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. The pontiff is not a crowd-pleaser like John Paul II, a former actor, and his homilies tend towards the abstruse.

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.

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.

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” 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.

“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.”

“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.”

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 — 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, 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 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. 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.

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

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”

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