Earlier, I posted a brief blog entry by Marco Tosatti about Benedict XVI and the words of Rudyard Kipling's poem, Recessional. Here now is his article for La Stampa and Vatican Insider assessing the seven years of Benedict XVI's Pontificate.
Seven years as Pope:
Not a transitional Papacy
by Marco Tosatti
Translated from
April 16, 2012
I am curious in a somewhat malicious way, wondering how many of those who in April 2005 had voted for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to become Pope thought then that seven years later, the Bavarian Pope would still be around - with his brisk walk now affected at times by problems with his right hip and knee, but still with us and evidently wanting to be.
Unfortunately, that's a question one cannot survey and for which it would be difficult to get a sincere answer. In any case, that which for many cardinals - and much of the media - was supposed to be merely a transitional papacy, as they were quick to say at the time, has been showing itself to be something else altogether.
It is a 'founding' Papacy, the work of someone who works silently but persistently - and in depth.
[Tosatti does not bother to explain why this is a 'founding Papacy', as he felicitously calls it, but those of us who follow Benedict XVI know that it is so because of his return to the essentials of the faith - since the institution of the Papacy, or anything else about the Church, cannot be effective unless these essentials are made the foundation of what is done by the Church and in the name of the Church.]
How? Few know that a great part of Benedict XVI places much time and commitment into a thankless task that does not and could not attract the interest of the media but one that is fundamental for the life of the Church - and precisely so that years from now, the media will not have base and negative reasons to make much ado about its consequences.
Benedict XVI is convinced that the strength - and the weakness - of the Church lies primarily in the dioceses, the local Churches. In John Paul II's Pontificate, very often the choice of bishops was delegated to the presidents of the episcopal conferences, the nuncios and other elements of the central and local Churches.
Most of the time, the Pope, especially in the final years of his life, was limited to signing his approval for their choices, if we are to believe what has been recounted since (and which we have no reason to doubt). John Paul II delegated - he trusted his collaborators, not always successfully as history has shown us.
Benedict XVI has a different style. He studies every dossier that is submitted for the short list of three final candidates proposed to fill any diocesan vacancy. He studies their records of study, preparation and work before he decides.
[And asks questions. The Pope meets once a week with the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops for this reason - to discuss the candidates for bishop and to arrive at final decisions.]
Not infrequently he has asked to be presented with other candidates because he finds not one in the proposed list satisfactory. This is tedious work, far from attention-getting, but one for which the Church in subsequent decades must be grateful.
[A bishop's appointment is lifelong, and even if they must usually retire at age 75, most bishops have at least 15-20 years of service ahead of them.]
That just happens to be the way Benedict XVI works. As it was when he was a cardinal. A 'lonely' way, certainly. But he has never been known to be a socializing person. Other than occasional visits to older German prelates and priests living in Rome, he was never known to frequent the homes of colleagues and friends, nor invite them to his.
One notes the same solitude by preference now that he is Pope. The progressive weakening of the figure of his Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, underscores this trait.
In the autumn of his life, Pius XII had Cardinals Tardini and Ottaviani, two guardian 'mastiffs' of the first order, who had his back, to help him hold up. Paul VI had Cardinal Benelli who kept the Curia and the Secretariat of State in place with an iron hand.
[And John Paul II had his faithful Mons. Dsiwisz, who was more than just his private secretary, and from all accounts, Cardinals Sodano and Sandri, as well as the Polish cardinals in the Curia, to look after the routine of governance. But in addition, he had Cardinal Ratzinger not just as an adviser on important Church affairs, but as the lightning rod used by the media to deflect from the Pope all serious criticisms of the Pontificate. And that is why he was the most prominent cardinal at the time..]
But today, outside observers would be hard put to say who exactly are 'the Pope's men' other than Bertone - who unfortunately seems incapable even of reacting effectively to the many traitors within his own department who have damaged him in recent months. (And, by the way, we still have not heard any results of the supposed internal investigations into determining the leaks in the system, nor do we even know which prelates are in charge of the investigation, so it is even doubted that there is one.)
[One must add to Tosatti's parenthetical that we have not heard either any results of Vatican police investigation into these leaks, yet it will soon be three months since the first 'Vatileaked' report. I find that outrageously inexplicable - this is not the Orlandi case they are supposed to solve, just an evident abuse of privileged access to information.]
In these seven years, Benedict XVI has worked steadily to carry his work forward - seeking to honor a legacy, often weighty and ambiguous, which was left to him by his prophetic predecessor, while defending himself and the Church from a number of attacks whose malevolence against the Vatican has not been seen since the Cold War, and he has tried to do this with inadequate tools and collaborators.
[The inadequate tools are, presumably, the flawed Vatican media mechanisms, not the Pope's own simple, direct and transparent responses, in word and deed, to the unfair and unjustified attacks.]
Above all, to get back to the start of this reflection, he has done so with a capacity for resistance, even physical, that cannot but amaze the observer. Which brings some to think that perhaps it is because he is never alone, and in fact, works with the best of all Friends.
Ad multos annos.
[A demurral to Tosatti's implication about 'the Pope's men': I would argue that all the Curial heads and secretaries he has appointed are Benedict XVI's men - not that they form part of any privileged 'inner circle', because this Pope does not seem to have a kitchen cabinet other than his literal household members, who cannot possibly create any palace intrigue. The Italian media have suggested with some plausibility that his only close associate is really Mons. Georg Gaenswein who necessarily is in on all the details of what the Pope does.
But the fact that Benedict XVI now has his own appointees heading the various organisms of the Curia means that he is confident each of them are capable and responsible for doing the specific tasks devolving upon each of them, and that none of them is likely to act autonomously or deliberately in ways that would harm the Pontificate. much less betray the Pope by an act of commission or omission.
So he may not have a Cardinal Ratzinger to fall back on as Papa Wojtyla did, but he does have 44 men (Curial heads and secretaries) to count on with some degree of confidence. It is distressing that his #1 Curial aide, Cardinal Bertone, has proven to be such a disappointment, but he should not be used as a standard to measure his senior colleagues in the Curia.]
Tosatti's fellow Vaticanista on La Stampa, Giacomo Galeazzi, assesses this Pontificate from a very significant, less obvious viewpoint. He also goes on to discuss the challenges of Vatican-II today for a Pope who took part in it as a young consultant:
A Pontificate of purification
by Giacomo Galeazzi
Translated from
April 16, 2012
Benedict XVI was elected Supreme Pontiff on April 19, 2005, and it is time to make a first evaluation of the man who succeeded John Paul II.
"The worst persecution of the Church is the sin that afflicts it from within". Enroute to Portugal in May 2010, that single statement by Benedict XVI was enough to sweep away all conspiratorial and self-absolving theories about ecclesiastical scandals and scourges.
It is a statement that could well be the manifesto of this Pontificate of purification. Three dates frame the boundaries for an evaluation of this Pontificate: his 85th birthday today, the seventh anniversary of his election to be the Successor of Peter on Thursday, April 19; and that of the solemn inauguration of his Petrine ministry, on Tuesday, April 24.
No one has done as much as Joseph Ratzinger against the sexual offenses committed by the clergy and the financial dealings of the Roman Curia.
He handed down a canonical punishment for Fr. Marcial Maciel reducing him to silence in 2005, and placed his flagship institution, the Legionaries of Christ, under pontifical receivership.
He has set up a Financial Information Authority to watch over 'sacred business' and he has retired many bishops around the world who had helped cover up thesexual absues committed by their priests.
This was a theologian who, once he was Pope, took on with determination the role of reformer. But in whose daily governance of the Church has never lost sight of his fundamental objective: to bring back Christ/God to the center of the life of the Church and of secularized man.
Having strengthened the Church with his battle against priestly pederasty and financial reforms whose first results we are starting to see, Jospeh Ratzinger is now focused on a new venture: a refelction on the Second Vatican Council 50 years after it opened to animate a Year of Faith and open a new season for Christianity and the Catholic Church.
The Ratzingerian line is increasingly that of transparency, ready if need be, to undertake an internal investigation, as it did to look at the charges made against the Vatican Governatorate by the present Apostolic Nuncio to Washington.
As a cardinal in the Roman Curia, Joseph Ratzinger was never concerned either with intramural intrigue nor with building a power base, and was not concerned about influencing opinion in the Church or outside it.
Once Pope, he was obliged to deal with the countermoves by people who never shared his attitudes, but this has not made him swerve his fundamental aim to live Christianity himself and to communicate this commitment to others. Starting with the younger generations.
In his relationship with young people, he has certainly benefited from his early intense experiences with the young people he guided in his first year as a priest assigned to be a chaplain in various suburban parishes of Munich, and from 1952 to 1977, as a professor of theology at the Freising seminary and four German universities.
Those who were his students at the time recall that he would often eat out with them, and in Tuebingen, some of them bought him a second-hand bike so that he could more easily go to and from the university.
In his first homily as Pope seven years ago
[Address to the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on April 20, 2005], he said: "I will continue our dialogue, dear young people, the future and hope of the Church and of humanity, listening to your expectations in the desire to help you encounter in ever greater depth the living Christ, eternally young".
Of course, he has not lacked for obstacles. The theological thinking and pastoral ministry of Benedict XVI "have been continually exposed to serious misunderstandings.. to criticisms and prejudices" against which It is 'an urgent task' to present the 'true face' of his Magisterium, says Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, in the Preface to his book 'Il mistero del granello di senape' which was to be presented today at Rome's Centro Internazionale.
Cardinal Koch points particularly to 'the profound criticism, often reiterated" that "the Pope has moved backwards and really wants to return the Church to what it was before Vatican II".
On Joseph Ratzinger's experience at Vatican-II, his brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger sheds more light in his book
My brother, the Pope, written with Michael Hesemann.
In his account of meetings held by the German-speaking bishops during the council at the Roman seminary of Santa Maria dell'Anima, one better understands the role Ratzinger played as an expert consultant to the Germanophone bishops. One relives the atmosphere of that extraordinary season for the Church, as well as the clear contrast between the forward-looking Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Frings, and Cardinal Ottaviani, who as the prefect then of what was still called the Holy Office, did all he could to block any reforms.
Joseph Ratzinger, as a theologian in his early 30s, was in effect the ghost writer for Cardinal Frings, who played a leading role among the reformers in Vatican II. Most notably, he wrote for the Cardinal a lecture about the Council delivered by Cardinal Frings in Genoa months before it opened, an address which was widely considered as a virtual theological program for the coming Council.
[In fact, as affirmed in another article I must translate for these anniversary days, John XXIII himself was so impressed by how Frings's lecture captured the objectives he had in mind for Vatican II that he congratulated Frings for it, and the latter disclosed to him that it had been prepared by his young theological consultant.]
Now, half a century later, it is that former consultant who must now preside over the interpretation and deal with the results and the challenges of that Council.
VATICAN INSIDER also found it useful today to resurrect some words of praise for Benedict XVI from Joaquin Navarro-Valls...
What Navarro-Valls wrote about
Benedict XVI in his memoir
by Michelangelo Nasca
Translated from
April 16, 2012
"The English writer G. K. Chesterton said that the miracle of language was that it allowed a man not just to express his own ideas, but also to leave a trace of himself, of his own irrepetible individuality. Obviously, this does not have to do only with writing but with the 'style' of a person, which is revealed by his gestures, his behavior, his life".
This is what Joaquin Navarro-Valls - who was the Vatican spokesman for more than 20 years under John Paul II and for another year under Benedict XVI - wrote in his book 'A passo d'uomo" published in 2009.
Twenty-two years of service (1984-2006) is quite a lot. Then, he decided to step aside. "I am very grateful to the Holy Father (Benedict XVI) who accepted my request. that I have manifested many times, to leave the position of Director of the Vatican Press Office, after so many long years. I am aware that during these years, I received much more than I could give and more than I can even now fully appreciate".
Although Joaquín Navarro-Valls spent less than a year (April 2005-July 2006) serving under Benedict XVI, he immediately appreciated the outstanding human caliber and excellent communicational gifts of the ex-Prefect of the the Doctrine of the Faith.
In his book, Navarro-Valls writes: "For Ratzinger, ideas do not give a face to persons, but rather, persons reveal themselves through their ideas... His actions are elegant and effective because that is the way he thinks."
Without a doubt, he continues, "Ratzinger has that strange and admirable strength of someone who loves to be amazed more than he wants to amaze. And so his attitude is one of a peaceful kindness and, one might say, graciousness. His outlook comes from the detachment and elevation of someone who seeks to look deep into the human heart".
Benedict XVI is also a man of dialog, he adds. "One who can dialog is fearless. He is not affected by the clamor or the silence of the crowd or of contrary opinions. But one who dialogs must know how to dialog, he must know the mechanisms that move opinions and must believe that it is worth pursuing dialog. And that is what Ratzinger resolutely believes".
As Navarro-Vall's own account shows, dialog becomes most effective if it is supported by an information service that is adequate and able to keep up with the rhythms of the Pope, and it is in this sense that the role and support of the Vatican press office is fundamental.
Think of the great events that mark the history of any Pontificate and the mastodon-like work that the Vatican Press Office must face in terms of getting out news bulletins, official statements, diplomatic reports, and dealing with media outlets - and it is evident that even the smallest error or delay in communications can compromise its task.
In all this, one must also consider the friendship and esteem that comes to be established between the Pope and his press director.
"The memories I keep of Joseph Ratzinger," says Navarro-Valls, "end on the day he entered the Sistine Chapel at the start of the Conclave. Our eyes crossed at one point, and that was the last time I saw Joseph Ratzinger. The person I saw just two days later was no longer Cardinal Ratzinger, but a Pope, in his sacred robes. who appeared for the first time was Benedict XVI on the central loggia of St. Peter's."
"At that moment, I understood subconsciously that everything had changed for him. That all his previous life was over - even without disappearing - for always. And I can now understand one of his subsequent statements, 'I, but no longer I'. With his habitually delicate and brilliant discretion, his personal life from that day on receded, to give way to the sacred identity and institutional responsibility of the Papacy. For Benedict XVI, the mystery commenced that every Pope carries in him - or that every Pope is".
I have always admired Navarro-Valls and George Weigel for their ability from Day One not to show the slightest prejudice in public against Benedict XVI by virtue of their intimate association with his predecessor. Their assessment and admiration of Benedict XVI's personal attributes and of the work he is doing has been generally unstinted and kept distinct from their understandable prior loyalties to John Paul II.
That also means that they have never been tempted, at least not in their public statements, to indulge in the usual cheap game of comparing the two Popes as if they were competing poodles in a pet show, as most of their colleagues happily do at the slightest pretext. Of course, Weigel has been critical of some aspects of Caritas in veritate, and of the Pope's failure to meet with dissidents in Cuba. but that's honest and legitimate dissent (though eminently arguable!) on peripheral issues, which is not fundamental dissent nor a personal attack.
Let me add a fourth brief tribute to the Pope, one of the best and most unequivocal that I have read, from another Italian commentator, Angelo Scelzo, who was once undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications under John Paul II...
Seven years of the prophet-Pope
by Angelo Scelzo
Translated from
April 16, 2012
We open a week of major anniversaries for Papa Ratzinger. Today, he turns 85 and becomes the oldest serving Pope in the past 100 years. Three days later, on Thursday the 19th, the seventh anniversary of his election to the Chair of Peter.
The Easter rites are barely behind him, but this sequence of events that inevitably have the figure of Benedict XVI in the center seem almost like a prolongation of the high point in the Church's liturgical year.
The atmosphere of Holy Week particularly made evident an aspect of this Pontificate that has emerged with more and more clarity.
Papa Ratzinger has brought on an unexpected era for the Church - something unprecedented and not easily labelled, which is expressed and manifested through a Pontificate that has been unlike any other in living memory, which nonetheless has not swerved from a natural continuity with what has gone before, especially not with the Pontificate of his predecessor, Blessed John Paul II.
There has been no contradiction, but the fact is that
Benedict XVI's Magisterium has offered unusual viewpoints deriving not from contemporary events but from the Gospel, which are almost explosive whenever he deals with the narrative of Jesus's Paschal mystery, from the drama of his passion and death to the exultation of his Resurrection.
In such a scenario of presenting the strongest themes possible that do not admit of half measures, Pope Benedict has embodied - especially in these days of his double jubilee as a person and as Pope - the essence of the Petrine ministry itself, which can be read in the words he said at the recent Mass of the Lord's Supper in the Lateran Basilica: "We do not announce our private theories and opinions but the faith of the Church of which we are the servants".
A statement that recalls the image he used when he first addressed the world as Pope - 'a simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord' - but which also underscores his total anchorage to a mission that he lives in a very Augustinian sense: "What else is so much mine than I myself, and what else is less mine than I myself?"
Seven years of a Pontificate understood in that sense give a new and more profound sense of that selfless and humble dimension, because it is evident that it is the 'true form of government' of Benedict XVI's Church.
The radicalness itself of Eastertide has projected the words of the Pope to such a vast terrain that renders not just an overview of his Pontificate possible, but the most evident datum of these seven years: how he looks to the future, looking ahead to draw hope, even when one sees "the filthy flood of all the lies and all the disgrace" advancing against the Church.
Even when the Church must do something about "the often tragic situation which the Church finds itself today", which is beset by betrayals even within herself - struck at the heart by her own ministers who have betrayed innocent children, and undermined by the disobedience of those who claim to be blazing new but improbable paths of reform.
The Easter liturgies are not merely evocative in these days of double jubilation for the Pope. Their powerful and mystic sacredness have helped to disclose more of the personality of this Pope who, in the difficult bench test posed by the Paschal Triduum of the passion, death and Resurrection of Christ, urges this search for truth that is much more than just his passion as a theologian, but the main road along which to lead the Church in its encounter with the world.
The Triduum days and Easter were a time in which we might say that Benedict XVI recapitulated his entire Pontificate - not as a compilation of acts, however great and of major importance, but in images of unexpected scenarios - and of amazement that gradually gives way to acceptance; of the gentleness and kindness with which he sets aside false and exhausted stereotypes; of the warm affection of the faithful; of moral rigor and firmness that is always tempered by mercy.
And above all, by his way of speaking about God to a world which needs to know him, but that even with the urging of a Pastor who does not hesitate to invoke his name, is nonetheless uneasy about seeking Him.
And in these jubilee days, how can we not think of Vatican-II as among the strong points of this Pontificate? These days, it is more on our minds not just because it will be 50 years since it opened, but also because with the Year of Faith that Benedict XVI has decreed to mark that anniversary, it will shine forth once again as a springtime for the Church.
And the travels of a Pope who despite his age has just completed his 23rd apostolic visit abroad, and who will be going to Lebanon later this year.
Much has been written and talked about the 'surprises' from Benedict XVI.
After seven years, it is time to elevate the discourse. It is time to speak about a prophet for our time, who has become that authentic sign of contradiction that the Gospels speak about.
In truly unexpected ways, through a path that has been often difficult and rough, he has managed to shake the Church into new life with his gentleness and to challenge the world with the truth which makes us humble and free.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2012 12:13]