I'll try to translate a few individual tributes. I was particularly struck by this unusual reflection from Marco Tosatti...
Benedict XVI and the prophetic
notes of Kipling's 'Recessional'
Translated from
“The tumult and the shouting dies —
The Captains and the Kings depart”…
Seven years have passed, and the tumult and the shouting that accompanied the death and the funeral of John Paul II are long gone. The captains and the kings who gathered around a bare cypress coffin returned shortly to their thrones.
And a few days later, a 78-year-old cardinal was elected to the Chair of Peter. To confront a legacy from a Pontificate that had been dramatic and resplendent, which swept through the Church like a cyclone, restoring to the faithful their pride in being Catholic, pride in the faith, and bearing along a people made up of saints and sinners, heroes and brigands, as men ever have been.
I was reading 'Recessional", the hymn that Rudyard Kipling wrote for the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign in 1897, when the wings of Empire were spread wide across the world. And suddenly, the image of Papa Ratzinger came to mind. Not because pf any resemblance to Victoria. But because 'Recessional', far from being a cry of triumph, though it mentions great enterprises and power, speaks of the danger of arrogance and forgetting God.
I thought of the words of Joseph Ratzinger on Good Friday 2005, and later: about 'the filth in the Church", that boat tossed about by waves and springing leaks; and later the appeal, "Do not leave me alone - pray for me that I may not flee in fear from the wolves".
How great is the solitude of a Pope, of this one in particular, we often see - even when he has the comfort of the affection of all the humble faithful around the world. But how tough, dark and difficult is the mission he must carry out, to sustain, to correct and to restore order in a magma-like Catholic world - this is less evident to many.
The final message in Recessional must be Benedict's too, asking God's mercy “For heathen heart that puts her trust
in reeking tube and iron shard —
All valiant dust that builds on dust”, which is true for his Church and the rest of mankind.
In his great poem, Kipling sensed - with the foresight of poets - a world about to shatter, engulfed in pride and the will to power among the leaders of the world - that would lead to the folly of the Great War and the worse madnesses that followed it.
Benedict XVI's voice often resounds with the same prophetic accents.
Ad multos annos, Santita! The world has need of your voice.
From Jose Manuel Vidal, on a day when all's right with his world and therefore, what he says about Benedict XVI...
Best wishes to the Pope
whom one can no longer call 'transitional'
Translated from
The Pope turns 85 this Monday. A round figure and an advanced age, with which he now counts among the seven longest-lived Popes in history: After Clement XII (1730-1740), 97; Leo XIII (1878-1903), 93; Píus IV (1775-1799), 91; Celestine II (1191-1198), 91; John XXII (1316-1334), 90; and Gregory XII (1406-1415), 89.
A long-lived Pope who will also soon complete seven years at the helm of Peter's barque, whom no one can any longer call a transitional Pope.
Seven years of seeing in action the theologian Pope, the wise Pope, the Pope of the essential, and above all, the Pope as God's great broom-wielder, who imposed on the Church zero tolerance for the pederasty of the rotten apples in the clergy.
The Pope who, for all his conservative preferences (it is part of his biography and he cannot fully renounce it) has been re-centering the pendulum of the Church. A pendulum which, with John Paul II and his favorite battle-hardened 'new movements', had swung totally to the right.
But the present Pope's intellectual ability has led him during the past seven years to correct the course. At least, somewhat.
The pendulum swing towards the center (the middle way of spiritual health, so that we can all be part of the Church, without excluding anyone) can be noted, above all, in the greater presence and influence of the classic religious orders and congregations.
In Rome today, it is not the Opus Dei, the Legionaries, the Kikos (Neocatechumenals) or the Focolari who prevail, as they did under Papa Wojtyla. Today, we see Jesuits, Salesians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Redemptorists - and other classic religious families. Represented most notably by Bertone and Lombardi passing through Ouellet.
A Spanish Jesuit recently cited to me the prestigious Jesuit theologian Joaquin Losada, who compared John Paul II to Napoleon - the latter came to restore order to post-revolutionary France, the former to the post-Conciliar Church. Which he did with firmness and decision.
[Not with as much firmness and decision as his successor! The intention was always there, but few effects were visible.]
But it would have been impossible to effect a Restoration.
[Nor was it ever intended! John Paul II was very much a creature of Vatican II, especially of Gaudium et spes, about which his successor is far less enthusiastic.] Something must remain (in this case, a lot) of the journey that has been taken forward and of the fundamental contributions from that springtime of the Church. Vatican-II remains a milestone in the life of the Church.
And Benedict XVI, a man of that Council, knows it. That is why he has become centrist
[I think he was always centrist, in the sense of always taking the via media, the middle way which is the way of moderation] and he will continue to do so if God gives him more years on earth.
In order that he may leave the next Pope a clean Church that is ready to embrace all her children and all currents of ecclesial thought
[provided they do not contradict or dispute Catholic teaching!] in the bosom of the one People of God, intent on building his Kingdom on earth.
A Church that is more plural, more open and more capable of dialog. A Church that offers a spiritual significance to Christian living and Samaritan charity, proposing without imposing, as Papa Ratzinger often says.
We wish you all good fortune in your task, Holiness. And felicitations.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2012 08:00]