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
