Joseph Ratziner is BENEDICT XVI

He took the name of Benedict XVI. Today we can, to some extent, assess this Pope who many were prepared to dislike and others saw as only the continuation of John Paul II. Perhaps the most striking reply to both came at this year’s Easter celebrations. They were Benedict’s first. Those who thought that the shy — some said timid — Ratzinger, would not have been able to draw the crowds which had followed John Paul II, were wrong.

Throughout the year, the Sunday and Wednesday appearances of Benedict XVI drew the same crowds, as did John Paul II. A record number of an estimated 100,000 turned out to hear the first Easter message of his Pontificate. The Pope’s Easter message gives a clear indication of the Pontiff’s position on International Affairs; Benedict’s message was carefully worded. He maintained the line of Post Second World War Popes.

An Appeal for Peace

These had broken from behind the scenes, diplomacy of former Popes. They made a public appeal for peace. Benedict couched his appeal in terms of the World’s need for tranquility and peace not only as the absence of war but also the peaceful living together of “ethnic groups, cultures and religions” as the only way capable of ending the “terrorist menace.” Thank God Benedict did not use the word ‘races’ but used ethnic groups: it suggests a clearer understanding of both biology and group relations than we have often had in Vatican statements. Those who had read Benedict’s first encyclical “God is Love” would have noted that even in the case of terrorism, Benedict was consistent with his theological positions.

Benedict XVI, like John Paul II, insisted on the right of Israel to peace and security but also on the right of Palestinians to their own State. Here again Benedict injects something different. It is not only a State that Benedict demands - he adds “real” to State with all that the adjective implies. Departing from his text, Benedict denounces “the temptation of reprisals,” a veiled allusion to Israel’s bombing of Gaza, a few days before.

The nuances continue with regard to Iran’s nuclear activities - although Iran is never mentioned. He asks for an “honourable” solution. In other words, not a humiliating solution. He insists on a negotiated settlement, but demands that these negotiations must be”serious and loyal” — a hint to Iran. He prays for peace in Iraq and registers his horror at the tragedy of Dafur and at the kidnappings in Latin America (read Trinidad and Tobago.)

Those who feared that the academic Ratzinger would be too far away from the World’s political concerns to understand them, thereby weakening one of today’s roles of the Supreme Pontiff, were proved wrong.

Resurrection and Evolution

Those who thought — or feared — that the old Ratzinger had disappeared with the new Benedict, were also proved wrong with Benedict XVI’s first Easter Vigil Mass of his Pontificate. Who but the old Ratzinger could put a Darwinian spin on the Resurrection? Tongue in cheek perhaps to those theologians who had opposed Ratzinger’s theological position in his Dominus Jesus. Tongue in cheek to the creationists.

“The Resurrection of Christ is the greatest mutation, as the theory of evolution would say, a qualitative leap, in the history of evolution and of life in general, towards a new life of the future, a new world which, beginning with Christ, penetrates our world and draws it to Himself.” Darwin perhaps. St Paul’s “All Creation” certainly. It was based on Paul’s certainty that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus had ushered in a new creation, that Ratzinger had argued that the Kingdom was not only for the future, it was already here. It was from the “All Creation” that Ratzinger would add to Karl Rahner’s Invisible Christians,” the “Anonymous” Christians — but saved as were we all, by the saving Act of the Cross. Ratzinger, the theologian, was good and properly there in Benedict XVI.

No Absolute Monarch

Not that you were obliged to agree with him. A few weeks into his Pontificate, Benedict XVI remarked that a Pope was not an absolute monarch. He was not a monarch at all — you didn’t have to agree with him. He repeated it at his summer residence, Castel Gondolfo. There, he reminded his audience that a Pope was rarely infallible. We all knew it but no Pope I know of had taken the trouble to proclaim it. Rather for the pious agreeing with everything a Pope said or did was demanded of a good Catholic. It was this automatic obedience and distance that Benedict XVI set out to change during the first year of his Pontificate. For those who chose to notice it, Benedict wore the longer pallium seen on paintings of earlier Bishops as if to signify a return to simpler days. He was the first Pope whose ring did not have a jewel. He did not kiss the ground when he visited Germany nor did he preside over the proclamation of the first step to a possible canonisation.

At a synod of Bishops there was at last a certain spontaneity of speech. It was reported that the Pope himself asked for his turn to speak. The number of Cardinals who may elect a Pope is back to 120. The College of Cardinals has been confirmed as a sort of Senate of the Church. In other words this is a humbler Pope. But also one who listens, thinks and takes his time making up his mind. It is rumoured that certain members of the Curia (the Civil Service of the Church) have remarked that, “It is a brain that the Cardinals have elected.”

A Solitary Pope

There is some nostalgia — John Paul II was a gregarious Pope. He loved people around him. He confided in his Secretary, the all powerful Stanislaus Dziwisz. He invited people to his morning mass or to eat with him. Journalists had no problem finding out what the Pope was planning or was thinking.

Not so with Benedict XVI. He said daily mass alone, usually ate alone and maintained a friendly distance from his two Secretaries and the three Germans who saw about his housekeeping. Journalists found few leaks in Benedict’s Vatican. He rose early, went to be dearly and could be heard playing the piano on an evening. It was his main relaxation and Mozart, his favourite composer. The one insight into the private person came from his elder brother. Joseph Ratzinger — was absent-minded, given to misplacing things and losing his keys.

Unity

At the first public mass of his Pontificate, the Joseph Ratzinger who in his Dominus Jesus had been accused of further dividing Christianity, announced that Christian Unity would be the priority of his Pontificate.

He followed this by meeting with representatives of the major divisions within Christianity. He had one victory that John Paul II had not managed to achieve; a surprisingly warm and affectionate exchange between himself and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. He met with Hans Kung the most famous theologian-dissenter but with whom he and Karl Rahner, the well-known Vatican II theologian, once collaborated in the publication of a theological periodical: Concilium. He met with the new leader of Lefebvre’s Integrist Catholics. They had refused Vatican II.