague’s request for an audience and spent several hours discussing theological matters of mutual concern.

‘‘Some conservatives, it seems, were surprised at the apparent inaction of the Pope in rooting out what they consider to be the corruption in current Church life and practice.

Others might well have been encouraged by the meeting in Castel Gandolfo with the head of the followers of the schismatic Archbishop Lefebvre, which caused dismay among liberals.

‘‘On the renewal of the liturgy, contrary to what liberals fear and conservatives hope for, I am convinced that Benedict is not going to try to restore the Tridentine Mass. The reforms of Vatican II (such as the use of the vernacular) were necessary and will remain.

‘‘But the way the reforms of the liturgy were introduced did enormous damage to the practice of the faith, simply because radical changes were imposed from on high. He will not repeat that mistake in order to bring about a true reform of the liturgy.

‘‘People ask if the Pope has a plan for the Church. If, by ‘plan’, they mean a fully worked-out strategy to leave his mark on the Church, then I do not think so. This would be entirely counter to all I know about the man and his thought.

‘‘However, if ‘plan’ means a vision for the Church, then Benedict certainly has one, based on the insight that the Church is a fully human institution which, despite all its imperfections, is nonetheless God’s instrument in the world.

‘‘Contrary to all that was said about him as Cardinal Prefect, Ratzinger does not (and never did) favour concentration of power at the centre, in Rome. He wants each local Church to flourish. Centralisation is, in the final analysis, an abdication of personal responsibility.

‘‘He has also stressed the need for wide consultation on matters that affect the Church, thus overcoming the authoritarian style of governance which many find typical of the Catholic Church.

‘‘Under Benedict, ecumenism has entered a new phase.

“His visit to the synagogue in Cologne touched the hearts of all the Jewish representatives at the historic meeting. The attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church, it seems, has also mellowed considerably, while many Anglicans are encouraged by his moral teaching - though others are repelled.

‘‘Perhaps the most significant aspect of his papacy is the fact that all that he wanted to say has already been said in his vast corpus of writings, which had been largely ignored - even by theologians, bishops and priests – but which have now been given a kind of canonical status.”

Professional Vatican-watchers have also been surprised by Pope Benedict’s first year.

Phil Lawler, editor of the US Catholic World News service, said: ‘‘Many people anticipated a pontificate marked by the stern and frequent application of papal authority. Liberal Catholics feared a disciplinary crackdown; conservatives longed for it. Thus far it has not happened.

‘‘During his first year, the new Pope has clearly sought to maintain continuity with the policies of John Paul II. His most energetic efforts have been in the fields of ecumenism, he has energetically pursued diplomatic talks with China and he has emphasised a collegial approach to Church governance.

‘‘The single most controversial statement issued by the Vatican during the year - that homosexual men should not be admitted to priestly training - was itself a product of the last pontificate (though it may be worth commenting that, after many previous delays, Pope Benedict refused entreaties from American bishops to delay its publication).

‘‘However, as he comes toward the end of his first year as pontiff, Benedict has shown that he is ready to put his own stamp on the papacy. He has issued his first encyclical, named his first cardinals and begun making his own appointments to the Roman Curia.

‘‘In the coming weeks, I think Pope Benedict will face two challenges that could shape his pontificate. First, will he assert full control over the Roman Curia? The Pope’s appointment of a Secretary of State to replace Cardinal Sodano - through whom virtually all the everyday work of the Vatican flows - will be a critical choice.

‘‘Secondly, will he make an effort to reconcile traditionalist Catholics? Vatican-watchers have been expecting a major policy announcement allowing wider use of the Tridentine Mass, but there is clear opposition from many members of the hierarchy, including powerful prelates in Rome.

‘‘Whether the Pope makes a bold move or yields to curial pressure will say a great deal about his plans and priorities.”

Fellow philosopher Fr Brendan Purcell of UCD agreed that events at the Vatican should be watched closely. ‘‘It’s very hard to say, through the fog of commentary, what exactly is happening in the Vatican,” he said. ‘‘My impression is that Benedict is taking his time.

‘‘I like his serenity, not feeling he must try to be another John Paul II. Precisely by being himself, people are responding to his honesty and integrity as a person. He has an incredible memory for names and faces, and several people who have met him - by no means VIPs - have been amazed how he greets them as friends.

‘‘But Benedict is not too worried about being perceived as a nice guy. He has been quite tough on underperforming hierarchies, such as the visiting Austrian bishops.

‘‘He is also well able to surprise, as the Brazilian bishops found out. They expected that next year’s meeting of Latin America’s bishops might be in Rome. Benedict asked them where the biggest Marian shrine in Brazil was, and said he’d be going there for the event - even though there’s currently no infrastructure at the shrine for such a meeting.”

Even feminists like theologian Gina Menzies of Trinity College have been startled by the first year of Benedict’s pontificate.

‘‘I confess that Cardinal Ratzinger would have not been my choice but am prepared to admit that the spirit often surprises,” she said ‘‘Pope Benedict’s style, so far, is very different to that of his predecessor. During his visit to Cologne, he ignored contentious issues of sexual teaching and instead invited the young people to enter into deeper faith within the community of the Church. The stern enforcer of orthodoxy seemed to lecture less than John Paul II, and to focus more on positive aspects of the faith…

‘‘His ecumenical meeting with leaders of Germany’s non-Catholic communities was conducted in a very different manner to the stern admonishments of Dominus Jesus. This dialogue was also continued with leaders of Germany’s Muslim communities.

‘‘Thankfully, the forced resignation of Fr Thomas Reese, the Jesuit editor-in-chief of America magazine, has not led to the purge of theologians that might have been expected by the ‘grand inquisitor’. Instead of the man who dealt with theologians in such a severe style, Benedict has surprised liberals and conservatives alike.

‘‘The instruction on homosexuality and the priesthood was undoubtedly wounding to homosexuals already in the priesthood, but sufficiently ambiguous to allow [Westminster’s] Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor to say: ‘The instruction is not saying that men of homosexual orientation are not welcome in the priesthood’.

‘‘Of more importance than any of this is his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, a deep reflection on the nature of human love, accompanied by the imperative that love of one’s neighbour expressed in action for justice is an intrinsic part of Catholicism.

‘‘Pope Benedict seems to be, so far, a different person to Cardinal Ratzinger. He has moved slowly and modestly.

“He may yet surprise all of us.”
[Er...Should that not read, "He may continue to surprise all of us?" seeing as how this whole story has been about how he has already surprised most observers! ]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/04/2006 18.25]

A funny thing today on the National Catholic Reporter - a John Allen article on Benedict's first year has been posted as the cover story for the magazine issue dated 4/31/06.

I was going to post the story here, when I noticed that it was simply a verbatim repeat of the March 31 Word from Rome column that Allen had. It's OK - especially for those who have not seen the March 31 column - because the assessment is on the whole positive and Allen has turned into one of the least equivocal of Benedict's "supporters" in the media.

I just find it unusual that a magazine should choose to use a month-old column as a cover story. They might have had the author add something to it, at least, as he earlier did in his interview with a Kansas City newspaper (also posted here earlier).

Also funny is that they use the picture of Benedict that Atlantic Monthly used as a cover for that infamous Paul Elie article a few months back.

Is there a subtext here?- as in, "Well, yeah, we have to go on record that the guy is marking his first anniversary as Pope, but hey, we won't go out of our way to do anything special - we'll just rerun an old article and use an old picture." Or am I being paranoid?

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/04/2006 1.09]

Teresa, the situation with John Allen is kind of odd right now. He will no longer be based in Rome but in New York so I think his stories on the Vatican are going to suffer. It is pretty hard to develop contacts and talk to key players if you are in New York and they are across the ocean. Allen has been doing a lot of speaking engagements and book promotions in the US so this move might help him personally but I think the Rome coverage in the Reporter is going to decline.

[This article repeats some things we've seen in other wrap-up articles but also includes a few rather interesting new comments.]

Pope Benedict's first year: He's his own man, but what does that mean?

He's been on the job a year now, so, for some observers, it's time to give Pope Benedict XVI a report card.

This past weekend's Easter Sunday services - the first of one of Christianity's holiest days that Benedict has celebrated during his still-young papacy - offered an occasion to assess the 79-year-old pontiff's performance so far in the administration and policy-making of the Catholic Church.

» France's Le Monde pointed out that the change in style that Benedict represents is part of the substance he brings to his job. Unlike his "ranting" predecessor, John Paul II, the paper noted, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, who is a big Mozart fan - he plays the piano and uses an iPod - is known for the "sobriety" of his gestures. Benedict "remains a fine theologian" and a "man of reflection." He "jealously guards his independence and...private life." Some Vatican-watchers have said, with regard to last year's election of Ratzinger as Pope: "It's a brain that the cardinals elected."

Le Monde's reporter summed up Benedict's achievements to date as not "always without results," albeit, he suggested, more modest ones, such as the issuing of an encyclical on the theme of love or attending a World Youth Day celebration in his native Germany. The new pope has reached out - sort of - to other faiths, referring to Jews as "brothers" and to Muslims as "friends." But he has dismissed "other Asian schools of thought" as mere "cultures," not viewing them as religions.

Will Benedict be a globe-trotter like John Paul II? There is a conference of Latin-American bishops coming up in Brazil next year, and he has been invited to Israel. One informed observer said that if Benedict is invited to travel to China or Russia, despite his age, he would go, "even if he had to go on a stretcher."

» Benedict "is not John Paul II, but he is the Pope....He has found his own voice," an Italian visitor to the Vatican told a reporter for Britain's Times. The paper remarked: "In his first year, the Pope has belied his earlier reputation as a doctrinally hardline Panzerkardinal [German for 'armored cardinal']. Web sites have sprung up offering mugs, baseball caps and car bumper stickers to devotees of the [new] pope."

» Spain's El País noted that, in his first year, the "intellectually refined" Benedict has not done anything "startling" - with the exception, perhaps, of what some Vatican-watchers viewed as his generous meeting last summer with Swiss theologian Hans Küng, one of the most vocal critics of the traditional Catholic Church. But because Benedict's accomplishments have been, as some believe, modest, the Spanish paper's Vatican observer cautioned "optimists" who had "illusions" that Benedict might be less hardline than he had been in his previous role as the main defender of church doctrine not to hold their breath. "He hasn't done it" - changed his stripes, that is. On such issues as "the ordainment of women, obligatory celibacy [for priests], [offering] the sacraments to divorced persons...[or] marriage for homosexuals" - don't expect Benedict to alter traditional Catholic doctrines, El País's reporter predicted.

» Italy's ANSA news service noted that the new pontiff has not hesitated to express himself on political issues, albeit diplomatically, with discretion. In addition to calling for peace in the Middle East, Iraq and the Darfur region of western Sudan - but what kind of pope wouldn't call for peace, El País's reporter wondered - Benedict noted that the time had come for "'concord' between the squabbling sides" in Italy's recent national elections, which revealed sharply divided right-wing and leftist political camps. (Telegraph and Le Figaro)

» The Sunday Times published a feature article about Pope Benedict penned by John Cornwell, the author of The Pope in Winter, a very critical look at John Paul II during his final years. As Cornwell sees it, Benedict is "still dwarfed by John Paul....Hence he is taking a softly, softly approach." Despite the fact that he met with Küng and "the journalist Oriana Fallaci, atheist, feminist and critic of Catholicism," which prompted "[m]any [Cathloics to] have seen in [these encounters] a change of heart,"Cornwell warned: "They could be wrong."

He noted that Benedict has replaced John Paul's "Polish mafia" of assistants with his own team of trusted aides, including a 56-year-old Bavarian housekeeper, Ingrid Stampa. "[A]n expert on the viola da gamba, an ancient form of cello[,]...Stampa has been known to play duets with Papa Ratzi, who has bought a baby grand for the papal apartments." Cornwell pointed out that, like "other'domestics' in the papal household, Stampa is a lay person who has taken a vow of celibacy. Although not a nun, she is what is known in the trade as a 'consecrated virgin.' Catholic optimists have speculated that she symbolizes Benedict's introduction of laywomen at the very highest levels in the church."

Cornwell noted that Benedict has disappointed Catholic hardliners by not purging from the church "liberals" who "adopt an à la carte approach to the faith." He also predicted that Benedict will "be tough on Islam, unlike John Paul, who favored an occasional visit to a mosque or toting a copy of the Koran for the cameras." Cornwell explained: "'We'll be nice to you,' he is saying, 'if you stop burning down our churches and killing our missionaries.' In Cologne last summer, [Benedict] declared that 'any country [that] claims not to respect other religions is not worthy of the name civilization.'"

Posted By: Edward M. Gomez, April 18 2006 at 09:20 AM
SFGATE.com

SPIEGEL ONLINE - April 18, 2006, 12:40 PM

One Year of Pope Benedict XVI

Ratzinger's Quiet Non-Revolution

By Alexander Smoltczyk

A year into his papacy and the radical shift many had expected when Pope Benedict XVI became pope last spring has yet to arrive. Instead, he has chosen discretion.

The newest entrance to the Vatican is 3.7 meters (12 feet) wide and 5 meters (16.4 feet) tall. It's a four-paneled bronze gate that looks like a row of book spines, and it's the German pope's first construction project. It looks almost as though one must go through the Word to get to the Church -- or at least into its underground parking garage.

The papal palace is empty on this Monday morning. Outside, on the other side of the Leonine Wall, the polling stations assembling votes in the Italian general election are about to close. The only sound inside is the ticking of a clock, surrounded by the silent turmoil of the allegorical frescoes covering walls and ceilings. "The one with the anchor around his neck is St. Clement," says the guardsman in the silence. Then he points to an elevator and says: "Pius XII." The clock continues to tick away.

The elderly prelate, who prefers to remain anonymous, sits in one of the palace's damask-lined offices and says that he remembers the days when Joseph Ratzinger was still making headlines as a pale "grand inquisitor." "There is a difference," he says, speaking almost completely accent-free German, "as to whether you play defensively with a strong team to back you up, or play a more individual game. He hasn't changed, but now he can show a side of himself that wasn't needed in the past."

One year ago when Joseph Ratzinger was elected to the papacy, both friend and foe expected different things from the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A shift would affect the entire church state. But when Pope Benedict XVI presented his encyclical, it was no reactionary manifesto, but a declaration of love: "Deus caritas est."

The German pope, once known in Italy by his German nickname, the Panzerkardinal, or "battle tank cardinal," spoke of the God-given gift of eros, of love and of good deeds, and managed to do so without mentioning the evils of contraception. The crusader against liberation theology left it up to the Italian bishops to handle the day to day and instead immersed himself in the psalms.

Everything is different, and yet nothing has changed. Every Wednesday, at 10:30 a.m. sharp, the pope gives a lecture. His topics are the same as those he addressed during his days in Tübingen. But today his lectures are open-air events attended by crowds numbering in the thousands and growing by the week.

It's difficult to love a German pope, but the Romans like him. Perhaps especially for the amount of attention he clearly devotes to his appearance. As born Catholics, Italians know full well that one's appearance and essence are inseparable. No detail is accidental. A pope's accessories say as much about the man as his writings. Don't they?

The prelate molds his face into an indulgent expression. He would put it differently, he says: "Small signs often have great significance. At least for those who see clearly. Watch out for such signs; they exist."

A QUESTION OF STYLE

One of the first to discover this pope's intolerance for breaches in etiquette was Massimiliano Gammarelli. The Gammarelli family has been tailoring for the Vatican since 1793. But Benedict XVI decided to change papal tailors and went to Euroclero, across the street from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Sant'Ufficio. The pope was apparently irritated over having to give his first audience wearing a cassock too short to cover his silk stockings.

"I would call it a new style," says Notker Wolf, who plays electric guitar in a Christian rock band and is Abbot Primate of the Order of St. Benedict. The windows of his office on Aventine Hill look out on the city of Rome. "Benedict is cautious with his health. He gives few audiences and he protects himself. He is wise enough to tell people not to trouble him with unnecessary things."

Ever since April 19, 2005, the date of Pope Benedict's election, Ratzinger has been treated in the curia -- often something of a hotbed of intrigue -- with distanced and amazed admiration, says Wolf. It's a demeanor that Italians often reserve for Germans, but it shouldn't be confused with affection. "I heard them saying: Finally we have a German again. He'll clean things up," Wolf reports.

But the new pope took his time. The first nine months of his papacy passed without any fundamental personnel decisions or statements of position. It was almost as if the infallible ex cathedra wanted to take a few steps back and carefully study the machinery. "Many were frustrated that so little actually happened, but many were also pleased." Benedictine monk Wolf cheerily blows his nose. Since February, he says, things have begun speeding up. The reform of the curia has been decided. The encyclical has been published, and one and a half million copies have already been sold. The number of members of the papal council was reduced, a high-ranking member of the curia was sent to Egypt as Nuntius, and 15 new cardinals were appointed, including -- to the horror of the papal bureaucracy -- only three veterans from the curia.

"Reform," says Ratzinger, "consists in the removal of the unnecessary."

COATS OF ARMS AND RENUNCIATION

Vatican chief herald and Tuscan nobleman Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo received a call only two days after the conclave which elected Ratzinger to the papacy. "The Holy Father and I discussed the elements of his personal coat of arms. The shell of St. Augustine, the moor's head, the bear and the bowl of St. Peter -- all were to be expected. But he also insisted on an innovation."

Benedict wanted the "tiara" -- the triple-layer papal crown in the coat of arms -- replaced by a mitre, the headwear worn by bishops, specifically the mitre he owns and that Paul VI wore on December 7, 1965, when he proclaimed the last reforms decreed by the Vatican II council.

It's a heraldic shift that points to an agenda. The three rings of the tiara originally represented the pope's universal claim to power, as "father of princes and kings, ruler of the world and representative of Christ on earth." Benedict wanted it one size smaller, as a sign of good will toward the Orthodox Church. Indeed, this pope seems to be seeking out dialogue with the East. As an icebreaker, he sent Cardinal Walter Kasper -- who is not only head of the papal committee responsible for relations with Judaism, but who also helps look after the Church in the Orient -- to Moscow as his personal representative.

Benedict's relationship with China is also changing. "We are experiencing a thaw in relations," says a church diplomat who travels to Beijing on a regular basis. "The government isn't afraid of the current pope. It was a different story with his predecessor. After all, he brought down Eastern Europe."

The Vatican is apparently considering moving the Apostolic Nunciature -- the Catholic Church's equivalent of an embassy -- from Taipei to Beijing before the 2008 Olympics. The church will likewise continue its policy of not appointing any bishops without first consulting informally with the Chinese. Beijing accepted the elevation of the Bishop of Hong Kong, who has been critical of the Chinese regime, to the post of cardinal without any serious objection.

Some would doubt that all of this is somehow reflected in Benedict's coat of arms. But omens and miracles are daily bread in the Catholic realm. March 24, the day that chief herald Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo was elevated to cardinal by Ratzinger, a former member of the Hitler Youth, was also the anniversary of a massacre in the Ardeatine Caves, in which the SS murdered Corderos's father after days of horrific torture. A coincidence? Not likely.

VELVET CAP AND VATICANUM

The Organization for the Protection of European Animals and Nature staged a protest against the pope shortly before Christmas. "The blood of innocent animals," said the group's (German) director, clings to Benedict's "medieval headdress." He was talking about the "Camauro," a small red cap lined with ermine, which first appeared in Renaissance paintings by Raphael.

Because he has always suffered from cold ears and can't afford to catch cold, the head of the church wore the cap to a general audience on December 21. But warding off the winter weather wasn't his only reason. The cap was also a signal, a reference to the Second Vatican Council 40 years earlier. It was a sign of reverence for the father of the council, John XXIII, who had reintroduced the Camauro look into the Vatican and took the cap with him into his glass-enclosed grave, where he is on display in a corner of St. Peter's Cathedral. The Sacrosanctum Concilium for some a sort of "1968" of Catholicism, was Ratzinger's fundamental theological experience. He was the only member of the conclave left who had played a leading role in the Second Vatican Council. As a result, the election of the pope was also a referendum on the "faithful interpretation" of the council's resolutions, on critical questions such as: How far can the church open up to the present? Hasn't it already gone far enough?

As a cardinal, Ratzinger repeatedly spoke about the "mistakes" of the post-council debate, of exaggerations and misinterpretations, especially among his German colleagues.

But in the sermon in which he wore the velvet cap, and during a Christmas address a short time later, Ratzinger professed his faith in the council, saying that an incorrect interpretation was responsible for the uproar within the church. The council, he said, was about "reform," not "separation."

Ratzinger was elected for this ability to set things straight, and he owed his election to the Italian "main electors" associated with Cardinal Camillo Ruini. They believed that no one but a professor from the land of Martin Luther could be trusted to focus attention on the church once again in a Europe of transcendental illiteracy. In Italy, Ratzinger had led the dialogue with agnostic intellectuals for 20 years.

"One couldn't discuss things with Wojtyla," says one cardinal. "Within a few minutes, he had already risen to visionary heights." But Benedict is a different story altogether. He understands non-believers. Unlike his predecessor, his solution is not to urge the non-faithful to kneel and pray. Instead, he believes that the Enlightenment needs some enlightenment. He is an intellectual who, instead of replacing the rational with the mystic, uses it in the service of faith.

SUNGLASSES AND ILLUMINATION

Last summer, to everyone's surprise, Benedict XVI had himself driven through Rome in a convertible. During the outing he wore designer sunglasses by Serengeti, which, according to the manufacturer, filter out short-wave light, helping prevent eye fatigue. And that's important for Ratzinger -- his eyes are vital for his writing.

Pope Benedict XVI writes and writes and writes. Letters, sermons, speeches, circulars and books. He is already the most-published pope in church history. This supreme shepherd is even capable of inserting a fundamental theological thought into the accreditation of the ambassador of Andorra. For him, truth can be found at his writing desk. If John Paul II was the pope of images, Benedict is the pope of words.

He writes all of his major sermons himself, and he completely rewrites prewritten speeches in his tiny academic handwriting, dubbed "picture books" by his office staff.

Being named the head of the Catholic Church has not truly separated Ratzinger from his lifelong work. He continues to struggle with his fundamental conflict, contrasting "truth" with the "relativism" of the modern age. At the center of his philosophy is man as a godly creation, not man as a replacement for God.

One of his talents is to switch planes in worldly debates. Instead of talking about condoms, Benedict XVI condemns sexuality without love. Instead of becoming explicitly involved in the Italian bishops' summer campaign against artificial insemination, he spoke about the founders of the church.

Although he continues to turn his attention to the dogmatic foundation, he also wants to be able to feel confident that there isn't too much bungling and tinkering going on elsewhere in the Vatican. This explains the curia reform and the removal of the unnecessary. "The rivalries over responsibilities," says one source from the Apostolic Palace, "resulted in a lot of back-biting."

CLEANING WEEK AND HOLY WEEK

The devil is in the details, the quartertones and the nuances. This explains why the director of music at St. Peter's Cathedral was replaced, supposedly at the urging of the pope. His successor will direct the choir for the first time on Good Friday, and he'll know that Benedict will never miss even a single discordant note.

Ratzinger watched his predecessor's stage-like appearances -- theatrical works of art drenched in color -- with almost Lutheran-esque suspicion. After all, a mass is no opera; and it's especially not an Italian opera. It's a belief that runs completely counter to the creed of Archbishop Piero Marini, the Vatican's event manager, who says: "At the beginning of the third millennium, the church must revel in beauty."

Ratzinger has already offered Marini three dioceses in an effort to get rid of him, but to no avail. For Ratzinger, who mistrusts the image, anything baroque is suspect. Pope John Paul II loved large-scale masses. Pope Benedict XVI does not.

It's no secret that Ratzinger regrets the disappearance of Latin from the mass, and that the mere thought of guitars being played in the church gives him hives. He wants the focus to be on the liturgy and not on how the message is imparted. Indeed, the structure of the liturgy was the main topic at the first bishops' synod led by Ratzinger in October.

"There is evidence of quiet shrinkage in the papal liturgies in St. Peter's Cathedral," says church historian Monsignore Walter Brandmüller. "The folklore elements have been pushed into the background, replaced by more of the sacral, more theological depth and tradition." Of course, Brandmüller adds, the council calls for the Latin liturgy and the celebrant's turning to the East instead of to the people. The only problem, says Brandmüller, is that actual practice has diverged from policy over the years.

THE POPE AND BECKENBAUER

Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa, sat next to Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for years. He knows the man. This is what he had to say about Benedict on "Telepace," a program aired on Vatican television: "The church has found its Beckenbauer," a reference to Germany's "emperor" of soccer. "He pushes us forward with his passes. He knows how best to use his teammates' talents. He is a reserved director and a reliable midfield player."

Instead of jetting from continent to content, from one gigantic mass to the next, this pope prefers to till the church garden. He wants to leave a dogmatically and organizationally strengthened Vatican for his successor, as long as he has enough time left to achieve his goals. In other words, anyone still hoping for a papal shift on issues such as contraception, ordination of women or granting Holy Communion to those who have been remarried will have to wait for Ratzinger's successors.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

GETTING IT RIGHT ABOUT FR. REESE AND HIS RESIGNATION


This may seem out of place here, but I am re-posting this bit here because almost every other wrap-up article on the Pope's first 12 months cites the resignation of Father Thomas Reese as editor of the Jesuit magazine America as an 'isolated' instance of Benedict showing his Panzer-Pope side.

For example, a female theologian is quoted in the Kieron Wood article earlier n this page as saying: ‘‘Thankfully, the forced resignation of Fr Thomas Reese, the Jesuit editor-in-chief of America magazine, has not led to the purge of theologians that might have been expected by the ‘grand inquisitor’" - all but attributing the "force" to the Pope!

Last March, John Allen interviewed the Jesuit Superior-General, Fr. Kolvenbach, and asked him specifically about this:

---

One early controversy of his papacy centered on Fr. Tom Reese from America magazine. What are the lessons of that episode for Jesuit-sponsored publications?
America magazine, under the competent and dynamic guidance of Fr. Tom Reese, believed that the best service to a mature Catholic public was to let the two sides of a controversial question to defend their views. … However, this orientation did not meet the approval of some pastorally concerned priests who were worried about a negative effect on the faith-growth of the Catholics. They expect that Jesuit publications will offer clear standings to meet the questions of the day, avoiding confusion and relativism. Unhappily, instead of changing his policy, Fr. Reese resigned. This episode takes us back to St. Ignatius when he speaks about sentire cum ecclesia (feeling with the church). …

Did the initial concerns about America come from the United States rather than the Vatican?
Yes, from clergy outside the Jesuits in the United States, including some in senior positions.

---

It is clear that even Father Reese's superior, the head of all the Jesuits, finds Father Reese's conduct in this respect unfortunate, and worse, that he is going against the order's founder's own dictum of sentire cum ecclesia.

So why is the Pope made the villain in all this?

The next time you come across another reference to America and Father Reese, remember what Fr. Kolvenbach said, and even better, remember what St. Ignatius admonished his priests!

And that not all Jesuits, thankfully, are as self-willed as Fr. Reese, since we are told that the Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica in Rome is vetted by the Vatican itself and used, in fact, as an unofficial mouthpiece by the Vatican, as in the recent analysis of the Muslim problem.

[G][/G]Post 720 by Benefan (above) had me chuckling wildly in places. It probably contains factual errors, but had its moments of humor...I just wonder:
[1] how true is the statement that Benedict has already offered 3 dioceses to Piero Marini to get rid of him - with no results? [2] And who is the new music director of St Peter's who apparently had his first appearance on Good Friday (Benedict's excellent musical ear here brought into the picture)? I still saw Liberti conducting the men of the Sistine Chapel in the cold night air at Via Crucis on Friday, but St Peter's is supposed to have its own choir and another director. On the other hand - according to the Catholic Encyclopedia - the Cappella Sistina traditionally has to take part in the liturgy when the Pope is the main celebrant.

So who was removed? Liberti or the ST Peter's man? And did a Mass take place at all on Good Friday in St Peter's, as the Spiegel said?

From Canada

Pope Benedict's First Year: An Impressive Defense of Life and Family
Has stated categorically that the Catholic Church's "principal focus" in the public arena is life and family

By John-Henry Westen

VATICAN CITY, April 18, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pro-life and pro-family leaders the world over could not be happier with the leadership on issues of life and family which Pope Benedict XVI has given during the first year of his pontificate. Following in the footsteps of his predecessor John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, has been an outspoken warrior in the culture wars.

Progressing from his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, where then Cardinal Ratzinger had already developed a very impressive repertoire of teachings concerning abortion and homosexuality (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05111603.html), Pope Benedict has since used every opportunity to promote the culture of life.

Just after his election to the pontificate, Pope Benedict seized the teaching moment on the papacy to note that even popes may not change the Church's constant teaching against abortion (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jan/06013102.html). During the first baptisms which he performed as Pope, Benedict spoke passionately against the "culture of death" (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jan/06013102.html). And even in his first ever visit as Pope to a Jewish synagogue, the Pope encouraged Jews and Christians to work together to defend life and family. "Our rich common heritage and our fraternal and more trusting relations call upon us to join in giving an ever more harmonious witness and to work together on the practical level for the defence and promotion of human rights and the sacredness of human life, for family values, for social justice and for peace in the world," he said. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/aug/05081901.html)

In the first book he published as Pope, Benedict emphasized that the fight against abortion must continue. Significantly he wrote, "There is no such thing as 'small murders'" www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/06022702.html).

His statements on these matters have been issued with a clarity and precision which does not allow for confusion and misinterpretation.

While many Catholic religious leaders in the West seem confused about the role of the Church in political life (some suggesting by their actions that support for affirmative action may be equivalent or more important than the right to life), the Pope has stated categorically that the Catholic Church's "principal focus" in the public arena is life and family. On March 30, this year he stated "As far as the Catholic Church is concerned the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable." He then named specifically the right to life, the safeguarding of the traditional family and parents' right to educate their children. (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/mar/06033008.html)

Moreover, on March 20, the Pope noted that attacks on preborn children which include abortion and destructive research on embryos are "today's gravest injustice" (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05111603.html).

He was also crystal clear in December when he told Latin American bishops "it is necessary to help everyone to realize the intrinsic evil of the crime of abortion which, in attacking human life at its beginnings, is also an act of aggression against society itself" (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/06022702.html). And with the precision of a theologian, Benedict XVI answered the nagging question about the right to life of embryos created by in vitro fertilization. "The Magisterium of the Church has constantly proclaimed the sacred and inviolable nature of each human life, from conception to natural end," he said. "This moral judgement also holds at the beginning of an embryo's life, even before it is implanted in the mother's womb." (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/06022702.html)

And despite vehement criticisms which included his being named, "Anti-Gay Person of the Year" (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05111603.html) and being compared to Hitler by an Irish Senator (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05111603.html), the Pope has not shied away from using clear language in his teachings.

Homosexual activists were outraged last November when the Pope issued a letter stating that marriage is between a man and a woman and can "admit no alternatives" (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05111603.html). They were even more upset in June, when he referred to "legitimate families". He said, "It is a grave error to obscure the value and the functions of the legitimate family based on marriage, attributing to other forms of union inappropriate forms of legal recognition, for which there is no real social need" (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112105.html).

Also raising eyebrows in June, the Holy Father noted that the Church with its teachings on sex within marriage and fidelity has "the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jun/05061001.html). And in August he committed the unimaginably politically incorrect act of encouraging Catholics to have large families (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/06022702.html).

The Pope also ensured through his appointments that the life and family concerns will remain a top priority for Church leaders. Shortly after being elected Pope, Benedict XVI made a bishop of a U.S. priest who made headlines for saying he would deny communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians including presidential candidate John Kerry (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112105.html). Likewise, the fifteen men the Pope elevated to the College of Cardinals in March have themselves had much to say in defense of life and family (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/060224a.html).

[This article looks pretty good.]

On anniversary, pontiff is winning over flock

Former disciplinarian modulates message for new mission

By Stephen Weeke
Rome Bureau Chief
NBC News
Updated: 8:33 a.m. ET April 19, 2006

ROME — Asked a year ago what they might have envisioned after a year of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger’s papacy, many liberal Roman Catholics might have imagined a bleak picture of a repressive church, and conservative Catholics might have described a church re-invigorated by a thorough house-cleaning of wayward thought and behavior.

Neither of these scenarios has come to pass, as Pope Benedict XVI proves to be a much different person as the pope than he was as a cardinal.

Those who know him say it’s not his personality that has changed, but his job description; that what we are seeing is a man of deep faith and dedication to duty, rising to the huge increase in responsibility that accompanies the change from being an advisor to the throne, to sitting there himself.

Defender of the faith
As the cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his job was to ensure that the official teachings of the church were followed throughout Roman Catholicism. When theologians or preachers wandered off the theological reservation, it was his job to either rein them in or shut them down.

That work was almost entirely intellectual, requiring constant reading, study, and analysis of past and present interpretations of the religion.

As the defender of the ideas of the faith, Ratzinger earned a rigorous reputation for sharp analysis and even sharper criticism in the face of unorthodox, or liberal, or pick-and-choose “cafeteria” Catholicism. For this he earned the nickname “God’s Rottweiler.”

Ratzinger served as Pope John Paul II’s head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for most of his papacy. All those years that the Polish pope spent encountering and performing for millions of people, Ratzinger spent with books and writings. For all the compassion and altruism that his friends attest to, the cardinal did not publicly confront the challenges of observing those teachings in everyday life around the world.

Yet, ascending to the throne of Peter, and stepping into the shoes of the fisherman, Benedict shed the cassock of the cardinal, and took on the weight of a billion souls.

Modulated message
As the shepherd of the world’s largest religious flock, Benedict deliberately modulated his message to suit his mission, and so far that message has been about the love of Christ, and how it’s worth more than anything the temporal world could possibly ever offer.

“I think people have been pleasantly surprised. It’s interesting how he talks," said John Wilkins, former editor of Britain’s foremost Catholic magazine, “The Tablet.” "In Cologne, (for Germany’s Youth Day last summer), with all those young people, he never wagged his finger at them. His first encyclical about love doesn’t point the finger at anybody.”

Wilkins was referring to Benedict’s first encyclical “God is Love.” The encyclical — a teaching letter of highest papal authority — was eagerly anticipated by Vatican watchers who expected it to give some clues about the direction of the new papacy.

The soft tone of the document — a meditation on love and the greater need for charity in an unjust world — surprised many who were ready to buttonhole Benedict as a doctrinal hardliner.

“It’s a positive approach pulling people back to what Christianity is all about. This is a man who has been seized by the truth of Christianity as a very young man, and he wants to give that to the world,” Wilkins said.

Youth appeal
Benedict’s impact on the young has been surprising. The rock concert-like screams and cheers he is met with by young people are as loud for him as they were for John Paul.

“He’s really cute. He seems really friendly and nice,” said Renee Lacoby, a young woman visiting St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday with a group of fellow students from St. Mary’s College in Wellington, New Zealand. A friend of Lacoby's added, “He’s really cool.”

Not what you’d expect for a reserved and bookish German intellectual, who just turned 79.

A group of students from North Carolina felt the same way. “I like how he brings a lot of energy, he seems like he really connects with the people,” said Mary Rose Bode, a twenty-something young woman from Raleigh. “I feel like he’s going to live up to everyone’s expectations, and do a lot of great things.”

Her friend Mary Crowson agreed, “I like him a lot, I think he has a lot to live up to from the last one, cause we all knew him, but I think he’s doing a good job.”

Crowson’s view seems to the consensus now, even among older Catholics and church-watchers.

"He realizes that the only way to fill such large shoes is just to be your own man, which is what he has been doing, he has not been trying to copy the style of someone who probably no one can copy,” said veteran pope-watcher Philip Pullella, Reuter’s Chief Vatican correspondent.

Gift for simplification
Benedict’s tightly controlled physical poise, which often presents as timidity, seems to be have developed into an appealing stage-presence of its own, akin to how Al Gore’s robotic lack of movement became funny in itself.

But there is one crowd-pleasing area where he is surpassing his predecessor, and which is making a big impact. It’s the clarity with which he expresses his reasoning on subjects that are often very complex.

Both in written sermons and off-the-cuff remarks, he states his positions with step-by-step logical progressions that are readily understandable by everyone. He has a real gift for simplification.

“He is, after all, a German professor, and he has the ability to speak beautifully about very difficult subjects. Again, at Cologne, he gave this wonderful address to young people all about the Eucharist and the Mass, and that takes some doing, but he did it brilliantly,” said Wilkins. “He has the capacity to make his thoughts take wing, and does that in his books, and he can do that in his talks.”

A year after his election to the highest position in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict has smoothly left behind the notoriety of the moral watchdog for the benign amiability of a religious retriever with a kind and steadfast disposition.

[Modificato da benefan 19/04/2006 18.31]

The article above is quite good and accurate. What a rarity! I didn't appreciate the comparison of Papa to Al Gore but otherwise the article was very positive. Please note the comments by some of the ladies interviewed that they think Papa is cute and cool. Sooner or later it is going to sink in to the mainstream media that 1)he IS cute (way beyond cute if any of us were to be asked), 2)he is cool, and 3)his popularity is huge already and growing exponentially each day.