Catholics flock to the Vatican for Pope's 80th
By Malcolm Moore in Rome and
Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
The Daily Telegraph, London
04/14/06


Thousands of Roman Catholics were descending on Rome last night as the Vatican prepared to celebrate the Pope's 80th birthday.

The faithful from Benedict XVI's native Germany were arriving bearing gifts including bone china and teddy bears dressed in papal garb.

They were to be joined by many more from around the world flocking to pay tribute at a special Mass tomorrow to a pope whose calm manner and ability to quietly go about his business has won him many plaudits in the two years since the death of his predecessor John Paul II.

The Pope will then attend a birthday concert of the music of Mozart and Dvorak at the Vatican on the eve of his actual birthday on Monday.

Dr Joaquin Navarro-Valls, a key member of the late pope's stunningly successful papacy and the head of the Vatican's communications department for 22 years, led the tributes yesterday to Benedict, describing him as a man of "elevated, perhaps even unreachable, composure: discreet, alert and Roman".

His words formed part of a growing chorus of praise for the Pope, who has surprised almost everyone with his firm but gentle leadership.

Dr Navarro-Valls said Benedict's character stemmed from his Bavarian birth, which gave him "both the shy and sober character typical of Northern people and the genuine vitality and fantasy of the Mediterranean."

He added: "It is his ability to fuse these different qualities that was one of the reasons for the deep trust and friendship which he inspired in John Paul II. Their friendship was deeper than anyone perceived."

Despite the uproar the Pope caused last year with his comments about Islam at Regensberg University, Dr Navarro-Valls said Benedict "has that strange and admirable quality of preferring to be shocked than to shock". [The correct translation from Italian is 'to be surprised than to surprise'!]

His opinion was echoed by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, who said the Pope had a "robustness and clarity in his teaching" that stemmed from "his noble language, and its efficiency of persuasion." He added: "He has always defended simple faith over the ambiguous and erroneous doctrines from the so-called wise men of this world."

Several Vatican commentators have noted that Benedict, who was known as "God's Rottweiler" when he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for his fierce protection of traditional doctrine, has even managed to reconcile the Church's Left-wing.

Fr Timothy Radcliffe, the former liberal head of the Dominican Order, and a possible successor to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as the head of the English and Welsh bishops, said: "I think it is encouraging that Benedict seems to be underplaying the role. He has no desire to be a superstar in the way that John Paul II was."

Fr Radcliffe said the Pope had "found it painful to be cast as a Rottweiler".

However, Benedict does not appear to have entirely lost his teeth. In the past month, anti-Pope graffiti has sprung up in several Italian cities, including the highly Catholic Naples, because of his strong stance against gay marriage. In addition, he has heavily censured a leading liberation theologian before a visit to Brazil.

As well as the Vatican's special Mass in St Peter's Square tomorrow, there will be a Mass celebrated at Benedict's birthplace of Marktl am Inn. The town intends to rename its market square after the Pope, and to open the 18th-century house where he was born on April 16, 1927, as a museum.

Fr Georg Ratzinger, the Pope's older brother, has made the trip from Germany to Rome. He said yesterday that he would give his brother a special hooded mantle, hand-embroidered by Bavarian nuns. "But above all, I wish him good health," he said.

The Pope's back at the Vatican -
I love his expression as he leafs through his book!


Here is a translation of the address delivered by Cardinal Schoenborn at the presentation yesterday of the Pope's book on Jesus. It is remarkable both for its synthesis of the main points made in the book and for the observations he gives us about Joseph Ratzinger, the man he has known as professor, bishop, CDF Prefect and now as Pope. .

Ratzinger's Jesus
is the Jesus of Peter,
the Son of the Living God
By Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn
Archbishop of Vienna


It is no surprise that the Pope speaks of Jesus. That the successor of the Apostle Peter perpetuates today his confession to Jesus - because that is the nucleus of his mission.

"You are Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the living God!" (Mt 16,16): this solemn confession about the identity of Jesus of Nazareth is the rock foundation on which stands the Church of Christ.

So it is no surprise that the successor of Kephas, Peter, the man-rock on which Jesus promised to found His Church, should repeat and renew this confession and announce it to the Church of today.

And so, that the Pope speaks of Jesus should not be surprising at all. This is his first and most important mission. But what is surprising is how he does it.

On the cover of the book, one sees first the name Joseph Ratzinger, followed by Benedict XVI, the name he chose on April 19, 2005, when he was elected Pope.

It is not the Pope that speaks here, not even the former cardinal, bishop, professor and priest, but the believer, the Christian, Joseph Ratzinger.

And so that this should be clear from the beginnning, he concludes the Preface with the simple notice: "Surely I do not have to say expressly that this book is not in any way a magisterial act, but is solely the expression of my eprsonal research into 'the face of the Lord" (Ps 27,8). (p. 22)

A book on Jesus that is completely personal, therefore. At the start, the author says he arrived at this book "after a long interior journey" (p. 10). But the man and the Christian Joseph Ratzinger is also Benedict XVI. And it is with this double name that he signs the Preface, and with which this book goes out to the whole world, the object of great media attention.

The book will be read as the Pope's book on Jesus. And why not? He is not the highest-ranking official of a multinational that is active throughout the world. He is the successor to him whom Jesus asked: "Simon, do you love me?"(Jn 21,15).

So why should it not be the Pope, who has been called in a special way, to talk about his Master and Lord? Is it not him, after all, who should be, more than anyone, full of friendship with Christ? As we will see, it is precisely this which is the center of gravity, the core, of his book on Jesus. He calls it "intimate friendship with Jesus" and says "everything depends on that" (p.11).

So, is this the testimony of an 'intimate friendship'? An altogether subjective approach? A personal testimony, the kind of which there are plenty, intended for those who are 'outside', a form of devotional literature that is most often indigestible? But this would not be the kind of literature that one knows of Ratzinger.

He is not inclined to any form of subjectivism, and any exhibition of his own personal interiority is alien to him. Like St. Thomas Aquinas, the flame of his life of faith is hidden, it is not exposed to the curiosity of biographers.

Up front, one sees that tireless intllectual confrontation, the effort of conception, the force of argument, the passion for an objective search for truth, the effort to give an answer to all who ask and look for one, wanting to know perhaps 'the reason for their own hope' (1 Pt 3,15).

That is why the Pope comes to the agora, into the arena of public debate. In the Areopagus (cf Acts 17,22) that is the plurality of opinions today, he presents his vision of Jesus. The Pope tells his readers that which in the Areopagi of todays's publio debates should be obvious, but he also adds a high criterion of quality.

"Therefore anyone is free to contradict me. All I ask of the readers is that earnest of sympathy without which there can be no understanding" (p. 22).

The contradictions are not lacking. In all aspects, from the beginning, Jesus was 'a sign of contradiction" (Lk 2,34). Is his figure coherent? Is the rock of Peter's confession to Jesus as Israel's Messiah not friable? Do we really know anything for certain about the man from Galilee? What friendship can one have with a 'ghost', which would be akin to 'groping in the void'? (p. 11).

And so the question of historical credibility is of vital importance, particularly for him who, out of two billion Christians, carries the onus of being the one to whom Jesus has entrusted 'the keys of the Kingdom' (Mt 16,19).

On the public mediatic market, there are always apparently new 'discoveries' on sale that purport to reveal a completely new story about Jesus of Nazareth. The Biblical and Church representation of Christ is supposed to be nothing more than a fraud by priests and a swindle by the Church. It is claimed that the 'truth' about Jesus is being stifled by obscure conspirators, localized preferentially to the Vatican.

Doubts about the historical credibility of the Jesus of the Gospels have come even from 'proper quarters." For more than 200 years, historical crticism of the Bible has called into question almost everything that is said about Jesus in the Bible. His figure seems to dissolve, like a shadow in the fog, like an 'icon that has faded' (p.11).

The faith of the Church in Jesus Christ is then made to appear as a posterior 'divinization' of Jesus of Nazareth, of whom nothing is really known for sure.

"This impression, meanwhile, has profoundly penetrated the common consciousness of Christianity. Such a situation is tragic for the faith, because it makes its authentic point of reference uncertain" (p. 11).

Suppose instead, one can show the historical crsdibility of the Gospels and their image of Jesus? Our author is convinced that this is possible. For this, his own biography has prepared him in the best possible ways.

For him, the Bible has always been the core and the center of theology. In the many years that I have known him as professor, bishop, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I have never seen him without his 'Nestle,' the critical edition of the New Testament in Greek. I do not know any other professor of theology who has such an intimate familiarity with the Bible.

For 14 years, he presided ove the Pontifical Biblical Commission which brings together Catholioc Biblical scholars of the first rank. He knows the 'historico-critical' method of Biblical exegesis.

And if he is critical about it, it is not out of fear, but out of a conviction that is well-founded and fully reasoned out, that this method should recognize its own limitations.

"I wish, nonetheless, to say," he writes, "that this book is not written against modern exegesis, but with great acknowledgment of what it has given us and continues to give us" (p. 22).

He knows what he speaks of. His book shows, on every page, how much familiarity he has with the work being done in the Biblical sciences. It is this very familiarity that has reeinforced his conviction that one can trust the Gospels.

He has therefore made the attempt "to present the Jesus of the Gospels as the real Jesus, as the 'historicla Jesus' in the true and proper sense. I am convinced and I hope that even the reader will find that this figure is much more logical and from the historical point of view, even more understandable, than the reconstructions that we have been confronted with in the past several decades. I maintain that precisely this Jesus - that of the Gospels - is a figure who makes historical sense and is historically convincing" (p. 20 ff).

Our author starts from this assumption. In that light, he reads the life of Jesus, from the baptism on the Jordan to the Transfiguration, the interval of His public life, with which this first volume deals, in anticipation of the second volume which will deal with the beginning and the end of Jesus's earthly life.

Given his confidence in the historical reliability of the Gospels and their image of Jesus, obviously an even more radical question is raised about the true center of the discussion regarding Jesus.

If Jesus were as the Gospels present Him, is He therefore credible as a person? The understanding He had about Himself, as we find it reliably reported in the Gospels - was it not an excessive supervaluation of Himself, an arrogant presumption?

After 200 years of historical criticsm of the Bible, we can, with Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, rest assured of the solid historical credibility of the Gospels. The countless fantasizing images of Jesus as a revolutionary, a meek social reformer, teh secret lover of Mary Magdalene, etc., can all be tranquilly deposited in the ossuary of history.

But the great question remains. Is Jesus coherent, is He internally consistent? The understanding He had of Himself, of His identity - could it not be an enormous mistake that Christianity has been following for 200 years?

Judaism and Islam are scandalized by this very claim [that Jesus is God]. To answer that question is the true challenge posed today to the Successor of Peter (and Paul) in today's public Aereopagus .

Is Jesus Himself credible? And if He is, "what has He brought us?" (p. 73). Why should He be more than just another prophet? This 'more' about Jesus is not a discovery of His followers who then made Him God. He Himself calls Himself 'the Son' (pp 386-396), in an absolute sense, one that applies only to Him. But why can He not - or will not - step back into the moree modest role of the founder of a religion among many others? And here is the real outrage [from non-believers] - more radical than all the other outrages that his disciples drew, from the very beginning.

Is Jesus Himself coherent and credible? According to the personal testimony of Pope Benedict, one of his impulses to write this book came from reading the book of 'the great erudite Jew Jacob Neusner" (p. 98), Disputa immaginaria tra un rabbino e Gesu (Piemme, Casale Monferraro 1996, originally, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus: An Intermillennial Interfaith Exchange, New York 1993).

What Pope Benedict says about that book is so essential to understanding his own book about Jesus that I wish to cite from it at some length.

Jacob Neusner, our aothor says, "imagines himself to be among the audience at the Sermon on the Mount and seeks afterward to have a conversation with Jesus...This debate, conducted with respect and frankness between a believing Jew and Jesus, son of Abraham - more than all other interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount known to me - opened my eyes to the greatness of the Word of Jesus and to the choice which the Gospel places before us. And so...I wish to enter, as a Christian, into this conversation between the rabbi and Jesus, in order to understand better, starting with that, what is authentically Jewish and what constitutes the mystery of Jesus" (p. 99).

Cardinal Ratzinger already thought about this 'trialog' when he defined the book of Rabbi Neusner as "the essay most important for the Jewish-Christian dialog that has been published in the last decade."

His book on Jesus, published now, fulfills that promise. More than the discussions on exegetical methods, he found the conversation with the rabbi more important. The first belong, in a certain way, to preambles, to preliminaries. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI clarifies these methods, synthetically and rapidly, in his Preface, indicating the merits and the limitations of historico-critical approaches to Jesus.

But already, from the Introduction, from "a first look at the mystery of Jesus,' he is there, at the center, where the Person of Jesus Himself stands. And at the heart of his meditation on Jesus, the rabbi had a decisive importance for him.

"Let us now try to grasp the essentials of this conversation in order to know jesus better and to understand more our Jewish brothers" (p. 136).

Rabbi Neusner, "in his interior dialog, had followed Jesus the whole day and now retires for prayer and the study of the Torah with the Jews of a small city, in order to later discuss the things he had heard - always within the context of contemporaneity across the millennia - with the local rabbi." (p. 136).

Now, they compare the teachings of Jesus with those of the Jewish tradition. The rabbi asks Neusner "if Jesus teaches the same things" as tradition.

Neusner: "Not exactly, but almost." What did he omit? "Nothing."
Then what did he add? "Himself."

That's the imaginary dialog. And it is this very point from which Neusner, in his very respectful encounter with Jesus, backs away, frightened.

He expresses horror at what Jesus tells the rich young man: "If you want to be perfect, then go, sell what you have, give the money to the poor, then follow me" (cf Mt 19,20).

Everything depends, Nuesner says, "on who is meant by this 'me'" (Disputa immaginaria..., p. 114). Our author completes this thought: "This is the central reason why Neusner does not want to follow Jesus, why he remains faithful to 'eternal Israel'" (p. 137).

"The centrality of Jesus's 'I' in His pronouncements" is the reason, as Rabbi Neusner writes in the preface to his book, why he would not have joined 'the circle of Jesus's Apostles' if he had lived 'in the first century in the land of Israel'" (op. cit. p. 7).

And he would ahve taken this decision, "out of good and important reasons", he would have defended it reasonably "with arguments and facts," Rabbi Neusner says, in the first lines of his book (ibidem, p.7).

Was Neusner's No to following Jesus, formulated in a manner that is very respectful and comprehensive, and quite clear, motivated primarily by faith or by reason itself? Both, it appears to be.

To him, saying No to Jesus equating Himself with God is a proof of his faith, whose reasonableness can be explained "with arguments and facts." Neusner justifies his courteous No with religious as well as social reasons. That which Jesus asks of his followers is something "only God can ask of me" (Disputa immaginaria...p. 78).

And that which He asks would lead ultimately to placing the social form of Israel in danger as it is prescribed in the Torah: "On the Sermon on the Mount, one cannot build a state or a social order" (p.146).

But Rabbi Neusner is so important for the book of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI because he, Neusner, opposes a clear rejection of all attempts to split up the historical Jesus and the Jesus of Church dogma.

It was not the Church, not even the Apostle Paul, who elevated an itinerant preacher in Galilee - gentle, liberal, prophetic, apocalpyptic, or however else He may be described - to the rank of Son of God, but He himself asserts the claim, in everything He says and does, that only God can make. And this is the central theme of this book.

It has to do with the question Jesus posed at Caesarea Philippi: "And you, who do you say that I am?" (Mt 16,15).

What did Jesus bring us? A new social order? His Kingdom is not of this world, He explains. He already said No to an expectation of salvation that was purely immanent and earthly, when he turned down the temptations, and therefore, the tempter.

This has something to do, as well, with the criticism, often misunderstood, that the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made of the so-called 'theologies of liberation."

In the praiseworthy chapter on the temptations of Jesus, we read: "No kingdom on earth is the Kingdom of God, which is the condition of man's absolute salvation..and whoever claims to be able to save the world is going along with Satan's deception and would allow the world to fall into the devil's hands" (p. 73).

But what then, what has Jesus brought us if not a better world? "Here, however, arises the big question that will accompany us in this whole book: What really has Jesus brought us, if He has not brought peace to the world, the well-being of all, a better world? What did He bring us? The answeer is very simple: God. He brought God" (p. 73). Is that all? "It is only hardness of heart that would make us say that this is little" (p. 73).

"The fundamental commandment of Israel is also that of Christians: one must adore God only" (p. 74). This is the prerequisite for the commandment to love our neighbor. Without the primacy of God, man's dignity has no meaning. "Jesus has brought us God, and with Him, the truth about our destiny and our origin" (p. 73).

But what does all this say to us about Jesus? Have not all the founders of religion brought knowledge and wisdom from above? In his introductory "first look" at "the mystery of Jesus", our author faces the question of how Jesus "brings God" (pp 26-33).

In the Old TEstament, Moses is the mediator of knowledge about God, of the will of god. He was not the oracle of an obscure future, but a friend and confidant of God, "him to whom the Lord spoke face to face" (dt 34,10). Only that way could he become the mediator of the Torah, of the will of God.

Moses announced there would be "a prophet like me...", one who would "talk face to face (with God), as a friend does with a friend" (p. 29). To be in in immediate relationship with God: that would be the sign by which to recognize the promised Messiah. Jesus is that propmised new Moses.

"He lives in the presence of God not just as a friend but as Son - he lives in profound unity with the Father" (p. 31). "If we set aside this authentic center, then one cannot grasp the specificity of the figure of Jesus, who would then become contradictory and ultimately incomprehensible(p. 31).

But is this immediate relationship between Jesus and the Father demonstrable? Is His being-the-Son-of-God 'verified', so to speak? Basically, the book o fJoseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is a singular 'sumphonic' attempt to prove the 'consistency" of the figure of Jesus as the Only One who is in absolute immediate relationship with God.

In order to follow this demonstration, one must understand and meditate on the book, step by step. Only the fullness of single impressions can be configured into a vision of the whole.

In this, as a reader, I find that the evidence of Jesus shines forth. Is my impression only subjective? Or does it come a priori from my faith that makes me interpret everything about Jesus, to begin with, in the sense of Christological dogma?

One thing is certain: "that the figure of Jesus is beyond all possible categories and can therefore be only understood starting from the mystery of God" (p. 21).

From the very beginning, it was the simple people who noticed it: here is someone who does not offer us scholarly erudition. "Never has any man spoken like this man does!" the simple folk tell the learned men of Israel (cf Jn 7,46).

"The teaching of Christ does not come from any human apprenticeship of any kind whatsoever. It comes from His immediate contact with the Father, from 'face to face' dialog...It is the Word of the Son. Without this interior foundation, it would have been recklessness" (p. 31 ff).

"The disciple who walks with Christ is drawn, with Him, into communion with God" (p. 33). The author of this book is without a doubt someone whom Jesus has drawn into this communion with God.

Gifted with brilliant intelligence, of a 'reason that is amply deployed" (p. 214), he brings us in this book the harvest of his long journey with Jesus Christ. It may seem a pity that such a theologian, who is doubtless among the most important in the last several decades, came under the ecclesiastical yoke [May 30 will be the 30th anniversary of the episcopal consecration of Professor Ratzinger). But the ways of the Lrod are not ours.

Whoever tries to encompass at a glance the works of Cardinal Ratzinger will note with profound admiration how fertile and how copious the years of his pastoral service have been, even from the theological point of view.

That which aroused enthusiasm among the listeners [NB: The book chapters were originally delivered as lectures] and readers of "Introduction to Christianity" in 1968 - that unmistakeable compenetration of faith-reason and existential openness - has acquired a more profound density through his pastoral service.

His look at society, at the intellectual, social and political challenges of our time, has become so universal -but it is the universality that his present pastoral service requires.

But beyond the splendid analyses, of all the wealth of intuition and perspectives with which this book is overwhelmingly rich, everything is motivated by a passion for Him whom it is now his task to represent on earth.

His book is now in the agora of the 'public market' - and is open to debate in the Areopagi of our society. the simple desire of its author is not, in the first place, to provoke debates - even if he knows that there will be no lack of contrary opinions. He only wants one thing - "that a vital relationship may develop with Him, with Jesus of Nazareth" (p. 23).

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/04/2007 15.10]

Stop wearing fur, activists tell Pope

ROME (Reuters) - Animal rights activists in Italy have asked Pope Benedict to stop wearing fur in a sign of respect for the sacredness of all living species."

The Pope, who turns 80 on Monday, has been seen over the past winter donning a red velvet hat trimmed with white ermine fur, known as "camauro." The hat was commonly worn by popes in the medieval period to keep their heads warm on cold days and it featured on many paintings at the time. On special occasions, such as official audiences with heads of state, Pope Benedict also wears a red cape trimmed with white fur.

The Anti-Vivisection league (LAV) made its appeal ahead of an April 22 visit by Benedict to Pavia, a northern town where Italy's best-known fur makers are based. "We call on the Holy Father to make a choice of high religious and ethical ignificance by not wearing fur on this occasion, nor in the future," the LAV said in a statement on Friday.

ROME (Reuters) - U.S.
President George W. Bush will pay his first visit to Pope Benedict in June, the Vatican said on Saturday. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Bush will meet the Pope on June 9 or 10 after attending a Group of Eight summit in Germany.

Benedict, who was elected pope two years ago after the death of John Paul II, last week lamented the "continual slaughter" in
Iraq. "Nothing positive comes from Iraq," he said in his Easter message.

A government source said on Thursday Bush may also see Prime Minister Romano Prodi during his trip to Rome. Relations between the two countries have been strained since Prodi took office a year ago, replacing centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch U.S. ally.

The Italian service of Vatican Radio yesterday spoke to two prelates and two philosophers about the Pope's new book and his coming 80th birthday.

Alessandro Gisotti talked first to the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Here is a translation:


With this book, the Pope goes to the heart of the Faith.
Certainly. The figure of Christ, or rather, the Revelation of Christ is the foundation of our Faith, it is at the center, and as one writer said, it is the lever of history.

And in the face of today's debates which have been re-ignited precisely around the figure of Christ, on the person of Jesus of Nazareth - a debate that is often misleading because of the ignorance of those who assume the right and the competence to speak about things they know nothing about, unfortunately - the Pope gives us his vision of Christ.

The Pope is passionately devoted to Christ, he is a profound connoisseur of Christianity and of Jesus Christ. Let us not forget his book Introduction to Christianity which we still read fruitfully today. And now, he offer us this panorama, this study in depth about Jesus Christ: Christ as the key to the interpretation of life, of the destiny of every human being, of the destiny of mankind. But also as a friend of humanity in pilgrimage, a tormented humanity, that is also thirsty for the eternal and the things that give sense to life.

Eminence, you have known Joseph Ratzinger for years. Which of his character traits have most impressed you?
His friendliness, his gentleness, his refinement, his respect for every person, his capacity for listening, and his ability to personalize every relationship - not only with his co-workers or those who have been with him for years, but we see that even in the general audiences, with people whom he greets even if it is just for a fleeting moment. The Pope has an ear and a word appropriate to every person he meets, as though each one is a true friend.

His 80th birthday coincides almost with his second anniversary as Pope. What balance would you make of these two years?
One can do this from many points of view, from many profiles. Let us think, for instance, of his addresses: those he gives at the general audiences, the ones with the youth of Rome or with the First Communion children. I would say they are all words that come from the fullness of his heart, from the depths of his heart, not forgetting that the Pope has said his task is to defend the faith of simple people.

And he continues to do this, especially for those who are pure of heart, and simple of heart, leading them during these encounters to Christ, who is the key to the resolution, the transfiguration of our lives.

We could also strike a balance in terms of his apostolic voyages. I remember the trip to Spain; the trip to Poland to thank that great land for having given us John Paul II, and his visit to Auschwitz, with his meditation on the absence fo God in that place that was so tragic for human history. His trip to Germany, with major speeches about the presence or absence of God in society today. The trip to Spain, with his message about the family.

And the first trip I was able to make with Pope in Turkey - with its inter-religious dialog and the example he gave ofhis willingness to meet everyone and to appreciate the highest sentiments of every human being, every community, every nation, every religious group. I think these are permanent, substantial messages that the Pope has given that can bear further fruit during his pontificate.

The Holy Father is turning 80. What wishes would you have for him as his closest collaborator?
Above all, for his good health, for the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit in the immense mission he was called on to carry out on April 19, 2005; but also the wish that he should be heard as he deserves, that he may be understood in his messages which are mostly evangelical, as he accompanies man, every man and woman, every community along the way, in order to give sense to life and prepare each one to encounter Christ who is our only universal Savior.

==============================================================

Next, Gisotti interviewed Mons. Angelo Comastri, the Pope's Vicar-General for Vatican City:

Benedict XVI seems young at heart, because his message always sounds fresh. What are your thoughts as the Pope turns 80?
It is not a question of calendar age. Age depends on what you feel. The heart of Benedict XVI is young because it is a heart that is 'in love' with God. Above all, with what he has shown as Pope, I have been very struck by the humility with which he undertook a ministry which must have reprsented for him and unexpected call.

But he came to the Papacy, taking the hand of his predecessor.
Rarely in history has a Pope spoken so well and so movingly of his own immediate predecessor. I will never forget what he said during the concelebration with the cardinal electors on April 20, 2005, at the Sistine Chapel: "I feel his strong hand, the hand of John Paul II taking me by the hand; I see his smiling eyes; I hear his voice saying, to me above all, 'Do not be afraid.'" It is a humble style, which endears him to people.

Benedict XVI described himself as a gentle and firm shepherd. How are these two aspects of his character demonstrated in your experience as a close collaborator of the Pope?
Gentleness and firmness are not mutually exclusive. Firmness means fidelity to truth, fidelity to a patrimony. Gentleness is the way in which he shows his firmness. And Benedict XVI succeeds in uniting them in an extraordinary way. One could say that his temperament favors this, but even the grace which he has cultivated all these years.

Despite the thousand demands of the Petrine ministry, Benedict XVI finds the time to write and has his book on Jesus out for his 80th birthday. It's the Pope who is making a gift to us...
Surely. The Pope has always been a teacher, that was his profession. He understands that in a time like ours, to teach, to give guidelines, to give clarity is a great act of love.

The world goes on, life is nothing but a journey, and on this journey, if there are no signs to guide us, then we disperse. The Pope understands this, and so now, even the book he has written is an act of love - to give us direction, a precise route to follow, which is, as his book says, the way of Jesus Christ. He is the Way. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. There is no other salvation, no other hope, outside of Him. So this is the most important thing that the Pope has to remind the faithful all the time, and for that, we are thankful to him.

================================================================

Gisotti's next interviewee is historian-philosopher Ernesto Galli della Loggia, who is also an editorialist at Corriere della Sera. In October 2004, he had a public debate with Cardinal Ratzinger about "History, politics and religion."


Tell us about that encounter.
Of that encounter, I remember with particular clarity and even with pleasure one moment and one detail.

The moment actually preceded the debate, because the Cardinal wished to meet with me a few days earlier to exchange ideas over what we would be debating. So I went to see him in his office at the ex-Sant'Uffizio.

It was this meeting with him in his study that I remember with intense pleasure. He gave me the impression, above all, of a person who was very ironic, even about himself - truly a German professor!

One could see that he took great pleasure in being able to discuss anything freely and he did not resist making remarks about various things happening in the world. He immediately showed an easy familiarity, as if completely forgetting that he was really with a stranger.

The other thing happened during the debate. We were seated at a table, in front of an audience. And I naturally glanced at the text he was holding, his notes, let us say. And I was so struck by this tiny, tidy handwriting, so evidently prepared by him alone, without the aid of any secretary...And I once more confirmed this profoundly intellectual dimension in him.
These were little things that perhaps say much more than grand theoretical propositions!

This is man who is turning 80, guardian of Tradition, but also extraordinarily modern...
And how! I think Popes have this most difficult task to remain within the tradition which their role demands, but at the same time, if there is one person who has the calling, the mental equipment to dialog with modern culture - even if naturally not adopting himself immediately to the majority opinion in such a culture - then that person certainly is Joseph Ratzinger!

================================================================

Among the leading advocates of secular culture who have dialogued with Benedict XVI, former Italian Senate President Marcello Pera, a philosopher and ex-university professor himeelf, stands out, having co-authored with Caridnal Ratzinger the book Senza Radici (Without Roots) about Europe a year before the latter became Pope.

Which intellectual trait of Pope Bendict XVI most impressed you?
His intellectual rigor, the profundity of his thought, his clarity, and even - soemthing which goes with his intellectual rigor - the intellectual courage not to use words, language and concepts which, under an apparent veil of diplomacy, simply confuses those to whom they are addressed. So I would say that rigor and courage are what I appreciate most about his intellectual traits.

You have had a chance to converse with Joseph Ratzinger many times. What impressions remain from those encounters?
Above all, a remarkably human content. He is a gentle man, a man who listens to his interlocutor, who places him at ease, who shows absolutely no trace of intellectual superiority, a man who is used to dealing with profound concepts, as well as in engaging his listeners in dialog.

Therefore, his accessibility, his kindness, which is one of character but also a remarkable intellectual gift which does not mask in any way his precision of thought.

Benedict XVI guides the Church with a firm hand. But what can he give to those who are secular, who have no ecclesiastical interest?
I would refer back to what the Pope has called 'an appeal to creative minorities,' his attempt to find a common ground for believers and non-believers.

Of course, this common ground is a concept that is philosophical and not just theological - it concerns what he calls the essence of human nature, which then becomes positively translated to natural law, into a quest for the principles, the values and the fundamental rights of man. So this is the common ground that can be explored.

The believer arrives at the truth about such principles and values through divine revelation. The non-believer arrives at them through rational reflection. So, the Pope's appeal to reason, to those who are willing to use reason and who also know how to dialog - this I consider novel and even courageous. and it certainly the most engaging aspect of Benedict XVI for those who do not believe in God, or at least, are not yet in a position to believe.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/04/2007 22.12]

ROME, April 14 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will pay his first visit to Pope Benedict in June, the Vatican said on Saturday.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Bush will meet the Pope on June 9 or 10 after attending a Group of Eight summit in Germany.

Benedict, who was elected pope two years ago after the death of John Paul II, last week lamented the "continual slaughter" in Iraq. "Nothing positive comes from Iraq," he said in his Easter message.

A government source said on Thursday Bush may also see Prime Minister Romano Prodi during his trip to Rome.

Relations between the two countries have been strained since Prodi took office a year ago, replacing centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch U.S. ally.

And I thought that ignoramus from NEWSWEEK was the pits! Well, what ever happened to the Vatican correspondent of TIME magazine who in the past two years has given Benedict XVI fairly objective reporting, if not sometimes downright laudatory pieces? If anyone has stepped backward, it is the reporter himself - he seems to have gone back to April 20, 2005, to imitate the scattershot attacks from all those who never expected Joseph Ratzinger to e Pope - or hoped to death that he would never be! This is all so passe!


A Step Backward for Pope Benedict?
Friday, Apr. 13, 2007
By JEFF ISRAELY/ROME

Two years into his papacy, Benedict XVI may be about to reclaim his reputation as a no-holds-barred traditionalist. Thanks to Benedict's thoughtful manner, Church progressives had believed that the man who was once the hard-line Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would cut some slack on areas of doctrinal contention — using his intellectual heft and traditional credentials as necessary cover. [Stop it with this faux-naivete! It's so dishonest!]

But as Benedict turns 80 on April 16 and marks two years as Pope on April 19, the once hopeful progressives have all but given up their fantasy of Benedict the Reformer.

In the coming weeks, the Pope is expected to release a document that would allow the more widespread practice of the traditional Latin Mass, which was all but shelved with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.

Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone recently confirmed to Le Figaro newspaper [the magazine, not the newspaper] that this motu proprio, or personal initiative of the Pontiff, will allow any priest to say the mass according to the old Tridentine rite (which is delivered in Latin with the priest facing the altar, his back to the congregation), rather than have to seek approval from the local bishop as is now required.

Eighteen months ago, one Rome-based progressive cleric had said he was "surprised to see that [Benedict] seems to be open to hear new ideas." But today, the same priest is disappointed.

There has been no sign of any of the hoped-for reforms: [Come now, you can't be serious! This is all revisionist reporting and sheer dishonesty. No progressive ever really expected Benedict to change any of these core questions!] overturning the ban on communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, reconsidering the celibacy requirement for priests, allowing gays in seminaries, or a softening of the condom ban to allow for distribution in AIDS-ravaged Africa.

The release last month of the Pope's final document on what had seemed to be a convivial and intellectually open October 2005 bishops' meeting on the Eucharist is a good example of the Pontiff's approach.

According to a senior Church official who participated: "He took all that debate of the Synod, and then gave us a document that simply defends the status quo." [Now, how could Israely, who knows very well what happened at the Synod, let this comment go unqualified? The Pope summarized and commented on a whole laundry list of matters that the Synod of Bishops had agreed on, by votation, and which they forwarded to him. Why would he then ignore the majority opinion in order to accommodate dissidents in the minority, especially since what they favor is against orthodoxy? An honest reporter would at least have placed that biased remark in context.]

This same official acknowledges a bit of past excessive optimism on Benedict: "People were hoping that with his intellectual acumen and understanding of theology, he'd be in a position to make some of these changes. Unfortunately, at this point, I don't think we'll see any of them." [But precisely, he has the intellectual acumen - acuually all he needs for this is common sense - to know that a Pope does not make changes in the Magisterium to accommodate public opinion, no matter how popular.]

Of course, beyond the doctrinal front, plenty has changed these past two years for the Bavarian prelate and Vatican insider. He has become a world leader [Wow, how condescending!- 'he has become a world leader'] and has been learning lessons in tempering his ideas with public relations, having given controversial speeches [Hmm, I must have been absent from planet earth, but was there some other controversial speech other than Regensburg I missed?] and been confronted with fiery inter-faith conflict, particularly with Islam. [And absolutely no mention of how he turned all that around in Turkey!]

A trip next month to Brazil, the first ocean crossing and first time among the fervent flock of the Third World, will further test both the pastoral and political aspects of his job, as Latin America continues to deal with widespread poverty and the continent's Catholics increasingly lose ground to Evangelical movements.

Still the Pope has managed to keep up his writings, including the conclusion of a book he began in 2003 on the life of Jesus, which comes out Monday in Italian and German, and next month in English.

A significant part of any Pope's job is to manage questions of doctrine and discipline. Benedict's "no wiggle room" approach is increasingly seen in the context of his great battle to defend Catholicism on its historical home turf of Europe, where he sees a kind of cult of secularism.

The Pope's response is not simply to reaffirm the Christian values of the old continent, a goal also expressed by the continent's more liberal leaders and theologians like Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Cardinal Godfried Daneels.

In addition, Benedict professes a very specific kind of Christianity [Yes, it is called Catholicism, in case you did not know, and he happens to be head of it, so what then should he profess?], one based not only on the teachings of Jesus, but on abiding by the letter of ancient Catholic Church traditions as the only effective bulwark against rampant relativism.

In fact, the one major disciplinary about-face expected is this coming document on the Latin Mass, a concession to the ultra-conservatives, who have been living and praying on the fringe of the Church since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council brought in mass in the vernacular.

Said one Rome-based priest: "Opening up the Latin rite to anyone would amount to the Church turning back the reforms of Vatican II." [Again, letting such an outrageously fallacious statement go by, unchallenged. As though Vatican-II had only been about dropping Latin and facing the people at Mass!]

A Vatican official who has worked closely with the Pope said that loosening rules on the Latin rite has been a long-time personal goal of Ratzinger, who had led what turned out to be failed negotiations in the early 1980s to bring back into the fold the followers of the breakaway French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who have defied the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The Vatican official says that Benedict believes that the Council's legacy "has been abused," and finding a way to widen access to the Latin rite "has always remained in his heart."

Still, even mainstream members of the Roman hierarchy are opposed, fearing that it will exacerbate divisions within the Church. French bishops have openly argued against it. The Pope's old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith last spring, privately advised against the motu proprio, the Vatican official said. [Oh yeah? I can just imagine Cardinal Levada and Mons. Amato going up to the Pope to say, "You know what? Better drop this!' Not that the CDF has primary competence on liturgy - it is Cardinal Arinze who is the point man in this matter.]

Still, Benedict does not appear swayed. The professor Pope may be happy to have a conversation on doctrine, but he knows he always has the last word.

===============================================================

God help me, but I would like to wish a pox on all these supercilious, sanctimonious, mean-spirited and traitorous 'Vatican officials who refuse to be named" - although I think it is an invention for when a journalist wants to peddle his own personal opinion or push his personal aghenda in the guise of a news report.

Whatever it is, SHAME ON YOU, JEFF ISRAELY, FOR SUCH A SHODDY DISHONEST PIECE OF JOURNALISM.

BTW, I urge you to look at how Father Z fisks Israely's piece on his blog today:
wdtprs.com/blog/

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/04/2007 22.53]

The Pope’s Book:
Jesus of Nazareth
By Fr. John Zuhlsdorf



I was at the presentation of the Pope’s book, Jesus of Nazareth in the Aula del Sinodo on Friday 13 April 2007. [The yellow circle on the photo marks his spot!] Others will write about or post the talks by the presenters.

Here are some of my personal notes. I do not intend to recap the book (impossible) or speak much about the press conference (a waste of time). The notes are intended only to help you read Joseph Ratzinger’s work more fruitfully.

It is not new to receive a book from a Pope. In the past, they were the fruits of interviews, or they were biographical or poetry. But this is a work of theology. That’s new. Even though it is a work of theology, it is not a contribution to the Magisterium. That’s new. This point was heavily stressed in the presser. This book is a contribution of “Joseph Ratzinger” to all who are interested in Jesus. The novelty of this book is its context, coming as it does from a Pope.

The book is intended to be “pastoral”. At the same time it is to be “a rigorous work of theology”. I am not sure how the pastoral thing is going to work out: the Italian edition has 446 dense pages. And I mean conceptually dense. It is truly the work of Joseph Ratzinger. As a matter of fact, all the editions I saw (Greek, Polish, Italian, English, German, Italian, French, Spanish) print the name “Benedict XVI” much larger than the name “Joseph Ratzinger” on the dust cover, but he signs his preface: “Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI”, as if, for the sake of this book, his being Pope is incidental. I am not sure that his being Pope will be incidental for sales, however.

He wrote the book during the last few summers, which astonishes me, given his many cares. Clearly he gave a lot of thought to it before he wrote it. Thought and prayer, which turns out to be an important dimension of the book. Without snuffing out faith in his intellectual examination Pope Ratzinger remains an objective hunter after the Truth.

So, the Pope puts himself into the modern public square, the post-Christian and post-modern areopagus. He does so as a man of rigorous intellectual discipline but also a man of faith. Faith not just in abstractions, but in a Person.

Returning to that notion of "pastoral"- a couple of side comments are in order. For a very long time now there has been a false dichotomy between “pastoral” and anything intellectually exacting. I can’t say how many times I have heard bishops and priests divorce "pastoral" and all those other bad things like being smart, or being exacting. Many are therefore baffled by the Pope’s life-long ability to work within both categories.

In the book, one of the Pope’s goals is to employ the historical-critical method of exegesis, a scientific method, which embraces its advantages and also recognizes its limitations. For example, in his preface he reminds us that the historical-critical method, as indispensible as it is, nevertheless is forced to leave the Word of God in the past only. But the Word is always in the now too, it is present. Exegetes must not fall into that trap. Ratzinger examines biblical studies with an eye to their completeness, which is not in contradiction with the historical-critical method, but develops it in an organic manner and turns it into theology true and properly understood.

Another relevant tangent: His Holiness has a global or “organic” vision of theological method. The same goes for liturgy. This is a key to understanding one of his motives for a de-restriction the older form of Mass. The older form would influence the newer form, and vice versa, resulting in a tertium quid.

What His Holiness is doing in this book is what he has done in all the fields which interest him. Whether it has to do with the “source and summit” of Christian life (the Eucharist and It’s celebration), or a vision of Europe which has the indispensable structure of Christendom at its core, philosophy or theology, or explaining the relationship of faith and reason, Ratzinger does not create false divisions.

The Holy Father, as a working theologian, therefore makes use of the modern tools of scientific method, but always with logical priority given to what is known by faith in revelation. Therefore, he does not destroy the very biblical texts he so closely examines. This has been a problem of the application of the scientific method to Scripture scholarship, that is the study that does not reduce the Bible to literature only, for many decades.

You will remember that during his Mass for Holy Thursday the Pope caused a bit of surprise by using modern research on the nature of the Last Supper. In his book, Benedict makes use of modern research on the figure of St. John the Baptist. As Pope, he demonstrates that he is willing to move outside the golden cage of pontifical precedents and Patristic glosses. The Pope doesn’t limit himself to Denziger-Schoenmetzer.

Since Joseph Ratzinger during his long career as a theologian has not fallen into the trap of reducing the object of his contemplation to a formula or abstraction there is a chapter on prayer, in which he explains the “Our Father”, which is the prayer Christ taught us. The Pope stays very close to the Scriptural texts in every move he makes in this book. Card. Schoenborn related his personal experience of the Pope as a teacher and then colleague. He said that the Pope never was without his little Nestle-Aland edition of the New Testament in Greek.

One of the engines driving Pope Ratzinger’s book was his reading a work 15 years ago by a rabbi, Jakob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks With Jesus. Benedict returns often to his insights. For example, His Holiness recounts his reading of Neusner’s book, wherein Neusner spends a day with Jesus, following him in an interior dialogue and then returns to his study of Torah with other rabbis.

One rabbi says to the interior Neusner, “613 precepts were given by Moses, 365 negatives ones corresponding to the number of days of the year and 248 positives corresponding to the number of parts of the body. David comes along and reduces them to 11… Isaiah reduces them down to 2. Habakkuk distills them to one only, as it is written: ‘The righteous one will live by his faith (Hab 2,4)’.

‘And so’, a rabbi asks the interior Neusner, ‘is this what Jesus has to say?’, Neusner responds, ‘ Not quite, but almost.’ The other rabbi: ‘What did he leave out?’ Neusner: ‘Nothing.’ The other rabbi: ‘Then what did he add?’ Neusner: ‘Himself.’

The point being that Neusner will not follow Jesus because of the radical “I” of Jesus’ message. Neusner cites Matthew 19:21: “If you want to perfect… follow me.” For Ratzinger, this helps create a conceptual bridge: “The perfection required by the Torah, being holy as God is holy (cf. Lev 19,2; 11,44), now consists in following Jesus.”

This little episode from Pope Benedict’s book is an object lesson in his theological method. He is always concerned to keep faith and reason in the right perspective, but always in play in their proper roles. Moreover, Ratzinger has always used interesting non-Christian or non-Catholic, or even errant, doctrines as springboards for theological work. No one who has read enough Ratzinger is surprised that he does this, even though his nimbleness leaves one a bit breathless.

For example, I think it can be argued that Joseph Ratzinger probably knows more about Liberation Theology than anyone. If might surprise some that he uses points of Liberation Theology in one of his own works on liturgy. Consider using the image of Christ as “Liberator” when working theologically with liturgical issues. This is what he did in A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today.

The Pope sets out like so many, to search for the historical Jesus. Someone is always doing this, of course. Jesus is usually morphed into someone else every thirty years or so, and always at the expense of Jesus Himself. These searches wind up emphasizing one dimension of Christ in order to underscore another. Understanding that there will always be more to say about Jesus, the Pope offers this work, fully expecting that it will be met with resistance and criticism from some circles.

But this book was not really written against modern theological work and socio-historical research, that is, as a polemic. The Pope recognizes how much modern work as contributed. He strives to present a more logical and comprehensible figure than what we have found in the last few years of trumpeted “discoveries” about the “historical Jesus”. For Benedict, the Jesus presented in the Gospels is a believable figure.

As Card. Schoenborn phrased it in the press conference for the book’s presentation, the penchant for seeing Jesus as a Revolutionary or the lover of Mary Magdalene, to name but a couple distortions, can be dumped into the ossuary of history.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/04/2007 22.45]

Some Italian news agency items from Lella's blog, translated here. It is so frustrating to read about Osservatore Romano articles, which the Vatican does not make available online!



The brothers Ratzinger in Regensburg last September.


'A greeting enclosed in an embrace'


VATICAN CITY, April 14 (APCom) - "A wish that is a fraternal memory. A fraternal prayer. Which expresses the delicacy of familiar intimacy."

So begins the message that Georg Ratzinger, the Pope's brother, sends Joseph for his 80th birthday which he celebrates Monday.

"A wish enclosed in an embrace," writes Georg in the pages of Osservatore Romano for Sunday, April 15.

"A wish with all the inner joy and gratitude to God for the long road that Georg and Joseph Ratzinger have followed together - first in their beloved family, with their parents and their never-to-be-forgotten sister Maria; then in the years at Seminary; and on the day of priestly ordination, that June 29, 1951. They know they can count on each other's prayers, as they have always done since they were little children.

"And to gladden the heart and the spirit," the message concludes, "think of the melodies so dear to them both that so many times they have performed, or interpreted by Georg with the wonderful Regensburger Domspaetzen."

"May every day renew the mission of being a messenger of beauty, a messenger of faith in this world, in service for the glory of God. A wish that I enclose in an embrace."

The Vatican newspaper dedicates a page entitled "A joyous and confident wish" in its 4/15/07 'birthday issue' to greetings from the Pope's intimates.

"A guide for the Church and the world," writes Franz Xavier Schwarzenboeck, who was one of those ordained together with Georg and Joseph Ratzinger.

Extending a greeting in the name of that entire 'class' of 1951
was Fritz Zimmermann.

Other greetings came from people who knew Joseph Ratzinger back in his native Bavaria, from his youth and adolescence.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/04/2007 11.38]

AD MULTOS ANNOS, BENEDICTE!



BUT THE USUAL SUSPECTS IN POPE-BASHING FALL IN LINE

When will we see one objective report about Benedict XVI that does not make false, misleading, distorted or
deliberately incomplete statements? Meanwhile, let me sweeten your mood before getting into this story....


Palm Sunday, April 1



Mass for John Paul II, April 2



Wednesday audience, April 4



Mass of the Chrism, April 5



Via Crucis, April 6



Easter Sunday, April 8



Regina Caeli, April 9



Wednesday audience, April 11


Vatican, April 14

From one of the two British writers who shamelessly paraded their ignorance on Holy Week by claiming that the Pope had singlehandedly upset two millennia of Catholic tradition by authorizing 'new' stations of the Cross - which glaring mistake, they have not, to my knowledge, corrrected, much less apologized for - comes now his two-year report card for Benedict XVI. And what should be his first verdict, but that the Pope looks exhausted! Right! As we can see from his pictures above!



Pope gets 80 beers, a new book
and a pile of problems for his 80th birthday
Richard Owen in Rome
Times of London
April 14, 2007

He looks exhausted but there can be no way to slow down for ‘God’s rottweiler’ as he faces a heavy workload and global challenges


If Pope Benedict XVI were still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he would be about to retire. On Monday the white-haired German pontiff turns 80 — the age at which cardinals are put out to grass and told that they can no longer take part in a conclave to elect a Pope.

Instead, he is celebrating the imminent second anniversary of his election, preparing his next trip — to Brazil — and bracing himself for criticism by readers of his book Jesus of Nazareth, launched yesterday at the Vatican.

Coupled with an in-tray inherited from John Paul II — reconciliation with Anglican and Orthodox Christians, relations with Islam and China, sexual abuse by clergy, pressure for doctrinal concessions on issues from condoms and Aids to celibacy — this is a heavy agenda for an elderly German theologian who lacks the charisma and showmanship of his predecessor and has already suffered two mild strokes.

But he is driven by a sense of urgency. By the end of the Easter celebrations, when he was taken by helicopter for a rest at Castel Gandolfo — the papal lakeside retreat south of Rome — he looked exhausted, the dark pouches beneath his eyes more pronounced than ever. [Were you there, Mr. Owen? Did you even see the telecasts on Monday and Wednesday?]

The pontiff is not a crowd-pleaser like John Paul II, a former actor, and his homilies tend towards the abstruse. [Now really, what have you been doing in Rome all this time? And 'abstruse homilies', Mr. Owen? Do you even know what abstruse means?]

Speculation that the Pope may amend the Vatican ban on the use of condoms — for example by allowing their use as a “lesser evil” in Africa to help to combat Aids — has so far proved unfounded. So, too, has the suggestion that he might relax the rule of priestly celibacy to allow priests to marry, or allow divorced people to take Communion. [And who the hell ever speculated that, anyway? Wishful thinking on the part of some liberals, but never once even conceived by straight-thinking orthodox Catholics! Although I must admit the 'lesser evil' idea was peddled by Cardinal Martini.]

His uncompromising efforts to sabotage legislation in Italy sanctioning cohabitation and same-sex unions have brought death threats scrawled on walls, aimed at the Pope and at Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, the new head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference.

But as the second anniversary of his election to pontiff next week approaches, figures close to the Pope are starting a campaign to show the world that his image as “God’s rottweiler” and hardline scourge of Catholic liberals is misplaced. [WHAT??? WHAT CAMPAIGN??? And who but you and a few other dogs in the English media remain doggedly fixated on the Rottweiler tag?]

He will mark his birthday with a Mass at St Peter’s tomorrow and a lunch for cardinals on Monday, followed by a concert in his honour. Monsignor Engelbert Siebler, auxiliary bishop of Munich — the Pope’s former archdiocese — said that although the Pope drinks only the occasional glass of wine he would give him 80 bottles of Pope Benedict beer, made in Bavaria, complete with the steins to drink it from. “No doubt the papal entourage will enjoy it,” he said.

The former Cardinal Ratzinger, the son of a policeman, was born in the small town of Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, on April 16, 1927. His birthplace, bought by a German Catholic foundation for €3.5 million (£2.4 million), is to be opened as a museum tomorrow.

The “friends of Benedict” [who, pray, are these, and why the quotation marks?] say that he has shown a “warm, kindly side” in the past two years in an attempt to get “closer to the people”. His first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, showed surprising insight into sexual love. He has reached out to liberals such as his former university colleague Hans Kung — whom he once banned from teaching — and to arch-conservatives such as the Lefebvrists, who reject the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. And, despite his age and health, he may not turn out to be a “caretaker” Pope after all.

“When critics note that Benedict was formerly head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, they always describe it as the successor to the Inquisition — as if the dreaded word was written above the door,” said Vittorio Messori, a Catholic writer who wrote several books with the Pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger. [Several books? There was only one! If you can be wrong on such an elementary thing, how can we trust you on anything else, Mr. Owen, who were not even aware that alternative stations of the Cross had been introduced for the Colosseum Via Crucis since 1991?]

“We need to demolish the image of Benedict as the Grand Inquisitor, the Panzerkardinal,” Mr Messori said. “Those who know him know he is shy, sensitive and understanding, a man of great culture, wisdom and kindness.”

[Oh dear, Mr. Owen picked up these quotes from Corriere della Sera last Monday, and 1) he has taken them out of context and 2) misquoted Messori. Messori was commenting on the New York Times magazine article last weekend that said erroneously that the CDF was once called the Inquisition! Messori said sarcastically, "Yeah right. If you go there, you will see a sign that says 'INQUISITION'! He then makes the remark, "For 20 years [since he interviewed Ratzinger for THE RATZINGER REPORT in 1986], I have sought to demolish the black legend about the Panzerkardinal, the Grand Inquisitor. One so terrible, and yet [when I interviewed him], I had an urge to turn off the tape recorder, and confide everything to him, to confess to that man who was so shy, but so understanding, possessing great culture, equilibrium, wisdom, goodness! When he became Pope, I said to myself, Finally, now they will see! And in fact, he fills up the piazza and people listen to him....But if the Americans, poor people!, prefer to make only a political reading of the Pope, what can we do? The Church has seen worse!"...And the following remark quoted from Alberigo was also made to Corriere as a reaction to the NYT magazine article. Yet Owen doesn't even have the decency to attribute the quotes to the Corriere story, making it appear that the quotations were made to him! It's dishonesty down the line, across the board!]

“Benedict is a complex figure,” says Giuseppe Alberigo, Professor of Religious History at Bologna and another friend. “To caricature him as some kind of right-wing hardliner is absurd. In any case, political labels like Right and Left do not apply in the Church.”

If there is disappointment among Catholic liberals, the “friends of Benedict” say, it is because of wishful thinking.

“John Paul II was no liberal either,” one Vatican-watcher said yesterday. “He was just as inflexible on doctrine — not surprisingly, since Ratzinger was his right-hand man for more than 20 years and in effect ran the Vatican during John Paul’s long decline. In a sense Benedict has been Pope for longer than we think.” [Did Owen pick up this last line from Russell Shorto's NYT mag article? Oh, the journalistic prostitution is just outrageous!]

The idea that Cardinal Ratzinger campaigned for the job by artfully reminding cardinals of his closeness to John Paul II, warning of the dangers to the faith from secularism and emphasising the need for continuity is wrong, insists Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the former papal spokesman: “He really did not expect to be elected.”

The Pope knows, however, that the cardinals chose him precisely because his agenda was to shore up the faith in its European heartland and confront the challenge of an increasingly secular, egocentric society in which Christianity was sidelined or derided.

The remarks on Islam last September at the University of Regensburg — his alma mater [Alma mater! Do you know what 'alma mater' means in the academic context, Mr. Owen? Ratzinger graduated from the University of Munich - that's his alma mater!] — that sparked a wave of Muslim anger have to be seen in this context, supporters of the pontiff say. Though he is alarmed by the rise of Islam in Europe, the Regensburg speech was not about the “spread of Islam through violence” but rather about the link between “faith and reason” in Christianity.

Unlike John Paul, the Pope consults few people outside his German entourage [Hmmm, and who might the German entourage be? Georg Gaenswein? Who else? One German does not an entourage make!], and is held in such awe as a theologian that few in the Vatican dare to offer advice. This professorial remoteness not only led to the row over Islam but also nearly caused offence to Jews when the Pope visited Auschwitz last May but mentioned the Holocaust only in his homily after the accompanying press corps [Joaquin Navarro-Valls will appreciate being called the 'accompanying press corps', as he claims credit for this!] pointed out the omission when the text was released to it in advance.

The trip to Brazil next month will offer similar pitfalls: if any country typifies the gap between Catholic theory and human realities, it is Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic nation. The Pope will open a conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops on globalisation, poverty and the growing influence of the evangelical sects that are competing with Catholicism. Social issues in Latin America — contraception, abortion and divorce — are not theoretical but real and urgent, and highlight the growing gap between Church hierarchy and Catholic grass roots in Latin America.

He also risks a row over liberation theology after ordering the Vatican last month to warn the popular Spanish Jesuit priest Jon Sobrino that his books contain passages that are “either erroneous or dangerous and may cause harm to the faithful”.

Liberation theology argues that the Christian mission is to bring justice to the poor and fight against oppressive South American regimes. [What a simplistic reduction! Omits what the Church objects to about it - 1) That it makes Christ out to be nothing more than a social activist; and 2) That it adopts Marxist principles not compatible with the social doctrine of the Church.]

As Cardinal Ratzinger, the Pope silenced Leonardo Boff, a former Franciscan who is the leading advocate of liberation theology. The Pope’s censure of Father Sobrino, Mr Boff says, shows that nothing has really changed. [Yeah, right! Get Boff's opinion on this particular issue, and no one else's! Is that objective journalism, Mr. Owens? And why don't you mention that Boff gave up the priesthood years ago? And isn't a phrase like 'leading advocate of liberation theology' in today's context meaningless because LT is almost a thing of the past?]

==============================================================

And can you believe this selective list of 'issues' drawn up by the Times in which the cancellation of a fourth-rate pop concert and the Pope's own candid disclosure of a remark he made about Bob Dylan are given the same weight as the Regensburg lecture?


Taking issue

April 2005 Pope Benedict XVI is elected

September 2006 Widespread Muslim protest against the Pope’s quotation of a 14th-century text labelling Islam a “religion of the sword”

December 2006 The Pope, who has described rock music as Satan’s work, abandons the annual Vatican pop concert

March 2007 The pontiff criticises John Paul II’s appearance with Bob Dylan in 1997, saying he doubted “it was really right to allow this type of ‘prophet’ to appear” in the Vatican
[What misrepresentation! The Pope was being candid to disclose he counselled John Paul against having Dylan at the concert, but JP did not listen to him. He did not have to disclose this, but he did in all candor, in the context of a book showing their relationship through the years.]

March 2007 Controversy follows Pope Benedict XVI’s affirmation of the Catholic doctrine that Hell “exists and is eternal for those who shut their hearts to [God’s] love” [There was a controversy????]

April 2007 In Creation and Evolution, the Pope describes evolution as “a theory that covers over its own gaps” and ignores questions that it cannot answer

Source: Times archives

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/04/2007 21.47]

Here is a translation of Vittorio Messori's article in Corriere della Sera today:


Ratzinger against
'the masters of suspicion'
By VITTORIO MESSORI


From the very first lines of his Introduction to his JESUS OF NAZARETH, Joseph Ratzinger (as he prefers to be called in this case, having written this as a private scholar) explains why, with some kind of urgency, he decided to dedicate 'every free moment' to writing this book even after being elected Pope.

He explains also why, "not knowing how much time and how much strength I may still be granted", he decided to come out first with the middle chapters of his planned text, that about the public life of the Nazarene, postponing his reflections on the "Gospels of infancy" and on the "Easter mystery", that is, the account of Christ's passion, death and Resurrection.

Ratzinger explains his haste, using a significant expression which is in contrast with his usual calm and measured tones. If he decided to go the very roots, to the Founder Himself, it is because "today there is a tragic situation for the faith."

A faith that is threatened, if assaults - which come even from part of the Catholic intelligentsia - against the historical truth of the Gospels are not opposed.

Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God proclaimed and worshipped by the Church, is made out to be nothing more than a late invention that has little or nothing to do with the 'historical Jesus', who was just an obscure preacher like so many others in the Jewish tradition.

"The impression has penetrated deeply into the consciousness of Christians," writes the man who is now Pope, "that we know little for certain about Jesus and that it was only later that faith in His divinity formed the image" [that religion has of him].

And so, this book intends to be an instrument for 'starting all over', to proceed to that re-evangelization that John Paul II had wished so urgently.

These are pages, questions, thoughts and wishes to be read, revisited, reaffirmed, in order to safeguard the foundations of the entire Christian edifice.

Only in the light of certainty in a rediscovered faith is it possible to speak of spiritual elevation and draw moral consequences.

If Jesus were not the Anointed One announced by the prophets and only one Yoshua, an itinerant preacher with a vague background who lived in the era between Augustus and Tiberius, then all the lucubrations that have been made through the centuries over a teaching that is the result of who knows what manipulations, are downright abusive and grotesque.

Although I am allergic to journalistic hyperbole, this time I think that adjectives like 'invaluable' if not 'decisive' (for believers, but perhaps, not only for them) are applicable to the portrait of Jesus by the Bavarian theologian who celebrates his 80th birthday tomorrow and has been, for two years now, the Vicar on earth of the Christ that he writes about.

While current best-seller lists teem with titles that pity the innocence or denounce the ignorance of those who persist in declaring themselves to be believers, here is a professor-Pope who sweeps aside the 'masters of suspicion', big and small alike, and shows himself much more up-to-date than they are.

In fact, the bookstores are full today of tracts which purport to show that "we can no longer be Christians", taking up the arguments of 19th-century polemicists and repeating the coarse banalities of Masonic lawyers and pharmacists.

They present as 'revelations devastating for the faith' arguments such as those that enthralled a self-taught socialist youth called Benito Mussolini who wrapped himself in a red flag on a campaign stage, took out a watch and gave God - if he existed - 60 seconds within which to strike him down with lightning to prove Himself!

But there are also books which are certainly more insidious because more sophisticated, in which Jesus is dissected by professors schooled in 20th-century schemes - according to which, incertain and often arbitrary research methods called 'historico-critical' are considered 'science', and therefore, objective and indisputable. Neglecting to tell the reader that those schemes are hardly 'historical' enough or 'critical' enough because every generation of exegetes refutes the previous one, offering their interpretation as the sure truth, which is bound to be refuted in its turn.

As Ratzinger notes with irony, "whoever reads these reconstructions of the 'true' Jesus will right away realize that they are above all the photographs of the authors themselves and their ideas", each one passing off as 'science' his own temperament and reading of the Zeitgeist.

It's difficult to take such Biblicists seriously who for decades have venerated - or at least respected - Rudolf Bultmann (for whom Ratzinger reserves a few ironic remarks) who issued the verdict that there did not exist, there cannot exist and there should not exist any relationship between what the Gospels say about Jesus and what really took place. And yet, he refused even to travel to Palestine: if the places and archeology belied his bookish theories, then too bad for them, not for his theories!

To those who have been stuck in 19th and 20th century mindsets, here comes a challenger who does nto do so as a Pope who cites the principle of authority, or as someone formed by what Hans Keung refers to scornfully as 'archaic Roman theology", but one of the best-known scholars in the world who has gone through all of modern times to come face to face with post-modernism.

To this epoch in which, after having ground up the Biblical verses in every way possible in order to sort them out into categories marked mythical, didactic, edifying, interpolated, etc., the result was that the enigma of Jesus, instead of clearing up, just became more dense. With the realization that perhaps, a simple reading of the Gospels 'as they are' might be more clarifying than the theorizing of a German academic!

And I say German not by chance, because it was Germany - where every university, including the public ones, has two faculties of theology and exegesis, one Catholic and the other Protestant - where the 'historico-critical method' was born, which gradually grew to the point of hypertrophy, but which came to be accepted by Biblical scholars everywhere, intimidated by Teutonic names which seemed to be synonymous with Wissenschaft, Science with a capital S.

Formgeschichte (history of forms), Redaktiongeschichte (history of texts), Wirkunggeschichte (history of effects), Entmithologisierung (demythologization), Ur-Quelle (original sources) and an infinity of other systems and theories that Professor Ratzinger is well familiar with, were born and cultivated in the universities where he taught, and perhaps may have even fascinated him in his youth.

Now he clearly neither condemns nor rejects them. "I hope," he writes, "the reader understands that this book was not written to denounce modern exegesis but in recognition of much that it has given us and continues to give us."

He does not reject anything valid that comes from his academic colleagues. He does not wish to oppose them but to go beyond them, well aware that research - if it is concrete, sensible, and ready to accept every possibility, including opening itself up to Mystery - will show that there are really many more things in Scripture than what positivist criticism or rationalistic exegesis has so far perceived.

Therefore, ultimately, a specialist like him, aware of every possible objection, but breaking away from any theory, system or method, can conclude that if one wants to find Jesus, "we can trust the Gospels", that it is not true that historical research is necessarily irreconcilable with the faith. On the contrary, in the end, it could confirm it.

In this sense, the book which our professor started as a cardinal and completed as Pope, seems to echo the battle cry of He whom he always calls 'my venerable and beloved predecssor'.

Because John Paul II's "Do not be afraid" resounds in these pages which do not fear the criticism of other scholars, a work which respects them, which takes from them whatever is positive, but then goes beyond them.

Corriere della sera, 15 aprile 2007

===============================================================

I feel it is necessary to give this little backgrounder:

With exemplary and almost unprecedented modesty for a journalist, Vittorio Messori, whose first book, written in 1976, was called Hypothesis on Jesus, does not make reference to his own book written 30 years before JESUS OF NAZARETH. And yet, he basically set out to do, as a layman, what the Pope has done as a theologian and Biblical scholar.

After years of research in European libraries, visits to archeological sites in the Middle East and interviews with well-known Biblicists, he set out to try to answer who was Jesus, did he really exist, and if he existed - was he the son of God; where did he learn what he taught; how is he different from Buddha or Mohammed, etc.

And in the end, he concluded, the most plausible 'hypothesis on Jesus' is that which the faith teaches us, and that reason tells us we can bet on the historical authenticity of the Gospels. Quite an ambitious first book for a journalist who was only 35 at the time.

He has since written three other books in the same vein: in 1986, "Pati sotto Pontio Pilato" (Did he 'suffer under Pontius Pilate'?), an investigation into the facts of the Passion and Death of Christ [Pope Benedict cites from this work in the Jesus book]; in 2000, "Dicono che e risorto" (They say he is risen), an investigation into the facts of the Resurrection; and in 2005, Ipotesi su Maria, an investigation into what can be known about Mary.

----------------------------------------------------------------



The following is one of the articles I had prioritized yesterday, 4/14, to translate, but as I was midway to translating it last night, I accidentally hit one of those buttons on the keyboard that I never use because I don't know what they are for (they have the Windows icon on the key) that took me away from the message box where I was doing the translation and back to a home page, which means I lost all the work I did. And I was too sleepy to begin all over...And of course today, 4/15, the more current news took precedence.

It's the book review by Marco Politi, who has been very hostile and harsh to the Pope in the matter of the Church's positions on 'political' issues, notably DICO lately. But this one is very positive because it accepts the premise with which Benedict XVI undertook this book project.


The Pope's book is above all
a fascinating portrait of Christ
that is rigorous and joyous
at the same time
By MARCO POLITI


The latest book by Joseph Ratzinger is a splendid literary catechism, a hymn in the footsteps of Christ, a fascinating portrait of Jesus as every parish priest and religion instructor would love to be able to convey.

In this first book written as Pope, Ratzinger confirms his style which fascinates the people of Rome and elsewhere: expository simplicity, an ability to draw everyone - literally everyone - closer to the essential themse of the faith, and a convincing exhortation to a spirituality that is intense, rigorous and joyous.

But GESU DI NAZARET (Rizzoli, 446 pp) is also an opportunity for Ratzinger to settle accounts with theories, methods and even translations that have annoyed him over the years.

"Mother is not a way to address God," he exclaims at a certain point, brusquely closing years of polemic with the inclusive feminist theology of some North American Catholics.

Of course, God is neither man or woman, although in the Bible maternal love for His people is attributed to Him, and it is touching that 'divine mercy' is described with a Hebrew term that refers to the 'maternal womb', he points out.

But, Ratzinger insists, the image of the Father, referred to in the fundamental prayer Jesus taught us, remains the most appropriate to express "the Otherness between Creator and creature, the sovereignty of His creative act."

Ratzinger-Benedict XVI concludes drily: "We pray as Jesus taught us to pray, not according to whatever comes to mind or as we please. Only this way are we praying right."

This book, the author announces in his Introduction, "is not a magisterial act." More, "anyone is free to contradict me."

It will be difficult. Because Ratzinger's formulation eliminates the great problems of Biblical research in the 20th century as though brushing away useless crumbs from a banqueting table.

What exactly does it mean that Jesus is the "Son" of God? How did he grow to his calling? Was there a maturation of his self-knowledge? Why did he believe, like other prophets did, that the coming of the Kingdom as imminent and that he himself would be returning soon? Is it significant that Jesus never once presented Himself to be God?

Generations of theologians have racked their brains over these contentious points and are still digging in an attempt to throw a bridge between the 'historical' Jesus and the Savior in Christian doctrine.

But the Ratzingerian Gospel calms down everything and bypasses these questions, by starting with the premise that Jesus is God, and therefore, he can be understood only "in the context of the mystery of God." Could a Pope say otherwise? Probably not.

But the Pope's Jesus book puts an end to theological research as an investigation conducted using historico-critical methods. These pages evoke a theology that is handmaiden to doctrine, a theology that explains but does not put to the proof whatever theoretical constructions have been inherited from the past.

Besides, by initiating the work with the baptism in the Jordan, Ratzinger can avoid the inconvenient questions about the paternity of Jesus and about the brothers cited inthe Gospels.
[But this omits to say that the second volume will treat with tehe beginning and the end of Jesus's biography in which surely those questions will be faced.]

"Neither a rebel nor a liberal," neither a political leader nor a teacher of morals, is the Jesus that Benedict XVI presents and accompanies, from his meeting with the Baptist to the Transfiguration, with citations ranging from Nietszche to Marx, Gandhi to Edith Stein, St. Francis and Therese of Lisieux.

Jesus, says the author, "has brought us God: now we know His face, and now we can invoke Him." And only he who knows God, he continues, can know man truly.

Ratzinger shows himself to be a great preacher. His illustrations are intense about the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Samaritan, the invocations contained in the Lord's Prayer.

The Pope preaches a demanding Christianity, in which the "I" should know how to find God [the expression is more effective in Italian, "L'Io deve saper cercare Dio'], purify itself and know how to be a 'neighbor' to the Other.

"The law of Christ," he says, "is freedom." But not to live as one pleases, "rather to live for good, a freedom that allows itself to be guided by the Holy Spirit."

He criticizes Christians who wish to escape the "Cross" and who consider the goodness of God as 'sugared water.' He rejects the ideology of welfare and of individualism which dictates its own morality, as well as political interpretations of the message of Christ.

"The Sermon on the Mount is not a social program," he says, "but social justice can flourish only when faith can have the power of renunciation and of responsibility for one's neighbor as towards the entire society." And the Church, he underscores, "should not lose its awareness that it should be recognizable as the community of God's poor."

Those who are afflicted - who are exalted by Christ - remind him of events under totalitarian regimes and "the brutal way in which they have mocked, enslaved and beaten up" men, but also of the abuses of economic power and the "cruelty of capitalism which degrades man to merchandise."

Ratzinger experiences the contemporary epoch with alarm - when God is declared dead and faith is made to appear ridiculous. "There is a global poisoning of the spiritual climate which threatens mankind in his dignity, if not outright, his very existence."

There is a 'secularism', he goes on, that wants a godless State. "When man loses sight of God, then violence takes the upper hand with forms of cruelty previously unimaginable."

In defense of the family: "For the nascent Church and thereafter, it has been fundamental to defend the family as the heart of the social order. And we see how today the Church's battles are centered on this point."

Central to Ratzinger's book is the relationship with Judaism. The Pope rejects every vision which would set aside the Old Alliance in the name of the New. And he confronts the thesis of Rabbi Neusner, a contemporary Jewish scholar who has studied Christ seriously.

For Ratzinger, the key to untying the mysterious knot which makes Judaism and Christianity close but separated can be found in the Torah, where it says that Israel has the mission to be a "light for the peoples" so that it becomes manifest that "the God of Israel, the one God [of Jews and Christians], the true God" becomes the God of all peoples and of all men. It is in this universal dimension that Jesus brings the Law of Moses to fulfillment.

Is there salvation for those who do not know Christ? Yes, for those "who hunger and thirst for justice" and who are ready for an interior awakening in order to proceed towards truth: "This is the way that is open to all, the way that leads to Jesus
Christ."

However, No to considering all religions equal. Because in the end, only Jesus is the Redeemer, Him who 'restores.'

Joseph Ratzinger reiterates passionately what the Apostle John
says: "No one has ever seen God: but He has been revealed to us by the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father."

And all the myths that have spoken of a divine being who dies and resurrects, says the theologian Pope, ultimately anticipated Him: "The desire became reality." And so the circle closes.

It is a reassuring discourse which will please the faithful who are in search of a comfortable identity, after Papa Wojtyla raised a lot of uneasiness with his 'mea culpas' and praying with other religions.

La Repubblica, 14 aprile 2007

NB: For those who may not be aware of it, Marco Politi was co-author with Carl Bernstein (of Woodward-and-Bernstein Watergate fame) of the 2005 book HIS HOLINESS, which focused on the role John Paul II played in the fall of Communism.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2007 22.27]

Avvenire came out today with its magazine special.

In this article written for Il Tempo, the head of RAI-TV's Vatican bureau, Giuseppe di Carli, Vatican correspondent for more than 20 years, describes the documentary BENEDETTO XVI: iL Papa dell'amicizia con Dio(The Pope of friendship with God) made by Italian state TV to mark the Pope's 80th birthday.
Part I aired last night and Part II today before the Pope's birthday Mass.


By GIUSEPPE DE CARLI

Tomorrow, Joseph Ratzinger turns 80. Today, for the first time on a global scale, the Papal Mass, celebrated one day ahead of the actual birthday, will be transmitted in high-definition TV (HDTV).

"I am a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord" is how he presented himself to the world for the first time as Pope Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005, at 17:58 from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica.

A shy person on the world stage. A German after the Pole. The dean of cardinals. A man of 78. The only one among the 115 cardinals who took part in the first Conclave of the third millennium who was not named by John Paul II but by Paul VI.

He was the architrave of John Paul II's Pontificate. A theologian Pope after a philosopher Pope. An erudite man who breaks the bread of theology into the simplicity of daily catechism.

"Help me so that I do not flee before the wolves," he said in his inaugural homily.

His choice of the name Benedict, his decision not to use the papal tiara on his coat of arms; the splendor of the ceremony that formally began his Petrine ministry.

Joseph Ratzinger as Pope surprises - and continues to surprise.

Already as a child (born in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria on April 16, 1927), he was an enfant prodige. He had a passion for Latin and Greek, he loved music, and through devotional books, he started to appreciate liturgy.

His father Joseph, in order to escape Nazi intervention in the family's daily life, changed assignments as a police officer 14 times to move from town to town.

Barely 16, Joseph was conscripted into anti-aircraft service near Munich, where he managed never to shoot a gun. Deserting in the final days of the war, he became an American POW, and in the camp, he fended off the memories of war by writing poems in Greek hexameter.

After the war, he entered the seminary in Freising and in 1951, was ordained a priest by Cardinal Faulhaber, the same one he first saw as a five-year-old boy, which made him declare he wanted to be a cardinal.

His Church superiors decided that his vocation was to be a scholar and a theologian. After his graduation thesis, his habilitation to become a university professor, which posed an unexpected problem that he overcame typically.

Thus started his academic career, and his reputation as an 'enlightened and progressive theologian' spreads through Germany's academic world.

He comes to Rome for the first time to take part in the Second Vatican Council as consultant to Cardinal Frings of Cologne and finds himself among the leading thinkers of a Church facing the tempests of modernity.

Eventually, he ends up in Regensburg, a haven for his spirit. But Paul VI had other plans for him. In 1977, he names him Archbishop of Munich and Freising and soon afterwards, a cardinal. He takes part in the two Conclaves of 1978.

He strikes a friendship with the Polish Archbishop who would go on to become Pope John Paul II. In 1982, he becomes Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

As Prefect, he found himself in the midst of burning issues, new disputes, unforeseen challenges: Liberation theology, the Lefebvre case, the confusion of teh post-Conciliar Church, No to communion for remarried Catholic divorcees, No to women priests, pedophilia in the clergy, genetic manipulations, the revolt of the theologians of Northern Europe, the dangers of 'protestantizing' the Catholic Church, the third 'secret' of Fatima, the gigantic scale of the Jubilee Year of 2000.

Charitable persons called him the Iron Prefect, the more critical used Panzerkardinal.

On the death of John Paul II, the cardinal electors looked to him as the only one up to the task of taking over the rudder of a Pontificate as great as his predecessor had made it.

He chooses to remain himself. Velvet-touch changes in the Curia and only a few foreign trips but well-aimed. In Cologne, with a million youth. In Wojtyla's homeland, Poland, and a dramatic invocation at Auschwitz-Birkenau; to Valencia, for the family; in his beloved Bavaria; and most recently, the most electrically charged of his trips, a voyage to Muslim Turkey with that extraordinary moment of prayer inside the Blue Mosque of Istanbul.

And there's 'the B16 style'. His way of being the Pope. Even in the way he dresses, the vestments he wears, his choice of chasubles, copes, pectoral crosses, headgear. There is a sense of levity and spiritual freedom, a mixture of old and new. A Pope who is a perfect synthesis of tradition and post-modernism. Who renounced the tiara for his coat-of-arms. Who calls himself as 'a beast of burden'. One with a clear sense of self-irony who says "To be the Pope, one must not take oneself too seriously."

And finally, the most intimate images not seen before. A day with Benedict XVI in that 'apartment' which centuries of reserve have kept hidden from the world.

We get an unprecedented portrait of the most human activities of a Pope who alternates his work with intense and long moments of prayer. In that Third Floor, where he now has all his books, and where silence reigns. In the daily environment where his 'family' carries on in perfect synchrony - Father Georg and Father Mietek, the four 'Memores Domini' sisters, and his valet.

Il Tempo, 14 aprile 2007


From Avvenire's Sunday newspaper, 4/15/07
(didn'tcome online yesterday, Sunday):



It devoted three pages to the Vigevano-Pavia trip this weekend:




The back page is the Vatican publishing house LEV's
birthday greeting to the Pope.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2007 22.04]

Pope celebrates Mass,
marks 80th birthday
By FRANCES D'EMILIO


VATICAN CITY, April 15 - Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his 80th birthday a day early with a Mass in his honor Sunday on the flower-bedecked steps of St. Peter's Square.

Cardinals, priests and tens of thousands of faithful joined the pope in prayers of thanks to God for his long life.

Benedict was born in Marktl Am Inn, a riverside town in the Bavaria region of Germany, and sprinkled among the crowd in the square were fellow countrymen and women in traditional dress, including feather-trimmed hats.

Benedict said the faithful had gathered to reflect on what he called his "not brief" life.



Since becoming pope two years ago, Benedict has devoted much of his energy to improving relations with other religions as well as among Christians, and in tribute to his efforts, Ecumenical Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians — sent a personal representative to the Mass, the Metropolitan of Pergamo, Ioannis. The pontiff said he hoped that theological dialogue between Orthodox and Roman Catholics would continue "with renewed vigor."

Benedict and a long line of red-hatted cardinals wore gold-colored vestments over white robes.

Yellow and white are the official Vatican colors, and the rows of flowers lined up in perfect order across the steps were all yellow.

The pope smiled as he gazed across the sea of faithful gathered under brilliant sunshine in the square.

As Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope spent most of his earlier years studying and teaching theology in Germany and later trying to ensure that Catholics kept to doctrinal correctness in two decades as a top aide to Pope John Paul II.

Referring to his 2005 election as John Paul's successor, Benedict said in his homily: "With the growing weight of responsibility, the Lord brought me new help in my life."

He said that knowing that many pray for him gives him joy, and he expressed gratitude to those who put up with his shortcomings.

"For this, I would now like to thank the Lord and all of you with all my heart," Benedict said, pledging to carry out his mission with increasing dedication.



From Vatican Radio's German service, translated:

A celebratory Mass on St. Peter's Square with more than 60,000 faithful present began the observance of Pope Benedict XVI's 80th birthday today a day early.

Many were pilgrims from Germany, including Munich Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, Bavaria's Minister-President Edmund Stoiber and Pricness Gloria von Thurn und Taxis from Regensburg.

Prominent among the guests were Metropolitan Iannos sent by Patriarch Bartholomew I as his personal representative, and Mons. Georg Ratzinger, the Pope's brother.



Earlier, Bavarian Mountain Rangers paraded in bright sunshine through Via della Conciliazione to the Bernini Colonnades at St. Peter's Square.

Before the Mass, Dean of Cardinals Angelo Sodano greeted the Pope on behalf of the College of Cardinals.

In his messages for various pilgrim groups after the Regina caeli, the Pope reminded the Poles that 5 years ago, his predecessor John Paul II had dedicated the Basilica of Divine Mercy in Krakow. Today is the Sunday of Divine Mercy, to which John Paul had a particular devotion. He died on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005.


Faithful in Rome
for Pope's birthday, anniversary
By Silvia Aloisi


VATICAN CITY, April 15 (Reuters) dict thanked God and his own earthly family for his papacy and his life on Sunday at a mass that began celebrations marking his 80th birthday and the second anniversary of his election as Roman Catholic leader.



Tens of thousands of pilgrims joined cardinals, bishops and foreign dignitaries in a sunny St Peter's Square to pray with the German-born pontiff, who turns 80 on Monday.

He said the events allowed him to look back at his life.

"To all I say the most heartfelt 'thank you,' and I extend that to the whole Church which, like a real family, surrounds me with its affection particularly at this time," the Pope said in a sermon after the mass.

He also thanked the members of his own family - both dead and alive - for their support. "I thank God because I was able to experience what family means," he said.

He said his father Joseph, a police chief, and mother Maria, had been role models for him and drew parallels between his own family and the wider family of God.

The Pope, a renowned theologian who last week published his first book since becoming pontiff, also remembered his predecessor, John Paul, who died at age 84 on April 2, 2005.

"He lived under two dictatorships," Benedict said, referring to Nazism and Communism, "and, in his direct contact with poverty, need and violence, he deeply experienced the power of darkness, which also besets the world today."

Benedict, an accomplished pianist, will celebrate his birthday with a lunch with cardinals, followed by a concert of Mozart and Dvorak in his honor at the Vatican.

"Music for my brother is the expression of joy and happiness, of his gratitude to God for the beauty of life," his older brother Georg Ratzinger, long-time music director at Regensburg cathedral, said in a recorded TV interview to be broadcast on Monday.

Benedict was elected Pope on April 19, 2005 after the death of John Paul, a Pole whose papacy of nearly 27 years was one of the longest in history.

He has repeatedly said he wanted his papacy to be a seamless continuation of that of his predecessor, whom he has put on the fast track to Roman Catholic sainthood.

The first phase of the process leading to John Paul's beatification - the last step before sainthood - ended earlier this month when Church investigators presented the Vatican with evidence of a purported miracle performed by the late pontiff.

Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, 46, a French nun with Parkinson's disease -- from which the late Pope also suffered -- claims it inexplicably disappeared in June 2005 after she and fellow nuns prayed to John Paul to intercede with God to heal her.



Having just read the Papal homily, I have to wonder at this headline. If anyone's downbeat, it is he or she whoever it is that wrote this piece.



Pope downbeat on 80th birthday

VATICAN CITY, April 14 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI marked his 80th birthday Sunday with a mass before thousands of worshippers in which he spoke of "darkness" threatening the world in the form of war, oppression and hate.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who turns 80 on Monday, was elected to succeed John Paul II two years ago Thursday and the mass in St Peter's Square celebrated both milestones.

He said only the grace of God could defeat evil in the world.

"Let us ask that this gift of God be accorded above all to the nations where oppression, hate and the tragedy of war hold sway," he said.

The pope paid tribute to his predecessor, saying John Paul had lived through dictatorships, poverty and violence and had "profound experience of the darkness which also threatens the world of our time."

Pilgrims had been called to attend the mass to "thank God for the gift he has given us in our Pope Benedict XVI."

The conservative Benedict, though less warm and spontaneous than his predecessor, has drawn similar-sized crowds so far in his young papacy, according to Vatican figures, though the numbers are falling. [How can any reporter so brazenly claim lies like this - in this case, the exact opposite of facts - and not be corrected by her editor(s(? What do editors do these days anyway?]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2007 3.38]

This appeared today opposite the editorial column in the broadsheet Sunday Telegraph. The unflattering (actually hideous) cartoon of B16 doesn't appear in the online version. This article doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, but it shows how the conservative side of the British media are responding to the birthday events

What happened to 'God's rottweiler'?

By Nigel Farndale, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/04/2007

Let us imagine, for one indulgent moment, how Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate his 80th birthday tomorrow. His beloved cats will no doubt feature, although he is no longer able to enjoy his morning walks with them across St Peter's Square - he has to be driven in a car these days, to avoid the scrums of autograph hunters. At some point he will surely open the lid of his piano and play a sonata by Schubert, Schumann or Brahms, as is his daily custom. He is an accomplished pianist, though few have heard him play. His modesty forbids it. Perhaps he will listen to his iPod, something he is said to enjoy. Unlike President Bush, he has yet to reveal what is on his playlist, but it is unlikely to include rock music - he strongly disapproves of that. Perhaps he will go shopping for designer clothes. As he showed when he posed on the ski slopes in a Nike hat, quilted white jacket, and designer Serengeti sunglasses, he has a taste for labels. And it is said that under the ceremonial garments he has reintroduced to the papal wardrobe, including the mozzetta, a fur-trimmed velvet cape, he wears dainty Prada shoes.

There will be time set aside for prayer and contemplation, of course. And perhaps the leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics will also reflect wistfully upon how he would rather be spending his 80th birthday. As a cardinal he often spoke of looking forward to a peaceful retirement in a Bavarian village, dedicating himself to writing books. And when it became clear that he was in the frame for the top job he prayed to God to be let off the hook. "Evidently," he mused as the white smoke rose, "this time He didn't listen to me."

The Big Fella wasn't listening to the world's liberal Catholics either. They, too, were praying Cardinal Ratzinger wouldn't be elected to the throne of St Peter. They expected "God's rottweiler", the one-time Hitler Youth, to be a heretic-devouring, fire-breathing inquisitor. Not surprisingly. As well as clamping down on dissent in his previous role as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - formerly known as the Inquisition - he described civil partnerships for homosexuals as "the legislation of evil", dismissed the paedophile priest scandal as a media contrivance, and damned all other faiths as "gravely deficient".

But two years into his papacy - the anniversary is this Thursday - liberals seem to have warmed to him, or at least come to recognise that the rottweiler was a media caricature. The Pope may still have those slightly sinister black circles under his eyes and that thin, off-centre smile, but he has not yet shown his fangs. On the contrary, there has been a gentle, unhurried and conciliatory tone to his papacy. His appeal to those languishing in the "spiritual deserts" of personal despair, for example, won over many a liberal heart and mind.

But it was his first encyclical that truly wrong-footed the moderates. Deus Caritas Est was a poetic, positive and inclusive document that amounted to the old hippy message that love is the answer. "Sex please, we're Catholics," was the considered response to it by the Catholic magazine, The Tablet. "Love your neighbour, even make love to your neighbour, but love God above all" seems to be a better paraphrase of it.

This is not to say that Benedict has strayed from the traditional Catholic doctrines on artificial birth control, abortion and homosexuality. In fact, some believed that the phoney war of his papacy was over when, a few months into it, he produced guidelines on excluding gay men from entering the priesthood. But guidelines were as far as he went, to the frustration of conservatives. One, Fr Richard John Neuhaus, has acknowledged his "palpable uneasiness" about the Pope's lack of decisive action. Another prominent American conservative has privately groused: "We thought we were electing Ronald Reagan, but we got stuck with Jimmy Carter."

To make matters worse for hardliners, it was reported last year that the Vatican had launched a commission to investigate whether married couples should be allowed to use condoms to protect against infection. Though no conclusions have yet been reached, the investigation surprised many in the light of John Paul II's consistent refusal to consider condom use in response to Aids. There was a widespread belief that his successor shared this view.

Damian Thompson, the editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, thinks that both reactionary and radical factions within the Catholic Church have missed the point about Benedict. "He has confounded and outwitted his critics by combining orthodox theology with a tremendously vivid theological imagination," he says. "He wants to talk about what he is in favour of rather than what he is against."

The question now is whether that is what the rest of the world wants to talk about as well. The Pope's first two years have, after all, been overshadowed by the firestorm he started last September with his incendiary remarks on Islam. During a lecture at Regensburg University he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying that Islam was a violent religion that relied upon the sword to spread its message. As if to confirm this, a nun in Africa was duly murdered by a Muslim in protest, and the Pope had to wear a bulletproof vest on his visit to Turkey. In England, 100 Muslims gathered outside Westminster Cathedral holding banners calling for the Pope's execution. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, meanwhile, waded in with the thought that: "Anyone who describes Islam as an intolerant religion encourages violence."

Quod erat demonstrandum, as the Pope might say - and not only because Latin is one of the nine languages he speaks. As a highly distinguished academic he read philosophy as well as theology, and it is this that informs his belief that true religion is the exploration of metaphysics by the power of reason - and that the absence of reason is what is fundamentally wrong with Islam.

There were those who dismissed his comments on Islam as a diplomatic blunder. Others think that, given his formidable intellect and his considerable knowledge of the Koran, he must have anticipated what reaction he would get. His lecture, moreover, represented a deliberate departure from the Vatican's previous policies on dialogue with Islam, away from promoting harmony at all costs towards more reciprocity. It may even be that it indicated that Benedict has given up hope that Islam will reform; that he now wants to take on Islam in Europe in the same way that his predecessor took on Communism.

Pope Benedict does not have the effortless theatricality and charisma of John Paul II. Nor does he share his predecessor's enthusiasm for thrusting forward his ring for the faithful to kiss. In many ways, Benedict is still the shy, sober son of a Bavarian policeman. But he is also described by those who know him as being a warm and self-deprecating man in private. Humour, he has said, is a good way to cope with stress, even for popes.

His collegiality, meanwhile, can be measured by what hasn't happened during his reign, including the delayed release of his motu proprio authorising wider celebration of the Tridentine Mass, the one celebrated almost entirely in Latin. He is all in favour of it, when the time seems right. Some Vatican-watchers are still predicting that a conflict is imminent with the more modernising elements in the Church. But if he was going to do something, it would surely have happened by now. A man of 80 does not bide his time, especially one with a heart condition.

There is a rumour that he has undergone an operation in preparation for an eventual heart bypass, but the Vatican is notoriously circumspect when asked about the health of popes. Perhaps the most telling indication as to the fitness of this one is the explanation he gave for bringing forward the publication of his book Jesus of Nazareth: "I do not know how much time and strength remains to me." A lot of both, it is to be hoped.

You can post a comment beneath this article here
- a comment can be about the Pope in general, how wonderful he is, etc.

===============================================================

Dear Wulfrune, I went and posted a comment right away. Isn't there a single English journalist writing about the Pope and the Catholic Church who can be trusted to be objective?

TERESA

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/04/2007 17.39]

Thanks to Rocco Palmo's blog for leading me to this article. Except towards the end, when she tends to take one of her interviewee's answers for gospel truth [whatever happened to the basic journalistic practice of checking out verifiable statements of alleged fact made by people you quote, and then adding the necessary correction if it is warranted?], it's fairly objective, especially if you compare it to the literal hack job by the Time and Newsweek writers.

Still, she commits an unforgivable error of fact early on - she's obviously not one of those who bothers to check out verifiable facts! - when she claims itswas Ratzinger who discplined Hans Kueng in 1979! Both instances when Kueng was disciplined by the CDF happened before Ratzinger came to the CDF. But this is the kind of supposed respectable journalism we are getting these days....As for the headline, it's probably the deskman's not hers, and it is, of course, stupid..

Celebrating two years as pontiff,
Benedict XVI assumes new role

By Ann Rodgers
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, April 15, 2007


Two years ago this week, as crowds in St. Peter's Square eagerly awaited a new pope, an elderly German whom critics had dubbed "PanzerKardinal" for his silencing of dissenting theologians stepped onto the balcony and introduced himself as "a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord."

Since that evening, Pope Benedict XVI has shed his image as a fierce enforcer. Instead of using his first encyclical to denounce Catholics who stray from orthodoxy, which conservatives had hoped for and liberals feared, he devoted it to proclaiming that "God is love."

"In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence ... I wish in my first encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others," he wrote, startling angry culture warriors on both sides.

Tomorrow the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger will turn 80 and on Thursday he will mark two years as pope. The oldest elected in 275 years, his papacy is not expected to be long. The marks he makes now are the legacy he intends to leave.

Along with love, his other great theme is the need for faith and reason to work together to create a just society. Despite a ghastly gaffe during a speech on that topic in Germany, he has stressed good relations with other faiths and worked toward unity with Orthodox Christians. His few statements that lay down the law have been nuanced enough to allow bishops some leeway in applying them.

He draws record crowds to his weekly audiences, surpassing those who came to hear Pope John Paul II.

"They are coming because they are being fed," said George Weigel, author of "God's Choice: Pope Benedict and the Future of the Catholic Church."

"This is a master teacher who can distill 2,000 years of Christian tradition and seven decades of his own scholarship into very beautiful teaching. That is the story of his pontificate. It is going to be a teaching pontificate."

The Rev. Thomas Reese, whose work as editor of the center-left Jesuit magazine Cardinal Ratzinger had criticized, was forced to resign shortly after the new pope's election. Today, Father Reese calls Pope Benedict "better than expected."

He praises his choice of new bishops, saying they are more inclined to persuade people to follow church teaching than to denounce them for not doing so.

The pope "truly believes that you can describe the Christian faith in a beautiful way that is attractive to people, and not simply as a list of don'ts," he said.

He did not welcome the Vatican's recent action against a theologian, the Rev. Jon Sobrino in El Salvador, whose view of Jesus was denounced as "dangerous." But it amounted to no more than a negative book review, Father Reese said, and did not require the priest to be silent or stop writing - although his bishop chose to remove him from his teaching post.

Pope Benedict was a model of civility in September 2005, when he hosted a friendly reunion with the liberal Swiss theologian, the Rev. Hans Kung, whom he had banned in 1979 from teaching official classes on Catholic theology.[He had nothing to do with that! He was the Archbishop of Munich at the time!] Kung rejects many church teachings, including that Christianity is the only true faith.

"My question is, have any bishops followed his example and had lunch with a local dissident?" Father Reese said.

Maybe not. But one theologian whom Cardinal Ratzinger forced from the Catholic University of America said Pope Benedict has left him "pleasantly surprised."

"I don't think he's going to change anything but I think he has become quite conscious of his role of the bishop of Rome as the center of unity in the church," said the Rev. Charles Curran, now at Southern Methodist University.

Some conservatives have grumbled that his new office made their champion timid. But Mike Sullivan, vice president-president of Catholics United for the Faith in Steubenville, Ohio, believes his fellow conservatives should emulate Benedict.

"He is reaching out to people who the church would not usually be able to reach. He is able to dialogue with dissenters, with other religions, with secularists and relativists in a way that really draws them into the struggle with the truth," he said.

Benedict has made constant calls for peace and social justice. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he opposed the invasion of Iraq, saying that "just war" theory had no place for "pre-emptive war." His most recent criticism came on Easter, when he said "nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees."

His recent major document on the Eucharist added a twist to arguments about politicians. Using a term favored by conservatives, he said that a short list of issues was "not negotiable" for Catholic legislators. But to the conservative list - womb-to-tomb protection of human life, families built on heterosexual marriage, and parents' right to educate children - he added "the common good in all its forms."

That's a church term for social justice, the leading concern for Catholics of the left and global South. It did not say that priests must deny communion to dissenting legislators.

Some observers believe that statement was the work of the committee that wrote the first draft. But Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., was on that committee and said the pope himself worked on that passage.

"That reflects his language over the language that was in the propositions," he said.

"I believe he was speaking of the whole social justice teaching of the church and saying these values are not negotiable. When you look at Jesus' teaching [on final judgment], he is saying that if you do not feed the hungry or clothe the naked, those things exclude you from the kingdom. ... The pope is talking about gospel values."

He knew Cardinal Ratzinger, and has been astounded at how quickly the academic theologian changed roles to become pastor of 1 billion souls.

"While his first encyclical was written in theological language, the whole focus is pastoral, explaining to people how to live out the love of God. I just found that remarkable, coming from a pope whose history is so profoundly and deeply theological. His first works to the church have been practical," he said.

Others are less impressed. David Gibson, author of the biography "The Rule of Benedict," said he changed only his image.

"We've gone from two poles of propaganda, from God's Rottweiler to papal pussycat," he said.

"Neither is quite true. He's talking about God's love, about his experiences of faith. He's becoming the Dalai Lama of Catholicism. Yet, under the radar, he's taken a number of serious actions. ... He's preaching a very lovely Christianity, but is he exercising that same love and charity?"

While others say that a document on gay seminarians gave bishops just enough latitude to accept those committed to celibacy, its negative view of such men is harmful, Mr. Gibson said.

"It says that homosexuals are a deviant class of deficient people."

He believes the pope's greatest flaw is a failure to acknowledge past mistakes by church leadership. At Regensburg, Germany, he infamously quoted a medieval emperor's claim that Muhammad brought only conversion by sword, but he did not lament violence committed in the name of the church. At Auschwitz, his meditation on the Holocaust did not mention the history of Catholic anti-Semitism.

[Did this man, who has the audacity to be a Papal biographer, ever look at documents that do not support his biases? Has he ever read any of the documents issued by the Church during Jubilee Year 2000 in connection with all the apologies it made for the obvious mistakes committed by its representatives in the past - from the Crusades to colonial excesses in Latin America and eslewhere?Documents which, obviously, had to have been prepared by the CDF in view of the nature of their contents? They are all available on the Vatican website!]
"He's not anti-Semitic, he's not anti-Islamic necessarily, but he's not reflective about the church's past," Mr. Gibson said.

Most people consider the Regensburg speech the low mark of his papacy. [Most people? That category obviously excludes thinking,literate people, who know a seminal document when they see it - seminal not only for the Church but for Western civilization as it begins the third millennium after Christ!] .] Angry Muslims rioted and killed a nun in Somalia, even though the pope repeatedly said that the emperor's view was not his own.

Father Reese said the speech revealed the pope's flaws.

"One of the strengths of Benedict is that he writes his own speeches for the most part, but that is also one of his weaknesses," he said. "It's clearly a thoughtful speech - and his target was not Muslims but European secularists - but it should have been enriched by input from people who are real experts in Islam and some other things."

Dr. Weigel, on the other hand, regards Regensburg as the most important papal address since Pope John Paul at the United Nations in 1985.

"It defines one of the key themes of the first two years of his pontificate, the necessary interface between faith and reason," he said. "John Paul wrote that humanity has to rise on two wings of faith and reason. Benedict has now identified the problem that happens when those wings fall off the bird. Irrational faith teaches that God wants you to strap a bomb on and blow up people in a pizza parlor. And reason without faith has made Europe unable to say why blowing up people in a pizza parlor is a bad idea."

On the left, Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch, has not backed off her criticism of limiting the priesthood to celibate males.

"He's not dealing with the priest shortage. It's almost like he's in an ivory tower," she said. [Just because he's not opening the door to women priests - which would be folly for any Pope to do - does not mean he's not dealing with it. You don't solve a priest shortage overnight, and you certainly don't do it by fielding dissident priests and married priests and women! The church has to care about the priests it fields - the substandard formation of the post-Vatican-II priests iss bad enough as it is!
But she was delighted with remarks the pope has made about women, including vague hints that they could take on more roles in the church. She cited talks he gave on the influence of women in the New Testament church, in which he endorsed women's right to speak in church, and spoke of a deacon named Phoebe.

The pope "put on the map that women's leadership was extremely significant," she said.

Phyllis Zagano, senior research associate at Hofstra University, advocates the ordination of female deacons, which existed in the early church and whose restoration has not been ruled out. She wouldn't be shocked if this pope brought them back.

"I don't know that he will be the first one to do it, but he may be the first one to mention it. I know all about snowballs in the netherworld, but I really think that he could do it," she said.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Ann Rodgers can be reached at arodgers@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416. )

The Mass at St. Hedwig's in Berlin today; right, Chancellor Merkel beside the Belgian ambassador during the service.

BERLIN, April 15 (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday congratulated Pope Benedict XVI on his 80th birthday which the pontiff and pilgrims were celebrating with a mass in Rome's St Peter's Square.

"Your holiness, I warmly congratulate you," Merkel said in a letter to the German-born pope, adding that he has for decades been a beacon to Catholics.

"Your radiant strength as a theologian, the depth of your faith and personal conviction has for decades been felt in the Roman Catholic Church and in society," she wrote.

Merkel, a Protestant, said she often thought of her "enriching" personal meetings with the pope in recent years.

"The ideas you have expressed about my work have been an encouragement," she said.

The pope was born Joseph Ratzinger in the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn on April 16, 1927 and turns 80 on Monday.

Thursday marks two years since he was elected to succeed Pope John Paul II as leader of the world's one billion Catholics on April 19, 2005.

He was also celebrating this milestone on Sunday.

In Berlin, several hundred people celebrated the pope's birthday at a special mass in the capital's 18th-century Cathedral of St Hedwig.

It was led by the archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who praised the pope as practising his faith in a way that was not only proper but also beautiful.

"His words are music to our ears and hearts," Meisner said.

Merkel and several ambassadors to Germany were among those who attended the mass where the choir and orchestra of Berlin's Humboldt University performed a new work by composer Wolfgang Seifen dedicated to the pope.

In Marktl am Inn, the 262-year-old house where the pope was born was opened to the public for the first time on Sunday. Visitors could look at an exhibition of photographs tracing his life and work.

The village near the Austrian border has become a place of pilgrimage since he became pontiff, attracting some 250,000 visitors.

Here is a translation of an editorial in Quotidiano Nazionale, by an experienced journalist who recently resigned as deputy editor at Corriere della Sera toprotest their editorial policies.


What we could all give the Pope
on his 80th birthday
By Gaspare Barbiellini Amidei


A Pope and his 80 years: good wishes are not enough. Christians need to show consistency, in morals as in politics. Agnostics need to respect diversity. And no one should expect this theologian Pope to make choices that contradict the deposit of the faith, which for decades he defended as the main collaborator of Karol Wjtyla, already called Saint.

Therefore it would be good for both the faithful and his adversaries to see the Pontificate of Benedict XVI for what it is: no surrender and no tacticism.

There's too much formal hypocrisy around. Devout atheists are preaching to the Pope how to be Pope. To the left, other devout hardliners, not atheists, are pushing for impossible 'modernization': traditions guarded as the truth are not subject to change the way the wind blows. And the anti-clericalists swing between hostility which is still civlly expressed and vulgar attacks, from extreme parody to threatening insults on city walls.

This Pope is a media mystery. The more he shows himself rigorous and demanding, the more the faithful appreciate him. The less he concedes to teh crowd, the more they applaud him. the more he shies away from the TV-friendly ambiance of his predecessor, the more he resembles him in being loved by his people.

He has made non-conformist choices for his top aides, all substantially definable as progressive. Bertone, a Salesian cardinal outside the Vatican diplomatic service, is Secretary of State. Hummes, a South American cardinal who was a friend to many liberation theologians as a young priest, and is still a good fiend of the worker-president of Brazil, was called to take charge of the most difficult congregation, that which governs all the priests in the world.

If he had not been elected Pope two years ago, Joseph Ratzinger tomorrow would become ineligible by reason of age to be a cardinal elector. But his new mission asks of this 80-year-old man to act young. And he does not disappoint.

He faces the most arduous issues. He has not neglected the organizational strcture which suffered inevitable setbacks during the last years of an ill Pope. He looks at crises in the face.

He knows the anti-Christian obsession of the cultural industry which sells fanta-theology bestsellers. These books follow the New Age mania in imposing on people an idea of Jesus who is not the Christ, not the Son of God, just another rabbi who lived 2000 years ago and had a wife and children. These frivolities will pass away sooner or later.

But Ratzinger knows that behind this is something much more serious in a materialistic society which does not value intelligence or reason. It has no tolerance for silence and meditation, which are indispensable for thinking about God and praying to Him.

The Pope knows the assault on Latin American Catholicism by Protestant sects. And he reads with sorrow the new European misbelief founded on the ruins of communist ideology.

He does not under-estimate the errors and internal weaknesses of the Church. He has been very severe with priests who commit outrages. He needs priests who are young and enthusiastic, Christians who are consistent in their faith and how they practice it.

There are Catholic sectors in Italy that are now in full vigor. Think of the volunteer services, or movements like Sant'Egidio, and so many other dynamic centers.

Christian media have reached levels of professional excellence. Avvenire can match Corriere della Sera for its breadth of international coverage and the authority of its editorials. SAT 2000 of the Italian bishops conference is the most popular satellite outlet in the country. The Catholic University has the best school of communications sciences in Europe.

There is much in the Chruch entrusted to Benedict XVI to do and to put in order, in a modern way but without surrendering to modernity.

As one usually says at birthdays: Another 20 anniversaries like this, Papa Ratzinger. May you have many more productive years.

di Gaspare Barbiellini Amidei

Pope Benedict celebrated at 80


By Peter Gould
BBC News

The 80th birthday of Pope Benedict XVI is being marked in style at the Vatican.
The music-loving pope will be guest of honour at a concert, and he will host a dinner for his cardinals. Tributes will be paid, and commemorative stamps will be issued.

The Vatican's employees have another reason to celebrate the pontiff's birthday. Not only are they getting the day off, they will receive a bonus of 500 euros (£340; $676).

The milestone is an opportunity for Vatican-watchers to assess Pope Benedict's papacy, which began three days after his 78th birthday.

He was already one of the most powerful figures at the Vatican. His defence of church doctrine led to him being called "the Pope's enforcer" and "God's rottweiler".

When he succeeded John Paul II, he was expected to uphold the legacy of the Polish pontiff while the church pondered its future direction.

An intellectual Pope

Benedict XVI promised to be a listening pope, and his style has been very different from his predecessor.

"It has been a surprising papacy," says John Wilkins, the former editor of the Tablet magazine.

"Benedict is shy and laid-back. He is an intellectual and he listens, and gives his bishops time to breathe. You can have a conversation with him - it is not like the monologue you got from John Paul II.

"He is all about healing the strife between progressives and conservatives that was so sharp before, and he has made overtures to both sides."

Indeed, critics who thought Benedict XVI would do all he could to stamp out dissent admit they have been surprised.

He has not appointed hard-line traditionalists to key posts. Instead he has promoted men who occupy the centre ground on church issues.

Father Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Centre in Washington, says conservatives in the church are disappointed, while liberals have been pleasantly surprised.

"Both expected him to institute a crackdown on dissident theologians and to appoint authoritarian bishops, but neither has happened so far," he says.

"For the most part, the bishops appointed in the United States have been pastoral teachers who uphold the tradition but don't want to play cops.

"John Paul II tended to appoint bishops who were more confrontational."

Relations with Islam

Benedict XVI has taken a harder line than his predecessor on relations with Islam. But he was dismayed when a quotation he used in a speech last year was seen by some Muslims as an attempt to associate their religion with violence.

"It was a serious and surprising blunder," says John Wilkins. "I am told Benedict was quite mortified at the way the reference was taken. His subsequent visit to Turkey was adept, and did repair a lot of damage.

"I think he has reservations about a theological dialogue with Islam, but there could be a cultural dialogue."

The key for Benedict is reciprocity. If Muslims enjoy religious tolerance in the West, he argues, Catholics should have an equal right to worship without fear of persecution in Islamic states.

A central theme of Benedict's papacy has been his defence of Christian values. The real threat facing the Church, he believes, is the moral decline he sees across much of Europe.

God's rotweiller?

But can the "listening Pope" bring about a change in attitudes? Father Thomas Reese has doubts, given the pontiff's past record.

"I believe that Benedict sees the key problems, but his strategy for dealing with them is fatally flawed by his history of suppressing theological discussion in the church," he says.

"To speak about Christianity to people in the 21st Century in a way that they can understand takes creativity. Creativity is not encouraged by the suppression of discussion and debate," says Father Reese.

Vatican-watchers agree that whatever Benedict XVI does achieve in his papacy, we should not expect him to make big changes.

"There will not be any major reforms, for example over the ordination of women or the celibacy of the priesthood, or about sexual ethics and contraception," says John Wilkins.

"He was at the right hand of John Paul II and he believes these matters have been settled. He is also a man of 80, so he is not going to rock the boat."

When he was elected, Benedict knew his papacy was unlikely to be a long one. He was the oldest cardinal to become pope since Clement XII was elected in 1730.

However, he appears in good health and equal to the physical demands of the job, so discussions about retirement seem premature. But what of the future?

"With regards to resignation in response to a long debilitating illness, I always respond that the pope will do what he thinks is best for the church," says Father Reese.

"But I think it is more likely that Benedict will resign than John Paul II because he is a humbler man."

As he enters his ninth decade, Benedict has turned out to be a less authoritarian pope than many expected. But it may be a mistake to think he has lost his teeth.

"People say that God's rottweiler has turned into a German shepherd," laughs John Wilkins. "But a German shepherd is an Alsatian, and can still give you a sharp nip."

[Modificato da benefan 16/04/2007 6.10]

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FROM TERESA -

I have two comments:

One, Fr. Reese claiming that Benedict 'suppresses theological discussion in the Church" is obviously inaccurate. What the Church 'suppresses' is the teaching and preaching of doctrine that is not according to the Magisterium.

Two, Wilkins's remark about the Pope having 'reservations on theological dialog with the Muslims." As in Jane Kramer's article for New Yorker, I don't understand why even intelligent people keep postulating 'theological dialog' with other religions, much less that Benedict considers it at all. Dominus Iesus was definitive of Catholic theology, and both Islam and Judaism obviously dispute it (as would Buddhism, Hinduism, etc).

So the core of each religion is not a subject for dialog - it would be endless and futile - and that is only what theological dialog can be about. Relations between religions on the practical level,of peoples and cultures living together - that's the subject for dialog, and that is why Benedict says inter-religious dialog is really a cultural dialog.

Theological dialog in Benedict's language takes place among Christians - who all believe in Christ as the son of God - where the aim is reunification. That is why he lays so much emphasis on the bilateral commissions for theological dialog with the orthodox churches or with the Anglicans (I am not sure there is something similar and as formal with the rest of Protestantism yet).

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2007 11.05]

AD MULTOS ANNOS, BENEDICTE!






Gerald Augustinus was at the Mass yesterday, and already his first photos give us a perspective
none of the news agency photos showed yesterday. You may see more pictures on
closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/


There is always more detail and sometimes, better perspective, in a wrap-up story than with initial reports, so I am going to post some here. First from AP, and then I will translate a couple of good ones from the Italian press, and hopefully, something from the German press as well.


Pope marks 80th birthday with huge Mass
By FRANCES D'EMILIO


VATICAN CITY, April 15 (AP)- Pope Benedict gave thanks for his 80 years of life dedicated to the Church with a special Sunday Mass, a celebration tinged with nostalgia which drew a huge crowd to St. Peter's Square.

The Vatican had invited rank-and-file faithful to the late-morning Mass on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica to help the pontiff celebrate both his 80th birthday Monday and the anniversary of his April 19, 2005, election to the pontificate.

Joseph Ratzinger, who would take the name of Benedict as pontiff, was born April 16, 1927, in Marktl Am Inn, a riverside town in the Bavaria region of Germany.

Thousands of pilgrims from Bavaria attended the Mass, and German echoed in the ancient alleys leading to the Vatican as groups streamed to the square. Some of his fellow countrymen and women wore traditional dress, including feather-trimmed hats; others waved German flags.

Benedict told the crowd they were joining him in a reflection of his "not brief" life.

Acknowledging their participation, the pope said he was extending, "my most sincere thanks, from the depth of my heart, to the entire Church, which, like a true family, especially in these days, surrounds me with its affection."

Benedict's reserved, almost shy style, came through in his homily. In contrast to his late predecessor, John Paul II, who would often speak informally of his youth in Poland, Benedict sounded almost apologetic that he was striking a personal note, however brief, in a religious service.

"The liturgy should not serve to talk about one's ego, of one's self," Benedict said.

He thanked his late sister, Maria, and his retired choirmaster brother, Georg, for being steadfastly close to him.

"I give thanks in a special way because, from the first day, I was able to enter and grow in the great community of believers" in God, Benedict said. He noted that he was born at Easter time, when Christians celebrate in joy their belief in Christ's resurrection.

Benedict appears to carry his years well. He walks briskly, stands through long public ceremonies, and his first book written as pontiff goes on sale Monday.



Right after Benedict's election as pope, his brother expressed worry about the toll that the burdens of the papacy might take on his brother's health. But Benedict's stamina seems to be holding up despite his rigorous schedule.

On Wednesday, he will receive U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Vatican, and next weekend he will make an overnight pilgrimage to northern Italy. In early May, he will travel to Brazil, where the traditionally strong Catholic Church is losing some faithful to Protestant evangelical churches.

While there are no indications that Benedict suffers from any serious or chronic medical problems, there have been ailments in the past — including a 1991 hemorrhagic stroke.

Among the pope's birthday presents was a Gospel holder decorated with gold and precious stones, from Munich-Freising Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, and a more secular gift — 80 bottles of specially brewed Bavarian dark beer and an equal number of steins, carried in the luggage of another bishop from the diocese on a train filled with German pilgrims.

The pope smiled as he gazed across the sea of faithful gathered under brilliant sunshine.



Yellow and white are the official Vatican colors, and yellow pansies were lined up in perfect order across the basilica's steps. Clusters of yellow daffodils brightened the gray cobblestones elsewhere in the square.

The future pope spent most of his earlier years studying and teaching theology in Germany and later trying to ensure that Catholics kept to doctrinal correctness in two decades as a top aide to John Paul II.

In his first two years as pope, Benedict has waged a vigorous Church campaign against same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia. He has cracked down on Church clerics whose writings were found not to correctly reflect Vatican teaching. Benedict has also called for the use of more Latin in the Church, including some prayers by the faithful.





Pope, turning 80, thanks church
for surrounding him with affection
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY, April 16 (CNS) - At a Mass marking his 80th birthday, Pope Benedict XVI thanked the church for surrounding him with affection "like a true family" and for supporting him with prayers.

"Over and over, I recognize with joy how great is the number of people who sustain me with their prayers, who with their faith and love help me carry out my ministry, and who are indulgent with my weakness," he said April 15.

The Mass opened two days of celebrations commemorating the pope's April 16 birthday and the second anniversary of his election April 19. The festivities featured a Vatican concert, dozens of written testimonials and a giant birthday cake in the shape of the Vatican.



Some 50,000 people, including German pilgrims wearing traditional dress, jammed into St. Peter's Square for the liturgy. The altar area was surrounded by thousands of flowers - yellow and white, the colors of the Vatican.

Cardinals and bishops processed with the pontiff through the square to a canopied altar area on the steps of the basilica. Seated near the front were German civil authorities from the pope's native Bavaria and ecumenical representatives from Orthodox churches.

Greeting the pope in the name of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano said his 80th birthday marked a moment of "spiritual joy" for the entire church.

He thanked the pope for guiding the church with love during the first two years of his pontificate.

In his sermon, the pope appeared a little reticent about being the focus of the Mass, saying the liturgy should not be the place "to speak about oneself." But he added that one's personal life can also offer lessons about God's mercy.

The pope said he always felt he was given a special gift by being born on Holy Saturday, at "the beginning of Easter." In a sense, he said, he was born into his personal family and the larger family of the church on the same day.

He said his family helped lead him to God, and he expressed his gratitude to his own father, mother, sister and brother. The only surviving member of his immediate family, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, sat near the papal altar.

The pope described his priestly ordination in 1951 as a turning point in his life. As he approached the ordination Mass, he said, "the awareness of the poverty of my existence in the face of this new task weighed upon me."

But during the ordination, he said, he came to realize that he would not be alone when he heard the invocation of the saints and the words of Christ in the Gospel: "I no longer call you slaves ... I will call you friends.

"I was able to have a profound experience: The Lord was not only the Lord, but also a friend. He placed his hand in mine and will not leave me," he said.

As his responsibilities have grown in life, the friendship of Christ has given him the strength to face them, he said. There is a lesson here for everyone, he added.

"The mercy of God accompanies us day by day. We only need to have a vigilant heart in order to perceive it," he said.

"We're too inclined to notice only the daily toil that's been imposed on us, as sons of Adam. But if we open our hearts, we can see continually how good God is with us," he said.

At the end of the Mass, the pope said he was moved by the vast crowd that had gathered in the square.

"From the depth of my heart, I renew my most sincere thanks and extend it to the entire church, which, like a true family, especially in these days, surrounds me with affection," he said.

Meanwhile, gifts poured into the Vatican. The pope's private secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein, said they included letters, books, flowers, compact discs and even a giant teddy bear, which the pope donated to the Bambino Gesu children's hospital in Rome.

Msgr. Ganswein said the pope had said he did not want to accept personal gifts from the faithful. Those who want to give something can make an offering that the pope will use for special church or humanitarian causes, the papal secretary said.

One gift the pope did accept was a cope, or liturgical cloak, given him by his brother. The pope also received 80 bottles of beer from a brewery near Freising, Germany.

The pope joined cardinals for a private birthday lunch at the Vatican April 16.

The Vatican newspaper published eight pages of articles commenting on the pope and his ministry, under the main headline: "Hearts Overflowing With Joy."

"Joy is the key word for the teaching ministry of this universal pastor," an editorial said.


AFP both wraps up yesterday and anticipates today's event, with some annoyingly inaccurate and uninformed statements:

Pope Benedict XVI, turning 80,
gives Vatican staff the day off
by Gina Doggett



VATICAN CITY, April 16 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI quietly turned 80 on Monday - which for the Vatican staff meant a day off and a bonus of 500 euros (675 dollars) - as tributes poured in from around the world.

The German pontiff has little on his official agenda besides a luncheon with the college of cardinals [NB: He had a series of audiences this morning] and a classical music concert in his honour to be attended by the 72-year-old actress Sofia Loren.

He marked the occasion, along with the second anniversary of his election as pope, which falls on Thursday, with an open-air mass on Sunday attended by some 50,000 pilgrims.

Among many tributes, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alessio II praised Benedict on Monday as "a sincerely and deeply devout Christian who speaks from the heart."

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano addressed birthday greetings on behalf of the Italian nation, "whose deep and ancient ties with the Holy See are nourished by the shared values of peace and the promotion of human dignity."

Also on Monday, the pope's new book, "Jesus of Nazareth", went on sale in Italy, Germany and Poland.

Billed as his answer to popular publications such as Dan Brown's best-selling "The Da Vinci Code," the book attempts to reconcile the historical figure of Jesus with that of the Gospels.

Benedict's style has been in marked contrast to that of his charismatic predecessor John Paul II, whose long pontificate was far more political as well as more activist, according to the current pope's critics.

At his birthday mass, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke of "darkness" threatening the world in the form of war, oppression and hate, saying that only the grace of God could defeat evil.

Observers have stressed the continuity of outlook, if not of action, between the two conservative popes. Some prelates however, speaking on condition of anonymity, say they are becoming impatient with Benedict's comparative lethargy.

The respected theologian has shaped his public dialogue increasingly around spiritual and moral questions, rarely venturing into diplomatic territory.

He is also seen as focusing excessively on the European Church. [Only by people who do not keep track of what he says saily, and his meetings with bishops from around the world.]

Three weeks ago, as the European Union marked its 50th anniversary, Benedict warned that Europe's revival could be threatened if it forgets its Christian roots and embraces a "peculiar form of apostasy."

Benedict, who has gained a reputation as a rigid guardian of the faith, said Christian values "that represent the soul of the continent must remain" part of Europe.

One Vatican diplomat said the speech, particularly the use of the word "apostasy," was disturbing, "building a pessimistic view of the world."

As head of the Vatican's doctrinal enforcement body under John Paul II, the then cardinal Ratzinger was the force behind many of the Polish-born pope's initiatives on ethical issues.

As pope, Benedict has spoken out ever more frequently on abortion, the family, homosexuality, the status of the embryo and euthanasia. This has drawn the battle lines between the Church and civil societies, at least in Europe and other developed regions.

Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister, citing a recent poll, says Benedict has made some inroads in predominantly Catholic Italy about rights for gay couples. "Benedict XVI uses Italy as the yeast for the rest of the Church," he said.

With an academic background in European philosophy, Benedict has shown little interest in other continents, unlike his predecessor. [Travel is not the only way to show interest! Read his statements in his day-to-day activities, if you have not read THE RATZINGER REPORT and subsequent books where he shows the grasp he has of the international situation for the Church and in general.] John Paul II was the widest-travelled pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church and had a keen eye on geopolitics.

The pope is planning a trip to Brazil next month, his first to the Americas, to meet with Latin American and Caribbean bishops. His only other trip outside Europe so far has been to Turkey, the crossroads between Europe and Asia.

Benedict, who was born in the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn on April 16, 1927, was ordained priest in 1951.

He spent much of his early career as a theology professor and became archbishop of Munich in March 1977, later moving to the Vatican.

He is said to speak 10 languages, although the Italian press has commented on his German accent [Have you heard how exquisitely he speaks French and Spanish? His Italian is by no means 'German-accented, except for his inability to pronounce soft 'g'] and is an accomplished pianist.

[And 'said to speak'? Surely you can easily check it out, Ms. Doggett!]



It's hard to believe, but this is all Deutsche Welle (Germany's State broadcasting agency) had had to say so far, at least in its online English service, about


Benedict's Birthday


Georg Ratzinger believes his younger brother Joseph first decided to embark on a career in the Roman Catholic Church when he was still only four or five years old, during a visit to their Bavarian hometown by a cardinal in the spring of 1932.

"He came home and told our father that night, 'I want to be a cardinal,'" Georg recalled in a 2005 interview.

As far as careers go, they don't get any better than this.

Ordained a priest in 1951, Joseph Ratzinger was still in his 30s when he took part as a consultant in the landmark Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 and had just turned 50 when he was proclaimed a "prince of the Church," a cardinal, by Pope Paul VI in 1977.

On April 16, on the verge of the second anniversary of his election as Pope Benedict XVI, his 80th birthday will be celebrated not only in Rome and in his homeland of Germany, but throughout the world.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2007 7.47]

Here are Reuters photos from Marktl-am-Inn, which apparently started celebrating the Pope's birthday with an early-morning procession to the church where he was baptized, a stone's throw from the house where he was born.

The only story I have seen so far is a line from trhe AP wrap-up on the Pope's irthday for 41/6/07, where it says -

In the pope's Bavarian birthplace, Marktl am Inn, some 300 people gathered for prayers in front of the house where he was born at 4:15 a.m., marking the exact time of his birth.
- That's very original and thoughtful!






The baptismal font in St. Oswald Church is where Joseph Ratzinger was baptized in an Easter Vigil service
(celebrated early morning at that time instead of the night before as we do now) just a few hours after he was born.


Children release balloons in front of the 'birth house' in Marktl.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2007 1.07]

And He Appeared in Their Midst:
“Jesus of Nazareth” at the Bookstore

The book most beloved of its author has been released in various languages.
Joseph Ratzinger has worked on it for many years, and he’s now preparing its sequel.
It’s also a fundamental text for understanding this pontificate

by Sandro Magister



ROMA, April 16, 2007 – As of today, the eightieth birthday of Benedict XVI, his highly anticipated book “Jesus of Nazareth” is on sale in its original German version, and in the Italian, Polish, and Greek versions. These will soon be followed by translations in nearly twenty other languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Maltese, Korean.

“Jesus of Nazareth” is the first part of a two-volume work that Joseph Ratzinger conceived many years ago as part of his “long interior journey” in search of “the face of the Lord.” He wrote the first four chapters before being elected pope, and the following six, “using all my free moments,” afterward.

In this first volume, the narrative begins with the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and continues to his transfiguration on Mount Tabor. The second volume will continue to his passion, death, and resurrection, with another chapter dedicated to the accounts of his infancy: the annunciation, his birth, the wise men, the flight into Egypt.

In the preface, Ratzinger explains his intention in writing this book: to present the Jesus of the Gospels to the men of today as the historically real Jesus, true God and true man.

For Benedict XVI, the Gospels contain all of the elements needed to affirm that the historical personage of Jesus is also truly the Son of God – both believer and nonbeliever – in the search for and discovery of his true face.

The book is composed of a preface, already made public last November, an introduction, ten chapters, and a bibliography.

In the introduction, Benedict XVI presents Jesus as the “new Moses” proclaimed by the Old Testament in the book of Deuteronomy: “a prophet with whom the Lord spoke face to face.”

But it goes much further: if Moses could not contemplate the face of God, but could only see his “shoulders,” Jesus is not only the friend of God, but his only-begotten Son; he is “in the bosom of the Father” and therefore can reveal him: “He who sees me sees the Father.”

The first chapter is dedicated to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Immersing himself in the water, Jesus “accepts death for the sins of humanity” – while the voice from heaven that proclaims him the beloved Son of God “is an anticipation of the resurrection.” The trajectory of his life is already drawn.

Chapter two: the temptation of Jesus. In order to save humanity, Jesus must overcome the main temptations that, in different forms, threaten men in every era. And by transforming them into obedience, he reopens the way to God, to the true Promised Land that is the “kingdom of God.”

The third chapter is dedicated to the Kingdom of God, which is the lordship of God over the world and over history, but is identified with the very person of Jesus, living and present here and now. In Jesus, “God comes to meet us – he reigns in a divine way, meaning without worldly power; he reigns with a love that endures ‘to the very end‘.”

Chapter four: the sermon on the mount. In this, Jesus appears as the “new Moses,” who brings to fulfillment the Torah, the law. The Beatitudes are the hinge of the new law and, at the same time, a self-portrait of Jesus. He himself is the law: “This is the point that demands a decision, and thus it is the point that leads to the cross and the resurrection.”

Chapter five: the Lord’s prayer. Having become a follower of Jesus, the believer can call upon the Father with the words that Jesus taught him: the Our Father. Benedict XVI explains this point by point.

Chapter six: the disciples. Their fellowship with Jesus gathers the disciples into the “we” of a new family, the Church, which is in turn sent out to bring his message to the world.

Chapter seven: the parables. Benedict XVI illustrates the nature and purpose of these, and then comments on three of them, all from the Gospel of Luke: the parable of the good Samaritan, the one about the two brothers and the good father, and the one about the rich pleasuremonger and the poor Lazarus.

Chapter eight: the great Johannine images – water, the vine and wine, bread, the shepherd. The pope comments on these one by one, after having explained who the evangelist John was.

Chapter nine: the confession of Peter and the transfiguration. Both of these events are decisive moments for Jesus, and also for his disciples. These clearly show what is the true mission of the Son of God on the earth, and what is the fate of those who want to follow him. Jesus, the Son of the living God, is the Messiah awaited by Israel who, through the scandal of the cross, leads humanity to the kingdom of God, to definitive freedom.

Chapter ten: Jesus’ statements about himself. Benedict XVI comments on three of these: “Son of Man,” “Son,” and “I Am.” The last of these is the mysterious name with which God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush, and through which the Gospels provide a glimpse of the fact that Jesus is that same God.

Here ends the first volume of the pope on Jesus on Nazareth. But the final appendix, in which the author guides the reader through the limitless resources on this subject, is also interesting.

For each of the ten chapters, Ratzinger cites the main books to which he refers, and which can be read for further study. Furthermore, he points out “some of the most important recent books about Jesus,” including those of Joachim Gnilka, Klaus Berger, Heinz Schürmann, Thomas Söding, Rudolf Schnackenburg, and John P. Meier.

Of the last of these, a work in three thick volumes entitled “A Marginal Jew. Rethinking the Historical Jesus,” he writes:

“This multi-volume work by an American Jesuit represents in many ways a model of historical-critical exegesis, and clearly displays both the importance and the limitations of this discipline. It is worth reading Jacob Neusner’s review of the first volume, ‘Who needs the historical Jesus?’, in Chronicles, July 1993, pp. 32-34.”

Benedict XVI dedicates this passage of his book, in the chapter on the temptation of Jesus, to the interpretation of Scripture:

“To lure Jesus into his trap, the devil quotes Sacred Scripture, [...] he appears as a theologian. [...] Vladimir Soloviev took up this theme in his ‘Tale of the Antichrist’: the Antichrist receives an honorary degree in theology from the University of Tubingen; he is a great expert in the Bible. With this story, Soloviev wanted to express in a drastic way his skepticism toward a certain type of erudite exegesis in his time.

"This doesn’t mean a ‘no’ to the scientific interpretation of the Bible as such, but rather a very healthy and necessary warning over the incorrect paths that this can take. The interpretation of the Bible can essentially become a tool of the Antichrist. It is not only Soloviev who says this; it is what is affirmed implicitly in the account of the temptation itself. The books most destructive toward the figure of Jesus, the ones that demolish the faith, have been woven together with presumed results of exegesis.”

____________


The Italian edition of the book:

Joseph Ratzinger - Benedetto XVI, "Gesù di Nazaret", Rizzoli, Milano, 2007, pp. 448, euro 19,50.

The English version of the volume will be released on May 15,
published by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom,
and by Doubleday in the United States.


The German edition of the book
was presented by Bishop Kurt Koch,
president of the Swiss bishops
conference, in Bern today.

===============================================================

I overlooked posting this commentary on THE BOOK from AsiaNews on the day of the presentation, so here it is:


‘Jesus of Nazareth’
by Ratzinger-Benedict XVI
by Franco Pisano


Vatican City, April 13 (AsiaNews) – Christianity is not a theory but an encounter with a person. This principle, which Benedict XVI restates so often, is at the origin of Jesus of Nazareth, the book in which he describes “my personal search for the ‘face of the Lord,” in order to “favour the development of an intense relationship between the reader and Him.”

Presented today in the Vatican and on sale starting next Monday, April 16, and the Pope’s 80th birthday, the 448-page book published by Rizzoli will cost € 19.50 and be available in 22 different languages around the world.

“Product of a long inner journey,” of which this is the first part, “the initial ten chapters go from His Baptism in the Jordan through Peter’s Confession to the Transfiguration.” The second part will cover instead Jesus’s childhood and His passion, death and resurrection.

The Holy Father writes the work “is not a magisterial act” so anyone “is free to contradict me.”

The subject of the inquiry by the theologian Pope is Jesus. But the question is which Jesus?

Since the 1950s “advances in critical research in history led to increasingly subtler distinctions between the various strata of the tradition,” blurring the image on which the faith stands. Various views of Jesus emerged ranging from the “anti-Roman revolutionary” to the “soft-hearted moralist.” But for Ratzinger the theologian, they reflect more the “views and ideals of their authors than any revelation about an icon, however faded it might have been.”

The “historical facts” about Jesus’ life and the unforeseeable growth of Christianity just a few years after his death show how extraordinary He was. And He cannot be understood without starting from “truly historical” facts, i.e. Jesus’ relationship to God and His union with Him.”

“My book is based on this, i.e. on the fact that Jesus is in communion with the Father. This is the core of His personality. Without this communion one cannot understand anything and it is from that that He becomes real to us even today.”

Since we are talking about an actual living human being, we must rely on the historical method to know him. For Benedict XVII, “faith is based on history as it unfolded on the surface of this earth.” Otherwise, “the Christian faith is eliminated and becomes another religion.” For this reason, the Jesus of the book is necessarily the Jesus of the Gospels: “the ‘historical Jesus’ in its truest sense.”

“I am convinced,” writes Benedict XVI, “and I hope readers realise that this is more logical and more understandable from an historical point of view than any of the reconstructions” offered in the last few decades.

This Jesus is also the “last prophet” as announced in the Old Testament, the “New Moses” to be more precise, who leads His people to “true liberation.”

More than Moses who “as a friend spoke face to face with God” but without the power to see Him, Jesus “lives in the presence of God, not only as friend but also as son. He lives in profound unity with the Father.” It is from this that come the answer to questions like “Where did Jesus get His doctrine? What is the key to explain his behaviour?”

The Beatitudes are a confirmation of this. From the “Sermon on the Mount,” Benedict draws many a detail like the “Mount” itself, whose location is not given in the Gospels, but which is simply the “mount,” the “New Sinai” to the crowd that came from the Galilee to hear Him, i.e. “a strip of land still viewed as half pagan,” but which “is in fact proof of His divine mission” to all the peoples; or the address “the New Torah brought by Jesus,” which “starts again from the commandments on the second tablet and goes deeper into the text without abolishing it.”

Indeed, the “paradoxes” that Jesus presents in the Beatitudes —‘Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, those who are persecuted, those who are reviled’ — express “what discipleship means.”

The Beatitudes’ meaning “cannot be explained by theory alone; they must be proclaimed in the life, suffering and mysterious joy that the disciple experiences when he has fully donated his life to the Lord.”

But the public life of Jesus, which this book is about, begins with His baptism, writes the Pope. And many are the nuances even in the first chapter, beginning with the possibility, which Benedict XVI referred to in his last “In Coena Domini” mass, that John the Baptist and perhaps Jesus and his family” might have been close to the Essenes, or the fact that by accepting baptism from the John the Baptist He comes to “fully accept the divine will,” prepares Himself to take the place of sinners and expect His own death on the cross.

Jesus of Nazareth is not only a profound meditation on the character and life of the founder of Christianity, but is also a pastoral reflection about today’s world. In the book the focus goes from the “world so sadly tormented” when the Pope talks about Palestine. to a critique of Nietzsche’s self-centred man, to an even more radical critique of the ills that modern society has caused by believing that it can do without God.

Thus, in mentioning Jesus’s “temptations,” he asks in relation to the first one — ‘tell these stones to become bread” —“whether feeding the world, and more generally solving social problems, is not the first real standard against which we can measure redemption.” “Understandably, by providing food to every hungry person Marxism has made this ideal the core of its promise of salvation.”

Feeding the world’s hungry is a challenge the Church must confront even today. As the evangelical story shows, “Jesus is not indifferent to the needs of mankind, including hunger, but He places them in the proper context and order.” Unfortunately, this is not done today; not even when people try to help.

“Western assistance to developing countries, which is informed by purely technical-material principles, has not only sidelined God but also alienated mankind from Him with the pride of their conceit, thus turning the Third World into the Third World in the modern sense. This kind of help has ignored existing religious, moral and social structures and introduced its empty technical worldview. It thought it could turn stones into bread but instead gave stones in lieu of bread. Because of that God’s primacy is at stake.

"[By contrast] there is a need to see Him as reality, a reality without which nothing else can be good. Material structures cannot govern History without God. If a man’s heart is not good, nothing can make it good. A good heart can only come from the One who is Himself Goodness itself.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2007 21.10]

In view of the horrible journalism served up so far by BrItain's MSM about Pope Benedict XVI, it is just as well the two British Catholic newspapers have turned to two sympathetic American writers to do their birthday/anniversary reports on the Pope. John Allen writes for the Tablet and George Weigel for the Catholic Herald. First, Weigel:


Pope Benedict XVI:
The master-teacher and
his challenge to the world
By George Weigel



Joseph Ratzinger came to the Chair of St Peter late in life, a 78-year-old man who could look back (although he rarely, if ever, chose to do so) on decades of intellectual accomplishment.

Recognised by even his critics as one of the premier Catholic theologians of the 20th century, he had also attracted the respect of his fellow intellectuals throughout Europe, many of them, like the influential German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, of a decidedly secular cast of mind.

Indeed, the then Cardinal Ratzinger convinced Professor Habermas, in January 2004, that the new Europe embodied politically in the expanded European Union could not be built on the thin and shaky foundation of epistemological scepticism about the human capacity to know the truth of things, including the moral truth of things.

And it is because Pope Benedict was elected three days after his 78th birthday that his papacy’s teaching has had the character of a great summing up: here is a master-teacher, distilling decades of research and reflection into a body of truths that he manages to convey in language and imagery accessible to those untrained in theology and philosophy – which is to say, to the overwhelming majority of the human race. The enormous crowds at his general audience addresses testify to the hunger for truth which Pope Benedict has touched.

Familiar themes were in play in the Pope’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, which was no surprise, in title or content, to those who had never bought the cartoon Ratzinger and who understood that the image of the “God with a human face” was central to Ratzinger’s theological project.

Similarly, in a recently published book entitled Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, Pope Benedict distils a lifetime of reflection on the relationship between faith and reason, and on the cultural consequences of a collapse of both faith and reason, into a challenge of prime importance for the entire world – but especially for Europe, in its current crisis of civilisational morale.

In the controversy immediately following his now famous lecture at the University of Regensburg in September 2006 attention was focused almost exclusively on the Holy Father’s analysis of certain theological tendencies in Islam and their unhappy consequences in the world of politics.

Yet that remarkably cogent lecture was in fact addressed at least as much to the West as to Islam. Yes, the Pope warned his listeners that an unreasonable faith is a real and present danger to the world – a faith, for example, in which God can be imagined capable of commanding the irrational, like the murder of innocents.

But so, the Pope argued at Regensburg, is a loss of faith in reason: that, too, is a real and present danger. If, for example, the West limits the concept of “reason” to a purely instrumental rationality, or, in a fit of post-modern self-indulgence, denies the human capacity to grasp the truth of anything with certainty, then the West will be unable to defend itself. Why? Because it will be unable to give an account of its political commitments and their moral foundations, to itself, or to those who would replace the free societies of the West with a very different pattern of human community, based on a very different idea of God – and, consequently, of the just society.

These, of course, are points that Joseph Ratzinger has been making for years, indeed decades. In Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures he synthesises his arguments into a series of finely tuned propositions on which all men and women of good will would do well to reflect.

Among the most important of these propositions I would list the following, illustrating each with a brief citation from the book:

Proposition 1: We live in a moment of dangerous imbalance in the relationship between the West’s technological capabilities and the West’s moral understanding.

Thus Ratzinger writes: “Moral strength has not grown in tandem with the development of science; on the contrary, it has diminished, because the technological mentality confines morality to the subjective sphere. Our need, however, is for a public morality, a morality capable of responding to the threats that impose such a burden on the existence of us all. The true and gravest danger of the present moment is precisely this imbalance between technological possibilities and moral energy.”

Proposition 2: The moral and political lethargy we sense in much of Europe today is one by-product of Europe’s disdain for the Christian roots of its unique civilisation, a disdain which has contributed in various ways to the decline of what was once the centre of world culture and world-historical initiative.

Thus Ratzinger writes: “...Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner hitherto unknown to mankind, excludes God from public awareness... God is irrelevant to public life... [This contemporary European culture] is the most radical contradiction not only of Christianity, but of all the religious and moral traditions of humanity...”

Proposition 3: The abandonment of Europe’s Christian roots implies the abandonment of the idea of “Europe” as a civilisational enterprise constructed from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome.

This infidelity to the past has led, in turn, to a truncated idea of reason, and of the human capacity to know, however imperfectly, the truth of things, including the moral truth of things. There is a positivism shaping (and mis-shaping) much of Western thought today – a positivism that excludes all transcendent moral reference points from public life.


Ratzinger asks whether such a positivism is an exercise of what the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor describes as “exclusive humanism”, and then asks whether such an exclusivist humanism, is, itself, rational. His answer is a resounding no.

As he writes: “This philosophy expresses, not the complete reason of man, but only one part of it. And this mutilation of reason means that we cannot consider it to be rational at all. Hence it is incomplete and can recover its health only through reestablishing contact with its roots. A tree without roots dries up...”

And so, evidently, do civilisations.

Proposition 4: The recovery of reason in the West would be facilitated by a reflection on the fact that the Christian concept of God as Logos helped shape the distinct civilisation of the West as a synthesis of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome.

If men and women have forgotten that they can, in fact, think their way through to the truth of things, that may have something to do with the European forgetfulness of God which Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn identified as the source of Europe’s 20th-century civilisational distress.

Thus Ratzinger writes: “From the very beginning, Christianity has understood itself to be the religion of the Logos, to be a religion in keeping with reason... [But] a reason that has its origin in the irrational and is itself ultimately irrational does not offer a solution to our problems. Only that creative reason which has manifested itself as love in the crucified God can truly show us what life is.”

Then, in light of these propositions, the Holy Father lays down a challenge: “In the age of the Enlightenment, the attempt was made to understand and define the essential norms of morality by saying that they would be valid etsi Deus non daretur, even if God did not exist...

"[Today], we must... reverse the axiom of the Enlightenment and say: Even the one who does not succeed in finding the path to accepting the existence of God ought nevertheless to try to live and to direct his life veluti si Deus daretur, as if God did indeed exist.

"This is the advice Pascal gave to his non-believing friends, and it is the advice I should like to give to our friends today who do not believe. This does not impose limitations on anyone’s freedom; it gives support to all our human affairs and supplies a criterion of which human life stands sorely in need.”

In his fine introduction to Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, Marcello Pera, a member of the Italian senate, a distinguished philosopher of science, and an agnostic, takes up Pope Benedict’s challenge and issues a clarion call for moral and cultural renewal throughout the West:

“This proposal should be accepted, this challenge welcomed, for one basic reason: because the one outside the Church who acts [as if God did indeed exist] becomes more responsible in moral terms. He will no longer say that an embryo is a ‘thing’ or a ‘lump of cells’ or ‘genetic material’. He will no longer say that the elimination of an embryo or a foetus does not infringe any rights. He will no longer say that a desire that can be satisfied by some technical means is automatically a right that should be claimed and granted. He will no longer say that all scientific and technological progress is per se a liberation or a moral advance. He will no longer say that the only rationality and the only form of life outside the Church are scientific rationality and an existence bereft of values. He will no longer act as only half a man, one lacerated and divided. He will no longer think that a democracy consisting of the mere counting of numbers is an adequate substitute for wisdom.”

How might such decisions to live “as if God did indeed exist” effect the needed changes in the civilisational morale of the West – and particularly the civilisational morale of Europe, the progenitor of the West?

In their jointly authored book Without Roots, Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera agreed, in a variant on Arnold Toynbee’s theory of historical change, that a “creative minority” of men and women, convinced that the truths the West lives politically are truths susceptible to rational defence, can be the agents of Europe’s rebirth as a culturally self-confident civilisation, capable of giving an account of its democratic political aspirations – which is to say, a civilisation willing to face squarely and respond imaginatively to the threat posed by the aggressive elements of the far different civilisational project now housed within it.

With the dust settled after the Regensburg lecture, perhaps we can see that Pope Benedict, in cooperation with men like Senator Pera, has for some time now been trying to give the world a precious gift: a vocabulary through which a serious, global discussion of both the crisis of technological civilisation in the West and the crisis posed by jihadist ideology and its lethal expressions around the world can be engaged by believers and non-believers alike – the vocabulary of “rationality” and “irrationality”. If Europe begins to recover its faith in reason, then at least some in Europe may, in time, rediscover the reasonableness of faith; and in any event, a renewed faith in reason would provide an antidote to the spiritual boredom from which Europe is dying – and thus open the prospect of a new birth of freedom in Europe, and throughout the West.

Benedict XVI has been trying to remind the world that societies and cultures are only as great as their spiritual aspirations. It is not an act of ingratitude toward the achievements of the Enlightenment to suggest that the soul-withering secularism – the exclusivist humanism – that has grown out of one stream of Enlightenment thought threatens the future of the West, precisely because it prevents us from giving an account, to ourselves and our children and grandchildren, of the noble political ends embodied in the Western democratic tradition.

As Marcello Pera put it in Without Roots: “Absolute [worldliness], supposing there is such a thing, is an absolute vacuum in which neither the happy majority nor the creative minorities can exist.”

I dislike the role of Jeremiah, as I am sure Pope Benedict does. But it is neither cynicism nor despair to note that two possible Dark Ages loom on the horizon of the 22nd century: there is the Dark Age of a technologically manufactured and morally stunted humanity, created by the unwise deployment of the new, Promethean knowledge given us by genetics; and there is the Dark Age in which an anti-humanistic theism fills the vacuum created by atheistic humanism and extinguishes the Western experiment in freedom whose deepest roots run to the Christian civilisation of the Middle Ages.

Neither is inevitable; both can and must be resisted, with all the tools of wit and wisdom at our disposal. We are fortunate to have, in Pope Benedict XVI, such a wise guide through the thickets before us.

=============================================================
George Weigel, the biographer of Pope John Paul, is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington DC and the author, most recently, of The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God (Gracewing) and God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (HarperCollins).

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2007 13.43]

In his article for The Tablet, John allen plays a riff on one of his favorite assertions, that with Benedict, WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get - in the lingo of our day. He also makes a couple of disconcerting comments about which he has never given any idnication in his daily pieces.


The real Ratzinger revealed
By John Allen
The Tablet
April 14, 2007


Benedict XVI turns 80 on Monday, and on Thursday celebrates the second anniversary of his election. To date, expectations of a ‘Catholic fundamentalist' papacy have been confounded. As cardinal, he was the man who said ‘no' for 20 years. Now he seems to want to express a deeper ‘yes'.

Reporters on the Vatican beat generally seek out the bishops who come to Rome for their ad limina visits, a mandatory five-yearly meeting with the Pope. During their visits the bishops also make the rounds of Vatican offices, so debriefing them provides a sense of what's on the "radar screen", so to speak, of the various dicasteries.

For a number of years, a few reporters had a standing bet that if one of us ever found a bishop who did not say that his best meeting was with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the legendary prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the rest of the group would buy that person dinner. In the end, no one ever claimed the prize.

Normally, bishops would tell us that many ad limina encounters with the heads of Vatican offices were unsatisfying. The cardinal-prefect would enter the room, read a lengthy statement, and leave little time for real conversation.

Cardinal Ratzinger, they reported, was different. While he brought careful notes, he allowed the bishops to speak their minds. Almost universally, they found him thoughtful, gracious, and open.

Such impressions framed the great disjunction between the public image of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and private perceptions of the man. In public, Ratzinger was the Darth Vader of Roman Catholicism; he was seen as draconian, inquisitorial and imperious. Those stereotypes shaped the early line in the media on his election as Pope Benedict XVI.

To take one typical example, an Italian editorial cartoon the day after Cardinal Ratzinger's election, in a play on the famous scene of John XXIII telling a moonlit crowd in St Peter's Square in 1962 to give their children a kiss from the Pope, showed the new Pope instructing a similar crowd to give their children not a kiss but a firm spanking.

In private, however, Cardinal Ratzinger had a different profile. Co-workers and brother bishops saw him as strikingly humble and collegial. The conviction of the 115 cardinals who elected him Pope was that they were elevating this "real" Ratzinger.

On 16 April, Pope Benedict XVI turns 80, and on 19 April he marks two years in office. As he passes those milestones, perhaps the most notable storyline about his pontificate is the way the private Ratzinger has, to a considerable extent, become the public Pope. To date, Benedict XVI has proved a more gradual, centrist and collegial figure than his earlier public image would have suggested.

To be sure, Benedict is capable of drawing lines in the sand, as he did by approving a November 2005 Vatican edict barring gay seminarians. He has also reminded the world that diplomacy is not always his strong suit.

In September 2006, he triggered a firestorm in the Muslim world with an incendiary fourteenth- century quotation on Muhammad during a lecture in Regensburg.

More recently, he disappointed whatever friends the Vatican has left in the EU by accusing Europe of "apostasy" less than 24 hours after the President of the European Parliament, the practising Catholic Hans-Gert Pöttering, extended a hard-won invitation to the Pope to address the Parliament.

In that context, Benedict's broadside struck many as ill-tempered; one Catholic who works for the EU said the remark has become "the Regensburg of Europe".

[This is the first indication I have seen of this. Allen never indicated anything in his daily pieces. Regardless, besides, the EU institutions are, from all accounts, a nest of anti-Catholic vipers, and European Parliamentarians who are Catholics have chaopter-and-verse citations to make about this!]

Furthermore, Benedict's listening skills did not stop the Vatican from issuing a critical notification on Jesuit Fr Jon Sobrino, a famed liberation theologian, just two months ahead of the Fifth General Conference of CELAM, the council of bishops' conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean. Senior Latin American clergy had asked the Vatican to delay the notification until after the CELAM meeting in Brazil in May, which Benedict XVI will attend, but to no avail.

[Really? Again, no previous word about this from Allen. Do the CELAM bishops really think Sobrino is that big a deal at this stage? Protestantism is teh challenge now, and KLT appears to be a thing of the past.]

Yet, on the whole, expectations that Benedict XVI would be a bruiser-pope have proven off the mark. Two vignettes make the point.

First, in July 2006 the Pope visited Valencia, Spain, for the World Congress of Families. He met Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose Socialist Government has pursued a liberal agenda bitterly opposed by the Spanish Church, including full gay marriage and adoption rights.

Yet when Benedict arrived, there was none of the finger-wagging and apocalyptic language one might have expected. Instead, the Pope struck a consistently positive tone, never even directly engaging gay marriage or other matters of sexual morality. His main concern was to offer a positive Christian vision of the family.

Later, a German television reporter asked Benedict why he didn't call down fire and brimstone in Spain. His response is revealing:

"Christianity, Catholicism, isn't a collection of prohibitions: it's a positive option. It's very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We've heard so much about what is not allowed that now it's time to say: we have a positive idea to offer ... The human person must always be respected as a human person. But all this is clearer if you say it first in a positive way."

For a Pope with a passion for classical music, this effort to phrase the Christian fundamentals in a positive key has become something of a leitmotif. Having been responsible for expressing the "noes" of the Catholic Church for 20 years, Ratzinger as Pope appears determined to articulate what he sees as its much deeper "yes".

The second such occasion came with Benedict's trip to Turkey late last year, his first to a majority Muslim state, which took place shortly after the Regensburg episode. On the basis of that contretemps, many had enlisted Benedict as chaplain for a new anti-Islamic crusade.

Instead, what they saw in Turkey was a "kinder, gentler" Benedict, whose consistent message was reconciliation. That spirit culminated in a remarkable, and thoroughly unexpected, moment of simultaneous prayer with the Grand Mufti of Istanbul inside the city's Blue Mosque. ['Kindler, gentler', no! 'kind and gentle as he really is', yes!]

In Benedict's approach to matters inside the Church, a similar pattern has emerged. His most important appointments, both in the Holy See and in major archdioceses, have revealed a preference for pastoral moderates rather than ideologues. To date, there has been no systematic clampdown on dissidents, no night of the long knives.

This gradualism has even generated alarm among some of the most ardent supporters of Benedict's election. Last year, Fr Richard John Neuhaus publicly acknowledged "palpable uneasiness" about the Pope's lack of decisive action. Another American neo-conservative privately groused, "We thought we were electing Ronald Reagan, but we got stuck with Jimmy Carter."

Benedict's commitment to collegiality has been visible in ways large and small. He has repeatedly spoken out about the crisis of Africa, for example, including a strong condemnation of the way Africa has been "plundered and sacked" in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth, and a plea for humanitarian concern with Africa in his Easter homily.

That focus does not come out of the blue. In the General Congregation meetings in April 2005 leading up to the conclave, the African cardinals made a plea for the next pope, whomever it might be, to put Africa at the centre of his pastoral concern. Benedict obviously wants to honour that request.

His collegiality can also be measured by what hasn't happened, including the delayed release of a motu proprio authorising wider celebration of the Tridentine Mass. If it were entirely a matter of the Pope's personal instincts, the document would have come out long ago, but in light of reservations voiced by several bishops, Benedict has opted to go slow.

Perhaps the best expression of Benedict's emerging persona came in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, released at Christmas 2005. The Pope treats human erotic love in deeply approving terms, deliberately avoiding anathemas. In general, most observers regard the Pope's writings and public addresses to date as impressive. Some have been tempted to style Benedict as "a pope of words", in contrast to his predecessor, John Paul II, as a "pope of images".

Although Benedict at 80 seems remarkably healthy, his advanced age nevertheless beckons thoughts about his legacy.

In the long run of history, John XXIII and Paul VI will be remembered as the popes of the Second Vatican Council, the men who launched that moment of top-to-bottom reform in Catholicism and who brought it to fruition.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI, on the other hand, have sought to foster a rebirth of Catholic identity, a transition from a period of internal reform to one of engagement with the wider world.

Under John Paul II, evangelisation was the watchword rather than aggiornamento; he was an ad extra pope, far more interested in how the Church can affect the social, cultural and political questions of the day than in reform of its internal structures.

Cardinal Ratzinger was key for John Paul, but no one is to Benedict XVI the same trusted lieutenant. The vision of the pontificate is flowing very much from himself for good and for ill, and there have been instances of both.

Benedict XVI's top priority, as stated on 22 March by his Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, during a lecture in Milan, is to complete his reassertion of Christian identity.

If the danger of the John XXIII and Paul VI era was throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the chief risk in today's politics of identity cuts in the opposite direction, towards rigidity and exaggerated defensiveness - a sort of "Taliban Catholicism" that knows only how to excoriate and condemn. To be sure, one can see the stirrings of such a spirit in today's Church.

Potentially, Benedict XVI's legacy may lie in pointing a way around these shoals. Given all that he represents, Benedict is in a unique position to illustrate that one can embrace Catholic fundamentals without becoming a fundamentalist, that reason and faith are not opposed but inextricably linked. That, in fact, was the argument he was trying to make in Regensburg, although the uproar over the quotation occluded his effort.

Because Benedict is not the charismatic media figure that John Paul II was, it is unclear how much of this will ever register on the broader cultural radar screen. To date, pundits still seem to be waiting for the "real" Ratzinger to emerge from beneath his thoughtful, pastoral facade. Perhaps, however, the deepest truth is that this facade is the real Ratzinger.

Here are two brief pieces from the Italian newspapers today which deserve attention.

First, the birthday editorial from Il Giornale:


Ratzinger, the 'inconvenient" Pope
who believes in the power of love


Two years ago, the day after he was elected Pope, Benedict XVU underscored that his task was "to make the light of Christ shine before the men and women of our day," not his light, but Christ's.

In the Mass to begin his Pontificate, the new Pope did not present 'a program of government' because "the true program is not to do my will, not to follow my ideas, but to listen to all the Church, to the words and the will of the Lord, and allow myself to be guided by Him."

With these premises, as Gian Maria Vian underlined in an assessment of the Pontificate thus far for the magazine Vita e Pensiero of the Catholic Unviersity of Milan, Benedict XVI in fact "has undertaken a remodelling" of papal government "in the name of simplification and a return to the essentials."

This is really the key to understanding Ratzinger, who was presented for decades as the Panzerkardinal of (pre-conciliar)restoration.

As a Pope, the words he has said most often are 'love' and 'joy'. Christianity begins, he said in his encyclical, "not with an ethical decision or a great idea, but with an encounter with an event, a Person, who gives new horizons to life."

Of course, today there are those who criticize Benedict XVI and therefore lament John Paul II (whom they used to criticize). Commenting on this game of comparing the two Popes, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said in Avvenire's beautiful special for the Pope's 80th birthday:

"This is an old film. In the old Westerns, the cowboys used to say that the only good man was whoever lay under six feet of earth. For today's secularists - but alas, even for some Catholics - it would appear that the only good Pope is a dead Pope."

Il Giornale, 16 aprile 2007


And speaking of secularists, Ernesto Galli della Loggia ahd this brief and pungent editorial comment about them in Corriere della Sera today:


Secularists gone off the rails!
By Ernesto Galli della Loggia


In a pluralist democracy, do liberals have the right to propose and make laws inspired by liberalism and its values? I don't think anyone has ever disputed that.

And do socialists have the right to propose and make laws inspired by socialism and its values? Of course.

And what about Catholics - don't they have the same right?

Oh no, Catholics no! That's what it would seem to be, going by the new constitutional theory expressed in a letter published in La Repubblica on Easter Sunday by a group of prominent personalities like Giulio Giorello, Sylvie Coyaud, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Moni Ovadia and others [I believe these names are supposed to be among Italy's leading liberal 'intellectuals'].

Their theory negating a basic right to Papists is stated thus: "A state is secular if religions and ideologies do not have any influence on the governance of society but are limited to personal values."

Yes, you read right: they are saying that all ideologies, religious or not, should keep out of government. Therefore, none of the political parties today or at any other time?

Blinded by prejudice, these 'intellectuals' would do away with history (and the present!) just to write unforgettable stupidities!


Corriere della sera, 16 aprile 2007

==============================================================

It's called 'being too clever for your own good'. A pox on all these hypocrites, whose brains are so addled they can't even see their obvious stupidity!]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2007 1.10]

MOSCOW. April 16 (Interfax) - Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II has congratulated Pope of Rome Benedict XVI on the 80th birthday and wished him good health, long life and God's help to hisministration.

"On your jubilee day I would like to emphasize the fact that your entire life has been devoted to ministration. You entered the ministry at a young age; your service was admirable and resulted in the election to the high-ranking position of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church," runs the congratulatory message received by Interfax on Monday.

The pontiff "is a well-known theologian entirely devoted to the protection and promotion of traditional Christian values," the message runs.

Alexy II described the pontiff as not only "a scientist with an academic mind but also as a sincerely and profoundly devoted Christian, who speaks from the heart."

The patriarch said that he shares many ideas voiced in theological works of Benedict XVI and gladly confirms the similarity of the two churches' opinions on the majority of problems the modern world brings up to Christians.

===============================================================

P.S. FROM TERESA-

In connection with the above, here is an optimistic story that came out in Il Messaggero yesterday, translated here:


Will Alexei-II be meeting the Pope soon?
By FRANCA GIANSOLDATI


On Pope Benedict's desk, prominent in a pile of letters wishing him a Happy Birthday is one from Alexei II, Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russias, who wishes him "Long life and good health" and signs himself, "With fraternal love in the Lord."

It is an extraordinarily warm message that expresses the sense of a new climate between Moscow and Rome.

Alexei-II assures the Pope of sharing "many of the visions" explained by the Pope in his theological texts. He notes "the coincidence between our Churches...in defense of Christian tradition."

He adds that the "actual challenges posed by the modern world to the whole of Christianity" constitute a "solid foundation for developing fruitful relations."

It seems that the misundestandings that have characterized relations between the Russian Orthodox and Catholic Churches are giving way to a new season. The difficulties encountered in the time of John Paul II appear to be on the way to resolution. Diplomacy has been hard at work behind the scenes on both sides.

On the one hand, both parties are drafting a joint declaration on human rights, and on the other, they are preparing the ground to finally realize a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch.

Calculated leaks appear to indicate that the meeting is no longer a pipe dream - a desire for something that may take place who knows when - but a project actually in the works.

The most likely hypothesis now is that the meeting will take place in Bari, Italy, a symbolic city because the remains of St. Nicholas, Russia's most beloved saint, are found there.

"There is a strong convergence of views between Alexei II and Benedict XVI," says the vice-president of the Moscow Patriarchate's foreign relations department, Bishop Mark of Egoryevsk who is in Rome these days and is scheduled to see the Pope later this week.

Christianity's drift in Europe, the disappearance of a sense of the sacred, and moral relativism are the key elements which have urged the two Churches to come to terms, he says.

"In the spiritual desert of today, we hear the voice of Benedict strongly," says the Orthodox bishop. "Today we see things that would have made the Apostles shudder. In some Protestant churches, same-sex marriages are now 'consecrated' - a sign of progressing relativism. In other communtiies, there is no longer a differnce between the secular view and that of their supposed Christians."

What has impressed him about Papa Ratzinger?
"The words he said after he was elected, 'I am a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.' It was not the image of a sovereign, at the apex of a whole chain of command, but of a humble person, a simple one, who is near to everyone, including us Russians."

And how are Alexei II and Benedict XVI alike?
"So many. I will give one example: Alexei II has led the Church in Russia during very difficult years. And he succeeded in not extinguishing the flame of faith among our people, and now, we are experiencing a great spiritual rebirth."

Il Messaggero, 15 aprile 2007

=============================================================

PPS - And here's a wire-service story today that is equally encouraging. Russian President Putin apparently sent a regular letter as well as his telephone greetings to Pope Benedict reported in the round-up below this post.


Putin sends Pope birthday greeting,
talks of links 1 hour


MOSCOW, April 16 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke in favor of closer ties between Moscow and the Vatican on Monday in an unusually warm greetings message to Pope Benedict XVI on his 80th birthday.

Putin, the first Kremlin leader since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution to publicly profess his faith, has spoken in favor of ending a long-running feud between the Roman Catholic church and the Russian Orthodox church to which he belongs.

There is speculation the new warmth could signal that a meeting is possible between the pontiff and Alexiy II, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church.

Putin met the Pope last month for the first time since the German-born Pontiff took office two years ago and on Monday sent him a congratulatory letter and an icon entitled "1,000 years of Russia's Baptism" as a birthday present, the Kremlin press office said.

"I warmly remember our recent meeting in the Vatican," Putin's letter said. "It has confirmed that Russia and the Holy See have close views on a wide range of international issue and modern problems faced by the mankind today."

The Orthodox church accuses Catholics of trying to win converts in Russia and neighboring Ukraine, which it sees as its traditional sphere of influence.

Several attempts to arrange a personal meeting between Patriarch Alexiy II and Pope Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, failed. Alexiy has said such a meeting could only take place if the Vatican reviews its policy in Russia and Ukraine.

Putin has said he would not mediate in the row. But analysts say a meeting between the Pope and Patriarch could be a big international success for the Kremlin leader, who is preparing to step down next year after eight years in office.


PPS2 - Here is AsiaNews's account of Patriarch Alexei's message:



Best wishes and “esteem” expressed
by the Russian Orthodox Church for Pope
by Maria Anikina


Moscow, April 16 (AsiaNews) – The Pope’s “courage” and dedication in denouncing the evil of our times, by inviting all Christians to be true witnesses of Christ, our salvation is just one of the aspects of Benedict XVI’s pontificate which Russian Catholics and Orthodox both underlined in their birthday greetings to the Pontiff.

Patriarch Alexi II of Moscow and All Russia greeted Pope Benedict XVI on the occasion of his 80th birthday and wished him good health, many years of life, and God’s help in his spiritual ministry.

“I express my special admiration – writes the Patriarch - of your life that has wholly been dedicated to the church ministry, and which has brought you to the head of the Roman Catholic Church”.

Alexi II defines the Pontiff “a famous theologian fully dedicated to defending and affirming of traditional Christian values”, in modern society. “It should become a solid basis for good relations and mutually beneficial cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church,” concludes the Patriarch.

Alexei underlines the Popes “theological depth” and expresses his appreciation of the Pope’s “clear position regarding the delicate themes of today’s world”.

“At the centre of his theology – he continues - there is Christ as the only Savoir of the human being to whom man has always to appeal. On the base of His teaching we have to create the future of Europe overfull with secularism, moral relativism and denying of the Christian roots”.

In expressing his wishes to the Pope Fr. Igor Vyzhanov, secretary for Christian affaire at the Moscow Patriarchate, reiterated the “esteem” in which Benedict XVI is held in the Orthodox Church, as well as the appreciation for his dedication to the progress of ecumenism.

Catholic and Russian Orthodox faithful gathered to pray today “for the Pope and Christian unity” along with religious representatives from the two communities at the catacombs of St Pancreas.

Msgr. Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, Catholic archbishop of the Mother of God Cathedral in Moscow, confirms the “Pope’s sincere desire to dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian society as a whole”.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2007 1.13]

AD MULTOS ANNOS, BENEDICTE!
WITH ALL OUR LOVE,
PRAYERS AND BEST WISHES

I'll try to compile in this box the various greetings that have been sent to the Holy Father as reported in the news.

First, APCOM reports that -
Russian President Putin placed a telephone call to greet is Holiness personally, and sent as a gift a triptych dedicated to the millennium of Christianity in Russia. The telephone call is certainly unusual. But the two saw each other recently and they can speak to each other in German, so that was a great gesture from Putin.

From U.S. President and Mrs. Bush -
"Pope Benedict is a great moral leader who offers a powerful message of love, faith and reason. Today we celebrate his life, and we express our appreciation for his commitment to the cause of human dignity around the world."


A letter from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano:
"Holiness, on your birthday and on the eve of the second anniversary of your accession to the Papacy, I send you my best wishes for your wellbeing and serenity, along with a sincere encouragement in the exercise of your high calling.

"On this happy occasion, let me express my gratitude for the affection that you have always shown to the Italian nation, whose profound and ancient links to the Holy See are nourished by our shared values for peace and the promotion of human dignity.

"In hoping for new occasions to meet with you, and certain that I am expressing the sentiments of the Italian people, please accept, Holiness, our most fervent wishes for the fulfillment of your high apostolic mission."


From the Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni:
"The communal administration of Rome and all its citizens join me in renewing to the Pope our appreciation of his great mission, with our best wishes for a long life in the service of the Church and all of humanity."


From the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni:
"For Judaism, 80 can be the age at which one starts a new life. Moses was 80 when he was called to liberate our Fathers out of Egypt. May this day be for you the satrt of a new fruitful season, full of strength and wisdom in the leadership of the Church and in particular, in its relationship with our people, in the hope of an atmosphere of sernity and fukll collaboration."


Giuseppe Laras, president of the Assembly of Italian Rabbis:
"My wish is that he may continue on the road he has taken and intensify his efforts towards bringing closer together members of different religions. I am thinking of not only of Judaism, but also Islam and other world religions."


Mario Scialoja, Italy's repressntative to the World Muslim League, also speaking to Vatican Radio:
"Aove all, I send my most fervent wishes to His Holiness for a long and happy Pontificate and this I wish him with all my heart. I believe, from what he has done so far, that he intends top proceed with dialog with other religiopns, particularly with the two others that derive from Abraham. In a world that is increasingly multi-cultural, with societies that are incrasingly more mixed, this is not just something to be hoped for but a necessity."


The Archimandrite Polykarpos Stavropoulos, a ranking Greek Orthodox religious leader in Italy:
"In behalf of my leader, Metropolitan Gennadios, who is recovering from illness, the clergy and all the faithful of the sacred orthodox dioceses in Italy, we say to the Holy Father, AD MULTOS ANNOS - a long life of health, peace and prosperity! May he always be blessed by God [benedetto da Dio] to carry on with his great responsibilities beause he is the Primate of the Church which presides in charity and love."


Bishop John Flack, director of the Anglican Center in Rome:
"Best wishes to the Holy Father for the second anniversary of his pontificate and his 80th birthday. I wish him many more years to carry out his minsitry. The way in which he teaches and explains Christian faith is very clear, and for this even we Anglicans are very grateful. I speak also in the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the head of the Anglican Communion."


Prof. Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant'Egidio Community:
"My wish is that the Pope may encounter the fruits of his ministry - in hearts that are open to the Gospel and to faith, to charity - how attentive this Pope has been to the theme of charity and those who need it most! May he see the fruits of his ministry in a church fabric and a family fabric which can resist the corrosive spirit of isolation and loneliness which is one of the devils of our time. This Pope deserves to see the fruits of his ministry because with his words, his prayers and his personal witness, he calls us all to be part of the family fo God.

"My sense is that the Pope has introduced joy and serenity to Christian living, telling us at 80 - something which proves a truly young spirit rather than the attitude of a senior citizen - that this is a beautiful time to be Christian."


Rosy Bindi, Italy's minister of the family, wrote:
"Holy Father, I join the Church in joy and prayer for your 80th birthday. With sincere affection, I renew my best wishes for your good health in carrying out your invaluable pastoral mission.

"I take this occasion to thank you for the gift you have given us in your new and very important book. Your tireless testimony of faith adn charity and your commitment to the defense of values for human dignity, peace, justice and cialog with other cultures and religions of our time is a source of great hope for all Catholics in the world and all men of good will."
[Note that she omitted in the list of values any mention of 'the family'. Bindi is, of course, one of the two principal authors of the DICO draft law.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/04/2007 2.53]

VATICAN CITY, April 16 (APcom) - Music is like "a travelling companion" to him, said Pope Benedict XVI at the end of a concert held at the Vatican tonight to honor him on his 80th birthday.

From his personal experience with music, The Pope - who plays the piano and is a passionate lover of classical adn sacred music - expressed this wish: "I hope that the granduer and beauty of music can give you too, dear friends, new aond continuing inspiration to build a world of love, of solidarity and of peace."

I am convinced that music - and I think in particular, of the great Mozart, but also of other composers, like Gabrieli and Dvorak - is truly the universal language of beauty," Ratzinger told the thousands of visitors who attended the concert at the Aula Paolo VI, "able to bring together all men of good will on earth, and to make them lift their eyes and open them to absolute goodness and absolute beauty, which ultimately spring from God himself."

"In looking back on my life," he added, "I thank God for having given me music almost as a traveling companion which has always offered me comfort and joy."

He expressed his gratitude to all who, in his life, had brought him close to music, "source of inspiration and serenity."

Among the many guests was Senator-for-life, ex-President Francesco Cossiga, who knelt as the Pope passed by, and actress Sophia Loren.

The Pope was surrounded by cardinals and bishops, and at a seat near him on his right was his brother Georg, the professional musician in their family.

Flanking the Pope were Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals.

The concert began at 6 p.m. and ended one and a half hours later. At the end, the audience of about 6,000 spontaneously sang 'Happy birthday" to the Pope. [In Italian, it's "Tanti auguri a te" (All good wishes for you) sung to the same tune.]

Directing the Stuttgart Radio Syphony Orchetsra was 27-year-old Gustavo Dudamel of Venezuela. Later the Pope thanked Dudamel and violin soloist Hilary Hahn personally.







The program:

* Giovanni Gabrieli:
Nine-tone Canzone for 12 Wind Instruments,
from the Sacrae Sinfoniae

* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Concert for Violin and Orchestra in G, KV 216
Hilary Hahn, Violin

* Antonín Dvorák:
Symphony No. 9 in E-minor op. 95
(From the New World)

* Giovanni Gabrieli:
Sonata XIII for 12 Wind Instruments
from Canzoni et Sonate


Radio-Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart,
Sudwestrundfunk
Conductor: Gustavo Dudamel

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2007 23.04]

Here's a brief and confusing item from APcom, carried on Lella's blog:


VATICAN CITY, April 16 (APcom) - All it needs now is a formal OK from the Pope, but for the Patriarchate of Constantinople, it seems a fait accompli that Pope Benedict XVI will travel to Ravenna in October for the opening of the 10th plenary session of the Mixed Catholic-Orthodox Theological Commission.

"It seems the Pope has accepted to go to Ravenna in October," said Ioannis Ziziaoulis, Metropolitan of Pergamum, after meeting with the Pope this morning. He was sent by Ecumenical Patriarch Barholomew I as his personal representative at the Pope's birthday celebration.

Bartholomew had proposed to the Pope that a follow-up to their meeting in Istanbul, it would be a good idea for both of them to open the meeting of the Theological Commission, which carries on the theological dialog between the churches.

Apparently, however, the Metropolitan was less definitive in the statement quoted by the French news agency I-media, namely: "I have the impression the Pope will accept. We have transmitted the official invitation. Now he must decide."

AD MULTOS ANNOS, BENEDICTE!


AsiaNews's round-up of greetings and celebrationsdeserves a separate post.


ASIA – VATICAN
Birthday greetings for the Pope
from China and around Asia


Rome, April 16 (AsiaNews) – From China to India and Sri Lanka, many churchmen and women as well as lay people have chosen AsiaNews to send their greetings to the Pope.

A 25-year-old Catholic from the underground Chinese Church in Hebei sent an enthusiastic message. Citing ancient Chinese poets and drawing on his country’s old similes, the young man called the Pontiff the 'Elder man', which is a token of honour in the Confucian tradition, wishing the Pope the longevity of a stork.

He also mentioned the many priests and lay people who have “shed blood” to remain loyal to the Pope and the Holy See, saying that every Catholic in China is waiting in prayer for the letter that Benedict XVI promised to address to the Chinese Church.

Here is his message (translated by AsiaNews):

---

April 16 is the birthday of our Holy Father, Benedict XVI. The poet Du Fung, who lived at the time of the Tang dynasty, melancholically wrote that “from ancient times it has been rare to reach 70,” but 80 years mean 80 years of storms and trials, 80 years of lifetime struggles. The marks of time have appeared, numerous, on the Holy Father’s head, imperceptibly whitening the hair of the elderly Pope. The hearts of Chinese Catholics go out to our elderly Pope as does mine.

Chinese Catholics are waiting for the Holy Father’s pastoral letter. For some time he has urged Chinese Catholics to accept sacrifices, read the Bible more, and recite the Rosary in order to prepare for the his letter. Let us invoke the Spirit of the Lord to protect our Father and make him an effective sign of the faith’s unity so as to strengthen the faith of Chinese Catholics.

In the last 50 years, many priests and lay people have shed their blood to remain loyal to the Holy Father, maintaining the Catholic tradition alive in China. I and my contemporaries are the Church’s new generation in China. We, too, want to reinforce the unity with the Pope. We want to be in communion with the universal Church and no external force can prevent us from doing so.

“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path,” (Ps, 119: 105). Holy Father, your words are imprinted in our hearts and we shall never forget them. When I was a teenager I recited from memory the “Ode to the Great Pope”. We still often sing it today. "Great Holy Father we love you; dear Holy Father we back and support you. You are Christ’s representative, the sun of the truth that educates the people of God and leads to the Kingdom of god!”

Holy, elderly Pope, let me offer you my congratulations. Happy birthday! May the Lord always bless you; may the grace of the Holy Spirit always be with you. Like the stork, may you always remain young, never age. Always renewing your venerable experience of life, may you always be happy."

---

India

Card Telesphore Toppo, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, also expressed his best wishes of long life to Pope Benedict XVI, specifically thanking him for his understanding and love for the Church in India. In all of the country’s dioceses, a mass will be celebrated in the Pope’s honour.

“The whole of India is with him and loves him. Pope Benedict has been very close to the Indian Church. The Holy Father has a keen understanding of the conditions under which the Church works and carries out her Mission in India,” Cardinal Toppo said. “Pope Benedict has shown special affection and concern for India, elevating an Indian — Cardinal Ivan Dias — to a position of responsibility overseeing the mission in Asia.”

Mgr Thomas Dabre, bishop of Vasai and an expert theologian involved in promoting inter-faith harmony, sends his greetings as well, remembering the Pontiff’s “great courage” in pursuing ecumenism among Christians and encouraging a dialogue with other religions. As a theologian the prelate told AsiaNews that he was “impressed” by Benedict XVI’s focus on the concept of God as love.

Sister Nirmala, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, sent the Pope a personal message:

“We your children, the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta and all over the world and the poor under our care, wish you a very happy birthday! [. . .] We thank God in a very special way for your dear parents and family for their beautiful gift to the Church. We [. . .] assure you of our prayer [. . .]. Please pray for us and bless us.”

Like the men and women of the Indian Church, lay people also remembered this day. Dr John Dayal, chairman of the All India Catholic Union, highlighted the Pope’s strong position on life and the family against the attacks from science that seeks to separate faith and reason in order to act without limits in stem cell research. He further expressed hope that the Holy Father might visit India “as soon as possible.”

Sri Lanka

About a thousand Catholics took part yesterday in a special mass celebrating the second anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate at the National Basilica of Our Lady of Lanka in Tewatte.

The service was presided by Mgr Mario Zenari, the country’s apostolic nuncio, and Mgr Oswald Gomis, the archbishop of Colombo. In his homily, Archbishop Gomis reiterated the Sri Lankan Church’s “respect and gratitude” for the Pope to whom he wished God’s “protection to continue his valuable mission.”

Many clergymen and laity attending the ceremony in Tewatte expressed their appreciation for the Pope’s statement during the Easter Urbi et Orbi blessing. On that occasion, the Holy Father appealed to Sri Lanka’s authorities and Tamil rebels to pursue a diplomatic solution to end the bloody civil war that is affecting the country’s northern and eastern regions.

Government representatives also attended the service. Public Administration and Home Affairs Minister Karu Jayasuriya said on behalf of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that the Sri Lankan government appreciated very much Benedict XVI’S “good mission,” adding his own wishes of good health and personal well being for His Holiness.