POTERE BENEDETTO - BENEDICT'S POWER OR BLESSED POWER
Herewith is a translation of an article in the German Catholic newspaper, Die Tagespost, which drew on material that earlier appeared in the Italian magazine Panorama on 11/24/05:
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Benedict’s Power:
The German Pope is considered in Italy as the universal moral authority - No one comes close to him in that respect
By Armin Schwibach
How much weight does Benedict carry? While the Pope is reiterating his respect for the lay State, the Ratzingerian camp is growing in the political arena.
“How much weight does Benedict carry?” The actual title of the Italian magazine Panorama’s cover story last week was clear: The German Pope has become an important factor in the somewhat confused Italian political landscape.
It has been over a decade since the old political parties were destroyed in the courtrooms of Milan. “Tangentopoli” was the term used then for the corruption and party financing that was behind the verdicts. In turn, that upheaval was facilitated by the end of the Soviet empire, which invalidated many important criteria for party identity. Socialists, liberals, Christian Democrats, Communists – they all broke up into small and yet-again-smaller factions and lost their cultural influence.
Even the Catholic Church at that time lost its political reference point- the old Democrazia Cristiana, which had been the most important populist party, but could no longer serve as a middleman for churchly and papal demands, since it had lost its cultural relevance.
Berlusconi and his party – which is really not a party but a club, or a movement, which follows certain house rules – recruited the “homeless” from the socialist and Christian-Democratic camps who would otherwise have completely lost any power.
In the increasing secularization of a modern consumer society, in a decade of growing wealth for a few and widening comfort for many, even as more groups of underprivileged emerge, the Church itself needed renewal.
Decisive for such a renewal was and is the intervention of Cardinal Camilo Ruini, chairman of the Italian Bishops Conference. Ruini recognized that the community of Catholic faithful that had become a cultural minority in Italy must find the way to establish a new cultural identity. The changes started by John Paul II did its part.
The Pope has become the universal moral authority. In Italy now, anyone can be attacked, politically or demagogically. Only one figure can’t: Il Papa. The Pope.
And now, both the nation and the world have to reckon with the “Benedict phenomenon.” The masses of people who want to hear this Pope continue to grow. Since he was elected, the number of people attending his audiences and Angelus prayers have nearly doubled from the year before. Every Sunday and Wednesday, his catecheses and his addresses are carried on television. All his activities and travels are covered comprehensively. Even his tailor and his shoe supplier have become topics of public discussion.
Benedict XVI has turned into a great and unique communicator, whom no one can ignore- neither children nor young people, Christians of all confessions nor representatives of secular thinking, self-proclaimed and genuine intellectuals nor the mass media.
For Joaquin Navarro-Valls, Vatican press spokesman, the secret of Benedict’s power of communication is his inexhaustible capacity for dialog. Furthermore, in an age of ambiguity, he speaks clearly. He fascinates through the many ways in which he can express himself but always with simplicity.
Benedict is a media phenomenon – despite of or precisely because he is demanding. One must hear him out. Benedict “harvests” everyone whom he wishes to draw to him, anyone who is willing to engage him in dialog. No one can deny that.
As Pietrangelo Buttafuoco wrote in the Panorama article: “The priest eaters of yore are no longer around, because this time, the priest happens to be the finest and the most profound there is.”
Benedict is so “in” that it has become a status symbol in Italy to have met with the Pope before he became Pope. For instance, important Italian philosophers like Massimo Cacciari or Emanuele Severino to icons of the secular establishment like Paolo Flores d’Arcais, founder of the outstanding cultural-political magazine Micromegas, can boast that they are on good footing with the ex-Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.
Italy has turned into Benedict’s Italy. “Potere Benedetto” is Panorama’s title for its inside-page article in an obvious double-entendre. It could mean “Blessed Power” or “Benedict’s Power”, depending on what you choose it to mean.
But both aspects combine in the Pope himself and his teaching, which he understands to be the Faith as it is inspired by the heart, by reason and by the community of the faithful itself.
The universal church as well as the Italian church has been “ratzingerized.” How the Pope will carry out what the Italian press has been calling the “Benedict project” will be known not only through his nominations, but above all, in the way he addresses institutions and entities within the Church as well as in the outside world – clearly, with firmness and simultaneous kindness. He showed this when he addressed the Austrian bishops recently.
Anyone who tries to generalize what he tells them, thereby doing exactly what he warns them not to do, namely, not to water down the Church’s teaching, will not succeed.
Benedict is the great mediator, the man with the cutting accent and the intellectual openmindedness towards that lay society that he intends to gradually draw toward and integrate into the life of the Church that he leads.
In Italy that task falls on Cardinal Ruini most of all. In this respect, the words and pleas of the Cardinal echo that of the Pope himself. The clever and sensitive nature of the architect of the Italian church's recent electoral victory complements Benedict’s political sense, and together, they have become decidedly political factors in Italy.
Indicative of their relation is that Benedict has spared no words in acknowledging the work of the Italian bishops: Ruini made known the Church’s stand openly and helped defeat the recent attempt to liberalize Italy’s laws on assisted reproduction.
Ruini is now propagating, with Benedict’s support, the idea of religion in civic life. Ruini knows that there is no longer any Demmocrazia Cristiana as a party or as a force, and that the Church needs to raise a new cultural generation. Ruini will not allow himself to be shaken by any “paper bullets” that the radical camps may choose to launch. He knows that he has the Pope behind him in all this.
The Church in Italy has become a power that is not bound or defined by party politics.
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To complement this story, please read the Time-Europe article this week on Cardinal Ruini, with the link indicated by Benefan in "People around the Pope".