BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

The Pope and Seewald in July 2010, and in November 2010 (extreme right).

This is the translation of a translation, as I have not seen the German original. Nonetheless, thank you, Peter Seewald, for bringing our beloved Benedict closer to us, if only in a virtual way...

Benedict XVI:
'I am the end of the old
and the beginning of the new'
by Peter Seewald
Translated from the German by Franca Elegante for

February 18, 2013

Our last conversation took place ten weeks ago. The Pope welcomed me to the Apostolic Palace to resume our conversations aimed at a work on his biography.

His hearing had deteriorated, his left eye can no longer see, he had lost weight so much that his tailors have been hard put to provide him with right-fitting clothes.

He had become very fragile, but even more amiable and humble, and still very reserved. He did not appear sick, but weariness appeared to have taken over his person - body and spirit - and this could not be ignored.

We spoke about when he deserted from Hitler's armed forces; his relations with his parents; the records from which he learned other languages; his 'fundamental' years on Mons docto, Freising's Hill of Learning, where for 1,000 years, the spiritual elite of Bavaria were introduced to the mysteries of the faith.

It was there he gave his first lectures to an audience of scholars. As a parish priest, he helped students, and he listened to the faithful in the chilly confessionals of the Freising cathedral.

In August last year, during a conversation in Castel Gandolfo which lasted an hour and a half, I asked him how much the Vatileaks episode had affected him.

"It didn't send me into any kind of desperation or universal sorrow," he answered. "It simply appeared incomprehensible to me. And as far the person concerned [Paolo Gabriele], I did not know what to expect. I cannot penetrate his psychology".

But he maintains that the episode did not make him 'lose the compass', nor did it particularly make him feel the weight of his office, "because these things can always happen".

What was important to him was that "the independence of the judiciary is guaranteed in the Vatican, that the monarch does not say, 'Just let me deal with this'."

I had never seen him look so exhausted. With the strength left to him, he had completed his work on Jesus - 'my last book', he told me, with a sad look as we said farewell.

Joseph Ratzinger is an unbreakable man, someone who has always been able to 'recover' rapidly. Two years ago [the July 2010 interviews that became Light of the World], despite the first infirmities of age, he still seemed agile, almost youthful. This time, he perceives every new memorandum that comes to him from the Secretariat of State almost like a physical blow.

"What else can we expect from Your Holiness, from your pontificate?" i asked.

"From me? Not much. I am an old man and my strength is abandoning me. I think I have done enough".

Are you thinking of resigning? "It depends on what my physical energies impose."

That month (July 2012), he had written one of his former doctoral students that the Schuelerkreis meeting in August would be the last one. [These annual reunion=seminars began in 1977 and were uninterrupted, even after he became Pope.]

It was a rainy day in Rome, that November of 1992, when we first met each other at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [Seewald had asked for an interview he would use for an article in a Bavarian magazine.] His handshake was not bone-crushing, and the voice, gentle and sensitive, was hardly that of a Panzerkardinal.

I liked the way he spoke of small things as well as of serious matters. And how he questioned the world's notion of progress, saying it must reflect on whether man's happiness could really be measured by GNP (gross national product).

The years have subjected him to heavy testing. He has been called a persecutor, whereas he was the persecuted. The scapegoat for every perceived injustice in the Church. The 'Grand Inquisitor' by definition, something as accurate as mistaking a cat for a bear.

But no one has ever heard him complain. No one has heard him say anything bad about anyone, nothing negative, not even about Hans Kueng.

Four years after our first meeting, we spent many days together to discuss a book about the faith and the Church, in general, and topics like priestly celibacy and insomnia.

As an interlocutor, he did not pace about the room like most professors do. There was not the slightest trace of vanity nor presumption in him.

I was struck by his clearly superior qualities, and that his thinking owes nothing to the times. I was somewhat surprised to hear him give pertinent answers about the problems of our time that are almost irresolvable; how he spoke of the great treasure of Revelation; of the inspiration he drew from the Fathers of the Church. All the reflections of the guardian of the faith sitting in front of me.

A radical thinker - this was my impression - and a radical believer who, nonetheless, in the radicality of his faith, never draws his sword, but uses a weapon that is far more potent: the power of humility, simplicity, and love.

Joseph Ratzinger is a man of paradoxes. His speech is subdued, but the effect of his voice is strong. Gentleness as well as rigor. He thinks big but he pays attention to detail. He embodies a new intelligence in recognizing and revealing the mysteries of the faith. He is a theologian but he defends the faith of the people against the cold-as-ashes 'religion' of the professors.

As he himself embodies equilibrium, that was the way he taught. With the lightness that is characteristic of him [He said once that angels can fly because they are so light]. With his elegance. With his ability to penetrate the essential that can render serious things light, without depriving them of mystery or banalizing the sacred.

His is a thought that prays, for whom the mysteries of Christ represent the determinative reality of all creation and the history of the world. A lover of mankind who does not hesitate to answer when asked how many paths lead to God, "As many paths as there are human beings".

He is the 'little' Pope who has written great works with a pencil. No one before him - the greatest German theologian of all time - has left the People of God during his pontificate such an important work on Jesus nor had been so devoted to Christology.

His critics have said that his election as Pope was a mistake. The truth is that there was no other choice. Yet, Joseph Ratzinger never sught power. In the Curia, he chose not to take any part in the games and intrigues at the Vatican.

He has always lived the modest life of a monk. Luxury is strange to him, and he is indifferent about living in an environment with comforts that are above bare necessity.

But let us stick to the so-called small things, that are often more eloquent than grand declarations, congresses and programs. I liked his style of being Pope; that his first official document as Pope was a letter to the Jewish community; that he took away the tiara - symbol of the Pope's earthly powers in the past - from his papal coat of arms; that he asked the Bishops' Synod to allow their guests from other faiths to address them - this was a novelty.

With Benedict XVI, a Pope for the first time took part in Synodal discussions without speaking as a superior but to colleagues, introducing in practice the collegiality much touted in Vatican II.

Feel free to correct or criticize me, he said, when he presented his first volume about Jesus, which was not announced as dogma or Magisterium, and did not carry the seal of his maximum Magisterial authority.

Doing away with the baciamano [literally, 'kiss the hand'] has been the most difficult. [Even many bishops continue to kiss the papal ring as a sign of obeisance and respect.] Once, when one of his students bent to kiss his hand, he took him by the arm and said, "Let us behave normally".

So many firsts. For the first time, a Pope visited a Germany synagogue, and ended up going to more synagogues than all the Popes before him combined. And for the first time, a Pope visited Martin Luther's former monastery, an unprecedented historical gesture.

Joseph Ratzinger is a man of tradition, who entrusts himself willingly to what has been consolidated, but he knows to distinguish between what is truly 'eternal' from that which is valid only for the time during which it emerged. And if necessary, as in the case of the Tridentine Mass, he adds the old to the new, so that together, they can amplify the space for liturgy and not reduce it.

He has not done everything right, but he admits errors committed, even those (like the Williamson case) for which he has absolutely no responsibility.

But no failing has caused him as much suffering as that of the sexual offenses of priests, even if, as Prefect of the CDF, he had already initiated measures to make sure that these offenses were uncovered and that the guilty would be punished.

Benedict XVI is leaving the Papacy but his legacy remains. And the successor of this humblest of Popes in the modern era will walk in his footsteps. He will have a different charism, and his own style, but it will be the same mission: Not to incentivize the centrifugal forces that would tear the Church apart, but the forces that will hold together the patrimony of the faith, those who remain courageous in announcing a message of which they themselves are authentic witnesses.

It is not accidental that the outgoing Pope chose Ash Wednesday as his last great liturgy. See, he seemed to say, this is where I have wanted to lead you from the beginning. This is the way. Detoxify yourself, get rid of dead weight, do not allow yourself to be swallowed up by the spirit of the times, do not waste time, de-secularize yourself!

To slim down in order to increase its actual weight in the world is the program of the Church today. 'Losing the fat' in order to gain vitality and spiritual freshness, and just as important, to regain inspiration and appeal.

"Convert, and believe the Gospel," he said as he laid ashes on cardinals and abbots.

At our last meeting, I asked the Pope, "Are you the end of the old or the beginning of the new?" He answered. "Both".

The best thing about the coming biography by Peter Seewald - apart from the great joy (and unbearable nostalgia) we can look forward to - is that for the first time, a Pope will have been able to present his own perception of the events that have marked his Pontificate. Which means that the 'first draft', as it were, of the history of his Pontificate, will have his input, and not just that of observers (hagiographers and detractors alike), most of whom will be depending on second-hand or even more remote references, including media reports, as their primary sources.

For Benedict XVI, a biography that covers the years of his Pontificate and published while he is still around to speak for himself, is not a vanity project, but a rightful effort to present his side truthfully (given who he is, it cannot be other than truthful!) against all lies, distortions and malicious interpretations... This, too, we must see as part of God's design for him to whom he has already given so many graces... and as many trials as humans can bear. And the Vicar of Christ, who will soon be nobody's vicar, is doubtless just as joyful to be back to being simply Joseph Ratzinger, priest.