Thanks to Gemma who has been patiently and lovingly editing videos of Benedict XVI events during his Pontificate, to Lella who features these videos on her blog, to Anne on Beatrice's site who transcribed the following video in Italian, and to Beatrice who translated the interview to French and published both transcripts on her site, here's a little B16 birthday/anniversary bonus - an interview for RAI by the late Giuseppe de Carli (for years, RAI's chief Vatican correspondent) and Vittorio Messori on April 15, 2007... It's one I had not seen or read about before.
On the eve of B16's 80th birthday,
Vittorio Messori confides he was the first one
surprised by the Ratzinger he interviewed
for the 1984 book THE RATZINGER REPORT
Interview on RAI-TV
April 15, 2007
GDC: Tomorrow, Papa Ratzinger will turn 80 and on April 19, he will celebrate the second anniversary of his election as Pope.
Successor of John Paul II, a German pope after a Polish Pope, a theologian after a philosopher, the architrave of John Paul II's Pontificate, a man who had just turned 78 when he was elected Pope - and was the only Conclavist who was taking part in his third Conclave, also the only remaining cardinal who had been created by Paul VI.
Next to me to comment on these series of events that are so singular and unique is Vittorio Messori, journalist and author, who is known to all of you.
Thank you, Messori, for your participation. It could be said that you form part of Papa Ratzinger's intellectual biography, so much so that in his book JESUS OF NAZARETH, which will be out in bookstores tomorrow, you are cited on page 64.
One cannot speak of Pope Benedict without referring to your RAPPORTO SULLA FEDE in 1984
[published in English as THE RATZINGER REPORT] which represented a kind of turning point for communications in the Church. For the first time, the Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith broke a taboo and emerged from the absolute privacy that we had been accustomed to in earlier custodians of the Catholic faith. And that RAPPORT) SULLA FEDE became a best-seller many times over.
VM: Well yes, I myself, who was well aware of the mythical secrecy of the Holy Office - a historic name that had been changed to the more politically correct Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - I myself as the chronicler, during the three days that I spent with the then Cardinal Ratzinger for the interviews that became this book, that was only later named RAPPORTO SULLA FEDE, I could hardly believe my ears - in the sense that I had expected a reticent man, a diplomatic man, according to the venerated rules of Vatican diplomacy.
I had expected a clever crafty prelate, but instead, I found myself facing a man of extreme simplicity, who, to my every question, never refused a response that was the most open and the most complete that he could give.
Therefore the first one surprised by Cardinal Ratzinger was myself, but I must say he also surprised the Church, because the book - certainly not through merit but that of its true protagonist, of Cardinal Ratzinger who for the first time came out in the open - that book marked a kind of watershed in the post-Conciliar years. Indeed, it was said outright that it separated a before and after mark in the years after Vatican II....
GDC: After the post-conciliar spring, winter followed...
VM: According to the black myth...
GDC: ...Of Messori's book...
VM: No, not Messori's book. It is Ratzinger's book. I was merely the chronicler who asked provocative questions...
GDC: Nonetheless, the effects of that book were so explosive that you had to drop out of circulation for almost two months. "I hid myself," you said in one interview, "as if it was during the wartime Resistance, in a retreat house of the Barnabites in Alta Brianza." But those who threatened you at the time have probably become Ratzingerians by now!
VM: Well yes. I say that with a smile and with no rancor whatsoever, because it's all in the past now, but I have a chest filled with furious letters written by colleagues, prelates, theologians, all of whom in 1985 attacked not just Ratzinger but even me, as the chronicler who, according to them, was guilty not only of having gone out of my way to interview the cardinal, but above all, of not having contradicted him, for not having pointed out that here was a kind of nazi-clericalism - that was the black legend that was circulated.
And I must say that, in 20 years, I have tried basically to show, in some way, as best as I could, in my little way, that the Cardinal Ratzinger who was presented as a German Inquisitor, is really a good man, a gentle almost shy man that we now know he is.
GDC: Well, 23 years have passed since then. Has Ratzinger changed or has he remained the same?
VM: I asked him that question myself in a different context when I said: "Excuse me, Eminence, you were part of the so-called progressive current in Vatican-II - and in fact, some of your colleagues have not forgiven you for turning into some sort of icon for a 'restoration'." And I remember that he looked at me with those clear eyes and with that face that I like to describe as a boy's face in an 80-year-old man. He looked at me said said in an Italian that was still tentative for he had not been here long then, "But it is not I who changed - it's the others who did". And I think he was right.
Basically, Ratzinger's line, since he was a young theologian, who was considered progressivist in a pejorative sense - his line has not changed. I believe he is a man marked above all, I would say, by a well-known trait: his great love for the Church and his awareness that he Church is the institution that reveals the mystery of Christ.
GDC: The Pope has never referred to his age, almost as if he fears getting all sentimental, but he knows he is old, that he was 78 when he said Yes in the Sistine Chapel, and yet, he did not step back. What is really striking about him is his fundamental serenity...
VM: It's part of his abandonment to the divine will.. Certainly, when I learned he had been elected - which was not something we took for granted, as you know - when I learned he had been elected, I was happy for the Church, I confess, but I also confess with the same sincerity that I was not very happy for him because I knew that he had intended to dedicate the last phase of his life to finishing his work as a theologian.
And I must say that his life has always been marked by obedience to the commands of the Church. I would say that his vocation would have been to spend his time in libraries and in theological studies. But, in effect, he was taken out of his niche by Paul VI who assigned him a difficult diocese, and in difficult times, that of Munich-Freising. After which John Paul II took him out of that niche to entrust him with the most sensitive task in the Church after Vatican II - to guard the orthodoxy of the faith. And then, of course, once again, his own retirement plans were foiled by the Conclave which made him Pope.
Basically, I would say this man's life has been one of sacrifice - sacrificing his true and most profound vocation, which is that of a reflective man, a man who loved his contact with young people in academic halls...
GDC: That is why he placed St. Corbinian's bear on his coat of arms - "I am like a beast of burden..."
VM: Yes, but Corbinian, the sainted bishop, after the bear had transported his baggage to Rome, sent him back home free...
GDC: While he has not been able to go back home free...
VM: Yes, in his case it would be: "They brought me to Rome and loaded burdens on my shoulders, and now no one is taking me back home".
GDC: Listen, the
New York Times dedicated the cover story in its Sunday magazine to him, saying: "It is a papacy that has largely disarmed the left wing of the Church. he has been a Pontiff who has been 'softer' than expected, not so much calling the Church to arms against abortion and contraception as to setting out secure positions of high morality."
His primary objective, says the Times, is to tame Western secularization which threatens to obliterate the splendor of the Western Catholic tradition to a geriatric echo chamber though it may be filled with works of art. The idea is expressed crudely but it does have some truth. What do you think?
VM: Yes, but one must specify that one cannot continue using this crude political scheme and apply it to the life of the Church...
GDC: Namely, right and left...
VM: Right, left, progressivist, conservative - in the Church, these are absolutely extraneous schemes. If we had to classify Jesus and the great saints, what are we to say - were they right or left, conservative or progressivist? This is nonsense, a journalistic deformation to apply such schemes.
But there is some truth in the article. For example, my colleague from the Times... confirms precisely what those who know Ratzinger have always said... that as Pope he has showed himself less rigid than expected. And yet those who know Ratzinger know that he was never a sort of Grand Inquisitor seeking to impose inhuman decrees on the People of God!
Ratzinger has always been a man who listens, a man of dialog, a moderate, so to speak.. Therefore, I am happy for the Church, not so much for him, that he was elected to Peter's Chair, precisely because he has been able to show that his true temperament is not that of a repressor or a restorer - his true temperament is that of a man of God who is open to the Catholic logic of 'et-et', namely, always careful to seek balance.
GDC: From the Scala Regia (Grand Staircase of the Apostolic Palace), we are seeing the procession emerge (towards St. Peter's Square). The Pope loves this ritual, we have noticed. He did it it on Palm Sunday and on Easter, and he does it today for the Messa in Albis (the first Sunday after Easter], as it was once called, and now, Sunday of Divine Mercy, as John Paul II decided when he canonized St. Faustina Kowalska in 2000... I shall tell you a small secret. Tomorrow the Pope turns 80 - but it is also the birthday of our illustrious guest, Vittorio Messori. Happy birthday...
VM: Thank you, thank you, But this is not the news...
GDC: April 16 is also the feast day of Bernadette Soubirous, who died on April 16, 1876. We are marking a jubilee year for Fatima, the 90th anniversary of the Marian apparitions there, and we are entering the jubilee year marking 150 years since the apparitions at Lourdes.
VM: Yes, next year (2008) we shall be marking the anniversary of Our Lady's first apparition in Lourdes to Bernadette. At Lourdes, they are already preparing great celebrations, starting this year on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8. It is expected that the usual 5-6 million visitors a year to Lourdes will probably be twice as many next year. And there will be a great affluence to the Grotto.
[As it turned out, Benedict XVI would make an apostolic visit to France in September 2008 to mark the Lourdes jubilee and would spend a memorable two days packed with activities in Lourdes. Messori himself, in 2012, would write a book about Lourdes entitled Bernadette non ci ha ingannati: Un'indagine storica sulla verita di Lourdesdid not deceive us" (Bernadette did not deceive us: A historical inquiry into the truth of Lourdes), which has sicne been translated to English as Lourdes: A Story of faith, science and miracles..]