Anniversaries: For seven years,
the Church has been led by
a wise pastor and a courageous man
Translated from the Italian service of
April 14, 2012
On Monday and Thursday, Benedict XVI will be celebrating two important milestones, whose proximity in time serves to make them more extraordinary - his 85th birthday and the seventh anniversary of his Pontificate. Two dates that always call for a new appreciation of his person and his work, as our director Fr. Federico Lombardi does, in his editorial for 'Octavo Dies', the weekly newsmagazine of the Vatican's CTV:
85 years of age and seven years of a Pontificate.
When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope at age 78, many wondered whether, after the final years of his predecessor that were marked by infirmity, the Pontificate that just begun could be as intense and lasting as one might desire, and if a theologian who for a long time had led a dicastery that was specifically doctrinal could undertake the very different task of pastoral governance of the universal Church.
In these seven years, we have seen Benedict XVI undertake 23 international trips to 23 countries [twice he visited two countries at a time, and he also visited Germany and Spain three times each], as well as 26 pastoral visits in Italy.
We have witnessed four Assemblies of the Bishops' Synod and three quadrennial World Youth Days.
We have received three encyclicals as well as countless other discourses and Magisterial texts.
We have taken part in a Pauline Year and a Year for Priests.
And we have seen the Pope face with courage, humility and determination - that is, with clear evangelical spirit - difficult situations such as the crisis attendant to the sexual abuses committed by priests.
We have read his work on JESUS OF NAZARETH, a story he has presented in a new and original way, as well as his book-length interview LIGHT OF THE WORLD.
Above all, we have learned from the consistency and constancy of his teaching that the priority of his service to the Church and to mankind is to orient human life towards God, the God that Jesus Christ made known to us; that faith and reason help us reciprocally in seeking the truth and in responding to the expectations and questions that each man has and that all mankind have in common; and that forgetting God and relativism are the the most serious dangers of our time.
For all this, we are immensely grateful. And we continue to make the journey with him: towards the next World Encounter of Families [the second with his attendance], towards the Middle East [his third trip to the region, after the Holy Land and Cyprus], towards the Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization, and towards the Year of Faith - in the hands of God, in the service of God and his Church.
The following text is the introduction to a book, Joseph Ratzinger; Teologo e Pontefice, that the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and L'Osservatore Romano will be publishing jointly on April 24. The book will include a dialog between Armando Massarenti and Giuliano Ferrara on secularity, an essay by Lucetta Scaraffia, and a chronology of Benedict XVI's first seven years as Pope, by OR editor Giovanni Maria Vian.
Happy birthday, Joseph!
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from
April 15, 2012
When, on April 19, 2005, 78-year-old Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope - after less than 24 hours of the most numerous Conclave so far in history - many were surprised.
For one reason primarily: He had been labelled a hardline conservative, and moreover German, a label attached to someone who had authoritatively led the former Holy Office for 23 years, and who had seemed destined to play the kingmaker in the difficult choice of a successor to John Paul II, who had called him to Rome where he became his closest collaborator.
The predictions and expectations turned out to be far from fact, just as the stereotyped image disseminated by many although totalyl unfounded.
What is certain was that the cardinal who emerged Pope from the Conclave, who had wanted for years to retire to his native Bavaria to devote himself fully to his theological studies, did nothing to get elected.
This was a development he had not sought nor expected. Just as the position that came to him in 1977 that changed the direction of the brilliant 50-year-old theologian's career, when he was named Archbishop of Munich and Freising by Paul VI, and one month later, made a cardinal
Fifteen years earlier, he came to Rome for the first time to take part in the sessions of the Second Vatican Council as the theological consultant to one of the outstanding figures of the German Church at the time, Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne.
For the 85th birthdya of Benedict XVI and the start of the eighth year of his Pontificate, the idea was born to gather together and update in this little book some little-known texts: a dialog, light-hearted but not superficial, between a mouse (Armando Massarenti) and an elephant (Giuliano Ferrara); an essay on how to read the works of Joseph Ratzinvger - not a specialized or systematic guide but an intelligent and comprehensive one from historian Lucetta Scaraffia; and a chronological synthesis of the life of the theologian who became Pope.
This joint initiative by two newspapers -
Il Sole 24 Ore and
L'Osservatore Romano - is meant to contribute to a 'first appreciation' of the person and the work of an intellectual who has dedicated and continues to dedicate his live to the inexhaustible search for truth, in a continuous dialog between faith and reason, in a language that speaks to everyone.
On the occasion of an important occasion for which one may use the greeting from Byzantine liturgy,
èis ète pollà, more familair in Latin:
ad multos annos - May you have many more years! - to wish the Pope a happy birthday.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/04/2012 13:31]