00 24/02/2015 10:48

I shall take advantage of this week when there will be litte or no papal news (the Pope and Curial officials are holding their annual Lenten retreat in Ariccia), to re-post a few more of the more important articles that were published following Benedict XVI's announcement that he was renouncing the Pontificate.[/dim\




This time in 2013, by coincidence, the only two journalists who have been privileged to publish interview books with Josehh Ratzinger came out on the same day with their impressions of him - Vittorio Messori going back to when he first met him and got him to agree to do the interviews that would be published in 1985 as Rapporto sulla fede (The Ratzinger Report)l and Peter Seewald, who is working on a biography of Benedict XVI that will include the years of his Pontificate, recalls how in the year before Benedict announced he was giving up the Papacy, had become noticeably weaker...

Famiglia Cristiana online has started to compile a dossier on Benedict XVI's renunciation, and one of the first contributions is this brief memoir by Vittorio Messori...

Joseph Ratzinger:
The gentle modest man
I've known for over 25 years
by Vittorio Messori
Translated from

February 19, 2013

More than 25 years ago in Bressanone, I met a person who is among the most courteous = even the most modest - that I have ever known.

My colleagues have asked me to recall at least how the first meeting came to be, an encounter more than a quarter-century ago with the man whose renunciation of the Petrine ministry has stirred up the sentiments of a billion and a half Catholics and caused worldwide uproar.

And they have asked me not to hesitate to "take a personal line'.

I do so willingly, but with some melancholy: The unexpected end of Benedict XVI's Pontificate also ends, for whatever it is worth, the central and most committed part of my professional life.

I am a bit uneasy at getting into autobiographical mode, but I agreed to do this because my little story is also tied in with the story of the group that publishes Famiglia Cristiana [Italy's most widely-circulated weekly magazine].

At the end of 1978, having left a city and a newspaper that I loved (Turin and La Stampa), I accepted the invitation of the unforgettable don Zilli to create a monthly religious magazine for Famiglia Cristiana, giving it a more committed name. In fact, nothing less than JESUS - said in the Latin manner, not English as I often hear it pronounced.

My meeting with don Zilli in Milan was due to the singular and unexpected success of my first book, Ipotesi su Gesù (Hypothesis on Jesus), which called attention to who I was, and which naturally did not displease me - a simple, quiet man who had been the editor of the cultural supplement to the daily newspaper (La Stampa) of the House of Agnelli [the Fiat family].

The original editorial staff of the new monthly was originally limited to don Attonio Tarzia, the editor; myself, and a young but very competent secretary, Maura Ferrari. With don Toto (as his friends called him), I decided that the strong point of each issue would be a long, in-depth interview with the leading thinkers of the day - Christian of other faiths, agnostics or atheists - that would be called 'Dialoghi su Gesu' (Dialogs on Jesus).

After a few years, this gave rise to a book, that is still in the Mondadori catalog, entitled Inchiesta sul cristianesimo (An investigation of Christianity). Every month, I added the portrait of an authoritative thinker to my collection, but at a certain point, I started to have a dream: Since all of my inquiries revolved around faith, why not interview the man who, in the Catholic Church, was the guardian of orthodoxy?

Paul VI had profoundly renewed what had once been the Holy Office [of the Inquisition, as others might add]. To 'replace' the feared institution, he created the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

To lead it, John Paul II in his time called on the Archbishop of Munich, who had been a professor of theology, Joseph Ratzinger. I had read his Introduction to Christianity, which I appreciated as much as I came to appreciate the declarations and documents that he started to issue in his new Roman service.

I was gripped by an idee fixe: This Bavarian cardinal was the man who would put a grand finale to my series of testimonials to faith. The few to whom I expressed this thought looked at me with an ironic smile. Someone even advised me, a bit in jest, to take time off for rest and recreation because it was evident that I was delirious.

Don't you realize, they asked me, that despite the change in name, the CDF was still the direct heir of the Holy Office of the inquisitors, the only congregation in the Church whose archives were still hermetically sealed? That this institution had made secrecy and silence its very essence?

And yet, and yet... It came to pass that on the eve of Ferragosto (Assumption Day) in 1984, I found myself pacing in front of the main door to the major seminary in Bressanone awaiting His Rminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who had agreed to talk to me not for just a couple of hours but over a period of three days.

The project was no longer a brief interview for a newspaper, but a conversation across the board that would become a book to be published, obviously by San Paolo, if only because, my editor, don Toto, was among the few who did not think I was lunatic but did all he could to achieve what had seemed like a utopian goal.

So I was pacing in that little square in Brizen/Bressanone expecting the arrival of a limousine with SCV (Stato della Citta del Vaticano) tags. Instead, there came a Volkswagen with Regensburg plates driven by a good-natured man (whom I learned later was his brother), and out came a priest in the modest clergyman outfit of a parish priest, with a boyish face that was in stark contrast to his crown of hair which was already totally white. It was 'him'.

Three days later, I would be leaving that front door carrying in my suitcase some 20 hours of tapes that would agitate the entire Church through a book which continues to be reprinted in multiple languages, under the title Rapporto sulla Fede(Report on Faith, published in English as The Ratzinger Report).

Thus began a friendship that, although in an obviously discontinuous way, lasted through the years, which (except for our latest brief encounter - after a GA in St. Peter's Square) allowed me to deepen my knowledge of the man.

The man who had struck me right away as being the opposite of the 'black legend' that had been created about him. Instead of a fearsome Grand Inquisitor, I found a person who is among the most courteous and gentle, even downright shy, persons whom I have ever met.

Instead of a fanatical ideologue, I found a man ready to listen, to understand, to interpret in the best way what his interlocutor says, firm on the essentials but elastic on accessory matters.

Instead of a somber and severe priest, I found a person gifted with a pleasant sense of humour, ever ready to smile and to respond, with finesse, to any joke or punchline.

Instead of a man smugly ensconced in the past, I found a curious person who was informed not only about current studies in theology and philosophy, but about everything significant that was happening in the world.

Instead of a cardinal who had climbed his way to getting a red hat, I found a priest surprised at what had happened to him, who had accepted higher assignments only for love of the Church, and who spoke with some regret about his interrupted research and plans for books that had to be postponed indefinitely.

It would not be easy, in the ecclesial atmosphere of the time (mid 1980s) to convincingly present this image - the true one - of the presumed heir of the Inquisitors, who was moreover German and who had been mandatorily enrolled in the Hitler Youth like other boys his age in Nazi Germany.

Indeed, it was probably only after he had been elevated to the Papacy that the Church and the world started gradually to discover the authentic Joseph Ratzinger.

Many, a great many, discovering him, came to love him. And now, they respect his decision but they grieve at the prospect of not seeing him again and not to hear him repeat as he often has - lovingly and not menacingly - the truths that the Church announces.




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 19, 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.]
[P.S. 2015 It would be the last reunion-seminar he would participate in, as obviously, his former students have decided to carry on with it.][colore]

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, who is also BenedictXVI, emeritus Pope.





[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/02/2015 11:01]