Here is a surprising commentary from a column in Panorama magazine by Italian journalist and TV news host Bruno Vespa, whose weekly program 'Porta a Porta' (Door to Door) carries interviews with people in the news and is considered so influential in the public discourse that it has been called the 'third house' of the Italian Parliament. He is a supporter of Prime Minister Berlusconi.
It is surprising because although he featured Cardinal Ratzinger on more than one occasion in 'Porta a Porta', our Italian sisters always complained that Vespa appeared to be snubbing him deliberately once he became Pope, featuring John Paul II on his program even when the occasion was a Benedict XVI milestone, and constantly making the unflattering comparisons that he denounces in this column. Famously, he did not see fit to do anything on the 80th birthday of Benedict XVI, choosing to do one instead of the birthday of the Queen of England. Who knows why he seems to have suddenly seen the light?
Vespa starts with some commentary on Ali Agca's recent release from prison and his bid to exploit his notoriety for as many bucks as he can get. He segues into this reflection about three Popes.
Benedict XVI: Like Jesus with the High Priests
Misunderstood, criticized, judged, whatever he does will never be enough for his critics.
And it is wrong to keep comparing his work to that of John Paul II.
John Paul II and Benedict XVI at the Great Synagogue of Rome.
by BRUNO VESPA
Translated from
January 22, 2010
…John Paul II’s extraordinary survival from Ali Agca’s ‘slalom-course’ bullet that miraculously missed any of his vital organs certainly contributed to the legend of John Paul II.
But with the passing of time, it is historically unfair to compare everything done by his successor to what John Paul II did. Consider the visit of Benedict XVI last Sunday to Rome’s Great Synagogue.
I had never before seen a Pope rise for a standing ovation that was not for him. Joseph Ratzinger did so to honor survivors of Auschwitz…. And one could not count the applauses from one side or the other on an afternoon that was memorable for both Jews and Catholics.
The actions and attitude of the present Pope towards the Jewish world have always been unexceptionable. In Cologne and in New York, he made it a point to visit a synagogue. On his first apostolic visit abroad as Pope, he visited Auschwitz, condemning rightly “the powers of the Third Reich… who sought to eliminate the Jewish people”.
As the French writer Bernard-Henri Levy noted in
Corriere della Sera on Jan. 20, at every step of his visit to the Jewish ghetto and Synagogue, Benedict XVI "did what was his duty, but [the fact is] he did”.
And yet, to some commentators, anything Benedict XVI might say will never be enough. Forgive me for the daring comparison, but sometimes I seem to hear the high priests in the temple of Jerusalem who attributed to Jesus exactly the opposite of what he said.
The point of friction remains the verdict over Pius XII.
Almost as if John Paul II had disowned him, and his successor is rehabilitating him wrongly.
[That is such an insightful remark! I had always wondered, when the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood approved the heroic virtues of Pius XII in May 2007 - why did it take 42 years for them to arrive at that, seeing as Paul VI first introduced the cause in 1965, and Pius XII was widely venerated even in his lifetime as a truly saintly man?
Was there an underlying history to explain the apparent lack of action during all of Paul VI's and John Paul II's Pontificates? Or was it a deliberate caesura in view of the escalating Jewish hostility against Pius XII? Was Benedict XVI, once he became Pope, responsible for 'resuscitating' the cause, such that the Congregation voted the late Pope's heroic virtues by May 2007?]
The opening to the public of the remaining archives concerning the Pius XII years will give the definitive word
[Does anyone really think that? The anti-Pius XII Jews will always find a new pretext for protesting], but already historiographic research has regained a lot of ground for the defenders of Pius XII, whom Levy identifies as Pius XI’s co-author of the 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical
Mit brennenden Sorge.
[I think it is widely accepted that the German-speaking Eugenio Pacelli drafted the encyclical.]
Was Golda Meir wrong to pay homage in the mid-1940s to ‘the voice of Papa Pacelli against the Nazi executioners'? Did the hundreds of religious establishments all over Italy who saved Jews during the war act contrary to Pius XII’s alleged ‘false prudence’ that made him a ‘fatal accomplice’ to the Nazis?
What price must Benedict XVI have to pay in the name of a Pope who has been so widely defamed and whose public persona does not help his cause?
[It is no more than the price he is continually asked to pay for every presumed 'misdeed' or 'mis-statement' that does not find favor with his detractors - part of the lot that falls to whoever is the Successor of Peter, one of the 'garments' that he must don when he first enters the Room of Tears after his election.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/01/2010 17:54]