BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

It turns out there is quite a crop of tributes to B16 on his 90th birthday. I will start out with those that are already in English.

One of the best, for its specific focus, comes from a Cameroonian priest who is pursuing a doctorate in theology at Boston College (not what you might call
a bastion of Catholic orthodoxy but rather of heterodoxy) while teaching at the college's Woods School. Judging from his essay of appreciation for Benedict XVI,
however, the priest keeps his own counsel, regardless of his current milieu...

One expects more tributes as we move on from the Emeritus Pope's milestone birthday to the 12th anniversary on April 19 of his election to the Chair of Peter...

Father Benedict: Friend of Jesus Christ
by FR. MAURICE ASHLEY AGBAW-EBAI

April 17, 2017

On April 18, 2005, two days after he had just celebrated his 78th birthday, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger delivered the homily Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice to the College of Cardinals gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome.

As Dean of the College of Cardinals, it was Ratzinger’s responsibility to highlight to his brother cardinals some spiritual yardsticks that could guide their discernment as they entered into conclave to elect Peter’s Successor.

While the buzz word of Ratzinger’s masterful homily became his denunciation of what he styled the “dictatorship of relativism,” the central nexus of Ratzinger’s homily, I believe, lay elsewhere.

He was not a prophet of doom unleashing canons of denunciation on culture, but a lover who was eager to share the love of his life, Jesus Christ, because he was convinced that encountering Jesus of Nazareth was a more liberating and joyful experience than atheistic secularism could offer. In other words, the central nexus of Ratzinger’s homily was an invitation to a friendship with Jesus Christ.

Commenting on the Gospel text from John, “I no longer speak of you as slaves…. Instead, I call you friends” (Jn 15: 15) [a text he often quotes in relation to the priesthood and his own ordination back in 1951], Ratzinger identifies two essential qualities regarding friendship with Jesus Christ:

Firstly, there are no secrets between friends, evidenced by Christ entrusting the body of his Church into the hands of weak mortals, in this context, those charged with the solemn responsibility of electing the Bishop of Rome.

Christ has made known to them the knowledge of God. He has made known to them everything he has learnt from his Father. Above all, he has entrusted the mysteries, the sacramental economy into their hands. We speak in his name, “This is my Body”; “I absolve you from your sins,” etc.

Because the Lord has made us his friends, we have been invited into his power, into his relationship with the Father, so that from this encounter and intimacy, we become active agents of bringing about God’s liberating love to our world that is so much in need of God’s love, and yet often unconscious of this need.

The second reading that Ratzinger gives to friendship with Jesus is the communion of wills: idem velle — idem nolle, same likes, same dislikes: “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (Jn 15: 14).

To be a friend of Jesus is to allow one’s discernment and consciousness to be shaped by Jesus Christ. It is to love what Jesus loves. It is to strive to live daily God’s will. I cannot be a friend of Jesus if my choices, preferences and likes contradict the manifest and revealed will of Jesus.

For Ratzinger therefore, I am a friend of Jesus if I am completely open and transparent with Jesus, and daily seek to live a Christ-like life.

As Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger developed this theme of friendship with Jesus Christ especially in his homilies at priestly ordinations in which he presided as Bishop of Rome. To be a friend of Jesus Christ invites one into a greater intimacy of knowledge and communion, for friendship demands intimacy and knowledge.

Father Benedict’s new ministry of prayer on behalf of the whole Church certainly mirrors to us his intimacy with Jesus of Nazareth, the love of Benedict’s life.

To be a friend of Jesus Christ as seen in the life of Benedict XVI, clearly has an ecclesial dimension. How could it be otherwise in Joseph Ratzinger! As Benedict himself said in his Chrism Mass Homily in 2008, “being friends with Jesus is par excellence always friendship with his followers. We can be friends of Jesus only in communion with the whole Christ, with the Head and with the Body; in the vigorous vine of the Church to which the Lord gives life.”

Friendship with Jesus Christ is friendship with the Church of Jesus Christ, because owing to the intrinsic link between the Church and Christ, the community of the Church is not an accidental product of time that could perhaps have emerged in its concreteness in a later time that was unrelated to Christ.

Friendship with Jesus Christ likewise implies modelling one’s life after the hypostatic union of Christ, not primarily in terms of the union between Jesus’s humanity and divinity as taught by Council of Ephesus in 431, but in the sense of the identification of mission and person in Jesus of Nazareth.

In Jesus, person and mission coincide, to the extent that to be a friend of Christ is to radically orient one’s life in a pragmatic, existential manner that is caught up in the never completely discernable transcendence that defines and shapes the openness with God, with Christ as the model of mission and person.

In large part, Benedict’s deep sense of the symbolic, of a 'usable' anthropology, is built on the conviction that his life is simply a standing for Another, a “representative” of Another, a being-in-reference to Another, a symbolic intercommunication meant to keep the window of the world open to the refreshing and life-giving breath of God.

Because Benedict believes that mission cannot be severed from person, what mattered was not his own person as Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger. He responded to the call of the Lord as a priest, and the consequence of that response was to cease to live for himself.

Like his mentor, Augustine of Hippo, Benedict’s fruitful priestly life was a search for the face of his friend, Jesus Christ, as he himself wrote in the introduction into his trilogy on Jesus – a classic that will be with the Church for ages to come.

And still following Augustine, Benedict, as is evident from his Last Testament, found himself, in finding Jesus. It became clear to this Son of Bavaria, with the passage of time, that he was not the only one searching, but Jesus was searching for him as well, even antecedent to Benedict’s conscious search for the Lord.

Benedict discerned the a priori love that Jesus has for him [as he does for each of us], a realization that led him to see love as the very being of God.

With Augustine, his theological and spiritual master, Benedict discerned his life as a gift of love, and he was certain that God’s love would never abandon him, since God had fashioned everything in measure, weight, and number (Wis 11:20).

The search for God, for the face of the love of his life, became for Joseph Ratzinger, the bedrock of genuine anthropology. Christology, as a systematic treatment of the person and work of Jesus, was not his intention, as Benedict forcefully wrote in the foreword to the second volume of his trilogy on Jesus.

The reason was simple: Christology, notwithstanding the gains made by the historical-critical method, is often subjected to a sterile demythologization and conceptualization-sounding verbalism in which Jesus of Nazareth becomes someone left in the past, perhaps in stacks of university libraries.

Benedict’s sole desire was not a systematization of Jesus, but to make his friend known and loved, because he had arrived at the certainty that the brokenness that was plaguing the lives of so many post-modern men and women was a desperate cry for help that could only be met by the loving encounter with Jesus of Nazareth.

To know Jesus of Nazareth was to enter into the open future of God that is transformative of the present. It was not mere coincidence that when Benedict visited his homeland, his theme for his apostolic visit to Germany was: Where there is God, there is a Future! The subtle implication could not be ignored. Where there is no God, perhaps there is no future!

When Joseph Ratzinger found himself in finding Jesus of Nazareth what did he see? We can dare a response to this question by looking into his spiritual memoirs, his trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth, which should be seen as the unmistakable public testament of Ratzinger’s long friendship with Jesus.

Clearly, in the evening of his earthly life, Ratzinger, like the Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel, felt the greatest good he could do for the world was to invite the village of the world to come to the well of Jesus and drink, so that we will never be thirsty again.

The alternative is to settle for the mediocre, the minimal, and lesser waters away from Christ; that is, the shallow waters of egoism whereby life is lived for the narrow vision of the self.

Standing by Jacob’s well, we suddenly realize that it is not the well that is deep nor us having no cistern to draw from the well. The real well is Jesus, and the water he gives to quench our thirst is the friendship with him. Little wonder that the Samaritans begged him to stay longer in their town!

To get a better appreciation of what Joseph Ratzinger’s life-long search had found, we must turn to the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth. In the foreword, Ratzinger writes that it is “in this second volume do we encounter the decisive sayings and events of Jesus’ life (…) I hope that I have been granted an insight into the figure of our Lord that can be helpful to all readers who seek to encounter Jesus and to believe in him.”

For a man who has always read into the fact that his birth took place on Holy Saturday, a symbolic sign of the Church that though longing for the light and hope of the Risen Lord, is not yet there, Easter for Benedict is the real defining moment of his quest for his friend, Jesus of Nazareth. His friend is the Risen One! This is the quintessential Ratzingerian characterization of Jesus of Nazareth.

Why? Because hope in the present and for the future is borne from the Risen One, and without hope, the human being has nothing to live for, and life becomes a meaningless, boring routine. The Risen One is the central theological metaphor for Joseph Ratzinger because it is about hope and the future that informs, humanizes and divinizes the present.

This is significant because Joseph Ratzinger is a thorough Augustinian who believes in a broken human nature, a broken world, in which the battle between the two loves of the City of God and the City of men and women is a tangible, unending reality.

With the eyes of Easter, Ratzinger is able to diagnose the cure for the malady of what Pascal trenchantly called diversion and indifference, that are not only eroding the humanity of men and women, but also depriving us of the meaning and joy of life, to the extent that men and women now live with little or no sense of the future.

As we mark the ninetieth year of Father Benedict’s birth that begins on Easter Sunday, in gratitude to God for the unique gift of this man, this priest, this bishop, this genius of a mind, this unassuming, meek and shy friend of Jesus Christ, it is important to still pay attention to what this friend of Jesus Christ is telling us about his friend:

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“Jesus’s Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming, but lies beyond it—a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence—an “evolutionary leap.”

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In Jesus’s Resurrection, a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind. Christ’s Resurrection is either a universal event, or it is nothing (1 Cor. 15:16, 20).

And only if we understand it as a universal event, as the opening of a new dimension of human existence, are we on the way toward any kind of correct understanding of the New Testament Resurrection testimony.

Jesus hdid not -re-enter' normal human life like Lazarus and the others whom Jesus raised from the dead. “He has entered upon a different life, a new life — he has entered the vast breadth of God himself, and it is from there that he reveals himself to his followers.”

Finally, we now know what Benedict found in finding Jesus: A “new kind of life”; a vast “breadth of God himself”! Jesus has not kept this “new life” from his friend Ratzinger precisely because there are no secrets between friends, and Ratzinger, by submitting his will to Jesus, entered into the same likes and dislikes of his friend, Jesus the Nazarene.

With immense gratitude and uplifted hearts, we thank you, Father Benedict, for your eloquent communication of this “new kind of life” to us. Vergelt’s Gott, Father Benedict!

An earlier tribute in CRISIS magazine was the ff essay from a professor of theology at the Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and author of a number of books, including Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (2012) and The Beggar's Banquet . His most recent book is Witness to Wonder: The World of Catholic Sacrament. He resides in Steubenville, Ohio, with his wife and ten children.

A Pope turns ninety
by REGIS MARTIN

April 12, 2017

In the long march of the Church’s history, stretching all the way back to a certain failed fisherman called Peter — whom Christ himself caught with the bait of eternal life —few occupants of the papal chair have evinced as lofty a level of erudition, existing in happy combination with ardent and uncomplicated piety, as the Bavarian Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Who, God willing, turns ninety on April 16, this Easter Sunday.

Although he was not born on the feast of Easter, but the day before, the Vigil of the Lord’s Resurrection, which sacred tradition speaks of as the Mystery of Holy Saturday, it remains central to his life. And when he was at once baptized with water freshly blessed for the great feast, it left an impression.

In fact, it is a point he makes much of in Milestones, which is a moving account of his life from 1927, when he came into this world, until 1977, when he became Archbishop of Munich. Chosen on the strength of a single book, Introduction To Christianity, which grew out of lectures delivered at Tubingen in 1967, it evidently so captivated the then Pope Paul VI that he had him elevated straightaway into the episcopacy. [I do not think that it was just that one book that made Paul VI pluck Joseph Ratzinger from his academic career, but the overall impression he had made as a theologian who was named to the International Theological Commission under the CDF when it was first established in 1967.]

After that, the scramble to the top was swift and sure. Only he was never one to scramble.

But getting back to the timing of his birth, he believed it to have been the result of divine Providence that, coming into the world when he did, he should then have been the first to be baptized. The experience filled him, he said, “with thanksgiving for having had my life immersed in this way in the Easter mystery.”

Putting it a little differently, we might say that given the pilgrim shape of the soul, of an existence lived always on the way, forever in transit, this sudden and dramatic juxtaposition of 'already and not yet' struck him as wonderfully “fitting,” since it left him in a state of “still awaiting Easter … not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust.”

What can that mean for the rest of us but that we need constantly to be in a state of readiness before the door of Easter, waiting expectantly for it to swing open, yet not quite able to cross the threshold. The pivotal moment, then, becomes the event of baptism, which he would years later describe, in an arresting formulation, as nothing less than “the final mutation in the evolution of the human species.”

He has certainly been living that tension a very long time. Meanwhile, the record of his achievements, which are vast, varied, and undeniable, testifies to an amazing and productive life. But what remains especially instructive about that life, one crowded with accomplishment, is the fact that he has spent it in a constant state of trust, of overarching hope in the Lord.

And why shouldn’t his life have been stepped in such trust? Benedict is, after all, a Christian, a believer, which means someone who carries within him the adamantine conviction that Another accompanies him every step of the way. Perhaps this is why the virtue of hope figures with the same striking prominence in his writings as it does in his life.

“The dark door of time, of the future,” he reminds us in Spe Salvi, that most beautiful of encyclicals [AGREE! AGREE! AGREE!], undertaken to unearth the meaning of the theological virtue revealed as Hope, “has been thrown open.” And in showing us the face of Christ, we are thus given a saving glimpse of Someone to whom we may entrust everything, including especially our brokenness and sin.

But Christ is not merely a face to be seen, as though salvation were nothing more than a snapshot. There is God’s outstretched hand as well, which we are free to grab hold of because it is the hand of Jesus who, first grasping hold of my own hand, enables the two of us to move together through the dark valley.

Here we see, he tells us in a profound and telling passage from Introduction To Christianity, “the most fundamental feature of faith … namely, its personal character:

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Christian faith is more than the option in favor of a spiritual ground to the world; its central formula is not ‘I believe in something,’ but ‘I believe in Thee.’ It is the encounter with the human being Jesus, and in this encounter it experiences the meaning of the world as a person.

The life of a believer, in other words, is that of someone who stands on the secure ground of God alone, who thereby “lives on the discovery that not only is there such a thing as objective meaning, but that this meaning knows me and loves me, I can entrust myself to it like the child that knows all its questions answered in the ‘You’ of its mother.”

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For Benedict, then, and for the Church he no longer leads but continues surely to inspire and to pray for, Christ is “the true shepherd … who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me.”

This is because Christ, having fallen himself into the hellish depths of that strangest of mysteries found at the center of the creed (on which day he, the future pope, was born), is uniquely placed to vanquish all the darkness that surrounds and oppresses us, since he himself already assumed it out of an incomprehensible depth of love. Neither death nor the devil, therefore, need hold us in fear any more.

And who better than Mary, he asks at the very end of Spe Salvi, to help blaze that trail home to God? “Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her ‘yes’ she opened the door of our world to God himself….”

And if the future belongs to those who show up, what better company to have on a journey than one who, having already arrived herself, can, like a good mother, nudge the rest of us across the same finish line?

“When you hastened with holy joy across the mountains of Judea to see your cousin Elizabeth,” he writes, citing the great Mystery of the Visitation, “you became the image of the Church to come, which carries the hope of the world in her womb across the mountains of history.”

This is heady stuff. And it is but a single stone in the great mosaic of his work, that will soon belong to the ages. And, like everything else he thought and wrote about, it remains most wonderfully evocative of the great themes on which his life turns.

What a towering presence he has been for the Catholic world all these years! Not a day goes by that I do not thank God for this holy and learned man. May God reward him greatly for the many good things he has done for Christ, the Church, and for the world he came to save.

Benedict XVI has always been an Easter child
By Father Raymond J. de Souza

April 16, 2017

Easter Sunday is the 90th birthday of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Born on April 16, 1927, he was a Holy Saturday baby, born the day that God is dead, the day of the tomb.

Joseph Ratzinger has lived his long life in a liturgical key, and it began as a newborn. In 1927 — before the reform of Holy Week by the Venerable Pius XII — the Easter vigil was celebrated in the morning of Holy Saturday. So little Joseph was taken to the church the same morning of his birth and baptized with the newly blessed Easter water. Born on the day of the dead God, he was reborn by water and the spirit into the new life of the Risen Jesus.

“Holy Saturday: the day God was buried; is not this the day we are living now, and formidably so?” wrote Ratzinger in one of his hundreds of incomparable biblical meditations. “Did not our century mark the start of one long Holy Saturday, the day God was absent, when even the hearts of the disciples were plunged into an icy chasm that grows wider and wider? And thus, filled with shame and anguish, they set out to go home; dark-spirited and annihilated in their desperation they head for Emmaus — without realizing that he whom they believed to be dead is in their midst.”

Ratzinger was born on the threshold of Germany plunging into that icy chasm. But the God who had been relegated to a historical curiosity by so many of Germany’s most gifted biblical scholars, the God whom Ratzinger’s countryman Nietzsche declared dead, the God of the children of Israel whom the Nazis were determined to exterminate — this God remained in their midst. God was in the midst of the Bavarian piety that nourished Ratzinger as a boy; God indeed had descended into the hell of Germany’s Holy Saturday.

Joseph Ratzinger, emerging from the horrors of World War II, devoted himself to the great question of God. Could he be known? Where could man find him? If he was not dead, was he a tyrant against whom we had to rebel? Or was he a Father who sent his Son to be our friend?

His project did not remain a purely speculative one, for he remain convinced that God of speculative theology did not remain only such. He revealed himself and came to encounter us, above all in the two privileged places of revelation — the sacred Scriptures and the holy Mass. In defense of the reliability of the Scriptures and the divine action in the liturgy, Ratzinger waged a decades-long battle against the prevailing trends of ecclesial life. Such was his brilliance, though, that even when his positions were in a minority, they demanded respect. In time, with the prominence he gained as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then as pope, his writings became massively influential.

It is plausible to imagine that 60 years hence, on the 150th anniversary of his birth, Biblical study of the Gospels will have been completely transformed by his trilogy Jesus of Nazareth. The celebration of the Holy Mass ad orientem will again be the norm. In 2077, Benedict will be recognized as a decisive turning point.

All pastors have to answer to God for their ministry. Benedict will have to answer for his decision to relinquish it, the utter innovation of a papal abdication absent a crisis. The Holy Spirit had heretofore never prompted the successor of Peter to do that, and it is not evident the Holy Spirit prompted it now. The public arguments offered for the abdication by Benedict are unconvincing; the results of the abdication are destabilizing.

Yet the man himself is serene as he awaits judgment by the Lord of history. He saw firsthand St. John Paul refuse to come down from the cross and admired that heroic witness. But he was convinced that God was calling him to a different path, “to climb the mountain ... to devote myself even more to prayer and meditation.”
The man who knows the great tradition better than anyone of his generation felt free to depart from it. Perhaps he saw farther than others into God’s providence.

The depth and breadth of the Ratzinger vision was manifest in an Easter meditation he published decades ago that focused on the binding of Isaac, who, as he ascends Mount Moriah, is told by Abraham that “God will provide” a lamb for the sacrifice. Isaac then realizes that he himself is that lamb and his own father is preparing to sacrifice him.

“The name Isaac contains the root ‘laughter,’” wrote Ratzinger. “And indeed, had he not grounds for laughter when the tension of mortal fear suddenly disappeared at the sight of the trapped ram, which solved the riddle? Did he not have cause to laugh when the sad and gruesome drama — the ascent of the mountain, his father binding him — suddenly had an almost comic conclusion, yet one that brought liberty and redemption? This was a moment in which it was shown that the history of the world is not a tragedy, the inescapable tragedy of opposing forces, but ‘divine comedy.’ The man who thought he had breathed his last was able to laugh.”

Joseph Ratzinger, who saw his share of tragedy in the world and betrayal in the Church, has lived long years alongside the “mortal fear” of totalitarian violence and a dying Church in his native Europe.

History may be tragedy, even a farce. But salvation history is a comedy. And Benedict has never ceased hearing — in the sacred word and in sacred music — the laughter. He has always been an Easter baby.

In the days leading up to Benedict XVI's 90th birthday, Mons. Georg Gaenswein gave at least three major interviews - to La Repubblica, Il Messaggero and
EWTN-Germany. I was devastated by the one with Repubblica in which he said that B16 was not getting into the AL controversy because 'it is something
that is very remote from him'. Even if it was merely GG's unfortunate way of expressing himself, the sense of the statement is so unlike Joseph Ratzinger,
for whom essential questions of faith and truth, and the sacraments, all of which are challenged in AL, cannot possibly be considered 'very remote from him'.
I was nonetheless going to translate both Italian interviews.

Here is CNA-EWTN’s English account of a lengthy interview which contains many details about GG’s relationship with Joseph Ratzinger not disclosed
before, but more importantly, it contains nothing 'damaging' to the image of JR-B16 that we always had before the so-called 'nu-Benedict' projected by
a number of Gaenswein's statements in the past two years, not to mention the Emeritus Pope's own words about his successor at the start of his 'Last
Conversations' with Peter Seewald...

A glimpse into the joy-filled life
of Benedict XVI at 90
By Elise Harris and Martin Rothweiler




Vatican City, Apr 16, 2017 (CNA/EWTN News).- In a lengthy interview with EWTN's German television branch, Benedict XVI's closest aide describes how the retired pontiff is doing as he turns the milestone age of 90, giving a rare look into what life is like for the Pope Emeritus.

Archbishop Gänswein has been Benedict's personal secretary since 2003, while the latter was still Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He has remained close at Benedict's side throughout his papacy, resignation and his life of retirement.

In anticipation of Benedict XVI's 90th birthday, which this year falls on Easter Sunday, April 16, Gänswein gave a lengthy interview to EWTN.TV in German, sharing insights into how the Pope Emeritus plans to celebrate his birthday and highlights and personal memories of his pontificate.

Among other things, the archbishop recalls how Benedict handled his election, the frequently negative media-firestorm that enveloped much of his pontificate, his hope for what people take from his papacy as well as how he spends his days in retirement.

The interview was conducted by the head of EWTN.TV Martin Rothweiler, and translated from the original German by EWTN’s Silvia Kritzenberger:

The question everyone's interested in is, of course: How is Pope Benedict? The Psalm says: “Our lives last seventy years or, if we are strong, eighty years.” That happens to be psalm 90. And now on the 16th of April, Pope Benedict will celebrate his 90th birthday! How is he?
Yes, indeed, on Easter Sunday he will turn 90! Considering his age, he is remarkably well. He is also in good spirits, very clear in his head and still has a good sense of humor. What bothers him are his legs, so he uses a walker for help, and he gets along very well. And this walker guarantees him freedom of movement and autonomy. So, for a 90-year old, he is doing pretty well – even though, from time to time, he complains of this or that minor ailment.

How will he celebrate his birthday?
On Easter Sunday, priority will of course be given to liturgy. On Easter Monday, in the afternoon, we will hold a small celebration. He wanted something not too exhausting, appropriate to his strengths. He didn't want to have a big celebration. That was never an option for him. A small delegation from Bavaria will come, the Mountain troops will come... The Bavarian Prime Minister will come to the monastery, and there we will hold a small birthday party in true Bavarian style!

Have you any idea if Pope Francis will come to see him?
That is quite likely. He will surely do so. [In fact, the reigning pope made his duty visit on Holy Wednesday, to greet the emeritus both for Easter and for his birthday.]

No one knows Pope Benedict better than you – apart from his brother Georg Ratzinger. How did you get to know Pope Benedict?
Actually, through one of his books. Back in the day, when I was just about to finish gymnasium [secondary school], my parish priest gave me Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity, urging me: “You absolutely have to read this! That's the future!” I said: “Okay, but have you read it?” “No,” he replied, “but you have to read it!” And I did. Later, when I started to study theology in Freiburg, and then in Rome, and then again back in Freiburg, I had practically read everything the then-professor and cardinal had written. But it was only 21, or maybe 22 years ago, that I finally met him in person here in Rome, when I was asked to become a collaborator of the Roman Curia … More concretely, I met him in the Teutonic College, that is, in the chapel, where Cardinal Ratzinger used to celebrate Mass for the German pilgrims every Thursday, joining us for breakfast. That was how the first personal contact with Cardinal Ratzinger came about, and since then we never lost that contact.

At some point, he decided to call you to his side. Why did his choice fall on you?
Well, you must know that I didn't come directly to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; my first employment was at the Congregation for Divine Worship. But when, in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a German priest left after a certain period of time in order to go back to Germany, Ratzinger asked me to come.

“I think you are suitable for the post, and I would like you to come,” he said to me. “If you agree, I would like to speak with the respective authorities.” And he did. That was how it came about that, in 1996, I joined the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post I held until 2003. Afterwards, he made me his Personal Secretary – which I still am, to this day.

What was your first impression of him? What did you think when he called you to work closely with him?
My first thought was: Have I done something wrong? Don't I have a clean record? So I examined my conscience, but my conscience was clear. And then he said: “No, it is something that concerns your future. Something I think might be a good task for you. Consider it carefully!” Of course, I was very pleased that he thought I was capable of working in his entourage. It is indeed a very demanding task, one that requires all your strength.

Which personality traits and characteristics did you discover in him?
The same I had already discovered in his writings: a sharp intellect, clear diction. And then, in his personal relations, a great clemency, quite the contrary of what he has always been associated with and still is, of what has always been said about him, when he was described as a “Panzerkardinal” [as though he was] someone rough – which he is not.

On the contrary, he is very confident when dealing with others, but also when he has to deal with problems, when he has to solve problems, and, above all, in the presentation of the faith, the defense of the faith. But what moved me most, was to see how this man managed to proclaim our faith with simple, but profound words, against all odds and despite all hostilities.

What were the main issues on his agenda when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith?
When I joined the Congregation, he was dealing with the encyclical letter Fides et Ratio, and then with Dominus Jesus, documents... Later, of course, it was also about religious dialogue – a subject he revisited and deepened after he'd become Pope. And then the big issue of faith and reason. A whole chain of subjects, so to say, I could witness in person. And it was all highly interesting, and a great challenge, too.

It was Pope John Paul II who nominated Cardinal Ratzinger Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. What kind of relationship did they have? What kind of relationship did Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger, have with the Pope who was, as we now know, a holy man?
Cardinal Ratzinger, that is to say, Pope Benedict, contributed a relatively long essay to beautiful little book that was published on the occasion of the canonization of John Paul II. An essay, in which he describes his relationship with St. John Paul II – after all, they had worked closely together for 23 years – and the great admiration he has for him. He spoke of him very often.

It is of course a great gift, an immense grace, to work for so long, and so intensely, side by side with a man like John Paul II, facing also many a storm together! And the then Cardinal Ratzinger had to take many blows for John Paul II, since the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clearly cannot be everybody's darling: He has to offer his back, so that he can take the blows that are actually meant for the Pope.

How strong was his influence on the pontificate of John Paul II?
I am convinced of the fact that the pontificate of John Paul II was strongly influenced and supported not only by the person of the then Prefect of the Congregation of Faith, but also by his thoughts and his actions.

Pope Benedict once said that he had learned and understood much of John Paul II when he watched him celebrate Mass; when he saw how he prayed, how very united he was with God, far beyond his philosophical and mental capacities. What do you think when you watch Pope Benedict celebrate Mass, when you might be present while he is praying?
In fact, that is something I see every day, but especially since the moment I became secretary to Pope Benedict. Before, I was already his secretary, but we didn’t live together. It did happen that we celebrated Mass together, of course. But from the very moment of his election, it was no longer just a work communion, but also a communion of life. And the daily Mass has become part of this life, then and today.

It is moving to watch Pope Benedict during Mass simply abandon himself to what is happening, even now, in his advanced age, with all the physical handicaps that come with it; to see how intensely he enters the depths of prayer, but also afterwards, during the thanksgiving in front of the tabernacle, in front of the Most Blessed Sacrament. As far as I am concerned, it makes me enter the depths of prayer. That is highly motivating, and I am very thankful that I was given the chance to have an experience like this.

2005 is the year that marked the end of the long and public suffering and death of John Paul II. How does Pope Benedict XVI remember this moment today? After all, with his resignation, he has chosen to let his own pontificate end in a different way...How does he remember the suffering and the death of John Paul II?
I remember very clearly what he said to me when he made me his secretary. He said: “We two are interim arrangements. I will soon retire, and you will accompany me until that moment comes.” That was in 2003...and then came 2005. The interim arrangement has continued...

[Before that], he was really looking forward to finally time to finish writing his book about Jesus. But then things turned out differently. Though I think that after the death of Pope John Paul II he was hoping that the new Pope would let him take his leave, entering his well-deserved retirement. But once again, things turned out differently: he became Pope himself, and the Lord took him up on his promise once again. He had plans, but there was another who had different plans for him.

Did he expect – or fear – that in any way?
He certainly did not expect it – but, at a certain point, he might have feared it. In this context, I always remember his first press conference (as Pope), where he described the 19th of April, the day of his election when, in the late afternoon, the ballot was so clear that it became obvious that he would be elected. Well, the image he used, the one of the guillotine, was a very strong one, and full of tension.

And later, in Munich, referring to the image of the bear of St. Corbinian, he said that the bear was actually supposed to accompany the then-bishop Corbinian to Rome, and then return to where he had come from, whereas he, unlike the bear in the legend, couldn't go back, but has remained in Rome to this very day.

How was your first encounter, after he had become Pope? What did he say to you?
We had our first encounter in the Sistine Chapel, right under the Last Judgement. The cardinals had approached him and sworn obedience to him. And since I had been allowed to be present at the Conclave – Ratzinger, being the Dean of Cardinals, had the right to take a priest with him, and his choice fell on me – I was the last in the queue approaching the new Pope...

I remember it so well…I can still see him, for the first time all dressed in white: white pileolus, white cassock, white hair – and all white in the face! Practically a small cloud of white...He sat there, and in this moment I promised the Holy Father my unconditional availability, that I would always gladly do whatever he might ask of me; that he would always be able to count on me, that I would back him, and that I would gladly do so.

What were the joys of this pontificate? Usually, the burden of the Petrine ministry is what first comes to mind. But are there also moments, events, when you could feel the joy Pope Benedict experienced in carrying out his ministry?
There were, without any doubt, moments in which he felt utter joy, and manifested it. I think, for example, of various encounters, not only during his travels. Encounters with the Successor of Peter are always special encounters; even here, during the General Audiences or the Private Audiences – and, in another, very special way, when he acts as officiant, that is, during the celebration of the Holy Mass or other liturgical celebrations. There were indeed moments full of joy, fulfilled with joy. And afterwards, he never failed to remark on it. It made him really happy.

Are there any events you remember particularly well, especially in connection with Pope Benedict’s visits to Germany, which we all remember vividly, for example the first World Youth Day?
Yes, well, the first encounter hadn't been brought about by Pope Benedict himself, but by John Paul II. And so, in 2005, as we all know, it was Benedict who had to travel to Cologne. It was surely something great, something really moving. It was the first time in his life he met such an immense crowd of young people, who were all waiting for him! How would it go? Would the ice break, would the ice melt? Or will it take some time? And how would we all get along? But there was no ice at all! It simply worked, right from the start! And I think, he himself was more surprised by it than the young people he met.

What are the key messages of his Pontificate? His first encyclical letter was Deus Caritas est, “God Is Love.” The second one was dedicated to hope; his third encyclical, the one on faith, was passed on to his successor who completed it. Don't you think that especially Deus Caritas est, so full of tenderness and poetic language, was something many didn't expect?
Yes, one has to say, he published three encyclical letters. We must not omit Caritas in veritate, which is very important. In fact, the one about the third theological virtue, faith, fides, Lumen fidei, was then published under his successor. But these four encyclicals clearly contain a fundamental message that has moved him his whole life long; a message he wanted to bequeath to men, to the Church.

Another constant of Pope Benedict is a very important word, a very important element: joy, la gioia, in Italian. He always spoke of the joy of faith, not of the burden, the hardship, the weight of faith, but of the joy that comes with it. And he said that this joy is an important fruit of faith – and also the one thing that gives men wings; that this is how faith gives human life wings: wings which, otherwise without faith, man would never have.

Another important thing for him is – obviously – liturgy, that is to say the direct encounter with God. Liturgy does not represent something theatrical – it means to be called into a relationship with the living God. And then, in theology, we have the person of Jesus Christ: not a historical “something,” a historical person long lost in the past. No, through the scriptures and liturgy, Jesus Christ comes into this world, here and now, and above all: he also comes into my own life. These are the pearls Pope Benedict has bestowed upon us. And we should treat these pearls very carefully, like precious jewelry.

This joy of faith is something Benedict never lost, despite often even heavy media criticism. He never really was the media's darling, at least not as far as the German media are concerned. How did he account for that?
Well, I have to say, to me that is still a mystery. Whoever defends the truth of faith – to say it with Saint Paul – be it convenient or not, cannot always trigger joy. That is clear. Some essential things just aren't for sale, and then there's always a hail of criticism. But he has never answered to provocation, nor let himself be intimidated by criticism. Wherever the substance of the faith is at stake, he had no doubts, and always reacted explicitly, without any inner conflict whatsoever. [But not about Amoris laetitia, or any other violations of the faith made by his successor???]

On other points, I have to say, there was a mixture of incomprehension, and also aggression, aggressiveness, that became like a clustered ball that consistently hit at the person of the Pope. The incomprehension of many, and especially the media, is still a mystery to me, something I have to take note of, but cannot sort out. I simply have no answer to it. [The simple obvious answer us that they disagree with his core beliefs, as they have always disapproved of Catholicism and the Church. A disagreement and disapproval that has been consistently expressed over the decades through hostility and aggression.]

: Pope Benedict was never shy about talking to journalists. In the introduction you wrote to the book Über den Wolken mit Papst Benedikt XVI(Above the Clouds with Pope Benedict XVI), published to mark his 90th birthday – above the clouds, because it contains interviews often given during Papal flights – you state that these conversations reveal his particular cordiality, his often not understood or underestimated humanity...
Pope Benedict has never shunned personal contact with the media, with journalists. And one great gift was that everything he says is well-worded, ready for printing. He was never shy about answering questions, even questions that were embarrassing – well, not embarrassing, but difficult. And that made it even more incomprehensible that it was exactly from the media that the arrows came, where the fire was set – and for no clear reason at all. He, too, took notice of it.

Of course, there were also things which offended, hurt him. Especially when it was clear to see that there was no reason at all, when you couldn't help asking yourself: why this snappish remark, this acrimonious presentation? Things like that would hurt anyone, that's only normal.

But, on the other side, we also know that our true measure is not the applause we get; our measure is inner righteousness, the example of the Gospel. That thought has always comforted him; it was the line of reasoning he has always pursued, until the end.

But was he also aware of the value of the media in the process of evangelization? After all, he has awarded the Medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice to Mother Angelica, founder of our television network, which means he must really appreciate her! How did he judge the role of the media in the concrete work of evangelization?
The media are an important means; a means that will become ever more important, especially in our time. He has never failed to recognize the value of the media, of the work done by the media and those who are behind it. Because media work is done by people, not by “something.” Behind every camera, every written word, every book, there is a person, there are people he appreciated, whose work he appreciated, regardless of what sometimes had been used or said against him.

One cannot think of Pope Benedict without rekindling the memory of his resignation. That is not about to change, and will continue to be a subject that stirs people's interest. So I would like to ask you again: Did you see it coming? Was it clear to him that he would go down that road one day?
Well, as far as I'm concerned, I didn't see it coming. Since when he started to nurture this thought, is something I don't know. The only thing I know is that he told me about it when the decision was already made. But I definitely didn't see it coming – and that made the shock for me even greater.

In his latest memoirs – I refer to the interview-book Last conversations with Peter Seewald – Benedict XVI makes it very clear that external pressure or adversities would never have made him resign. So this cannot have been the case…
That's right.
So this is the final word that puts an end to the discussion on possible motives...
In another book – the penultimate project carried out with Peter Seewald in Castel Gandolfo – he had already answered the question whether or not a Pope could resign, in the affirmative. I don't know how far he had, already then, considered resignation, stepping back from his office, as an option for himself.

When you start to have thoughts like that, you do it for a reason. And he has named these reasons very openly…and very honestly, too, one has to say: the waning of his forces, spiritual and physical. The Church needs a strong navigator, and he didn't have the feeling that he could be that strong navigator any more. That's why he wanted to put the faculty bestowed upon him by Jesus back into His hands, so that the College of Cardinals could elect his successor. So obviously, the pontificate of Benedict XVI will also go down in history because of his resignation, that is clear, inevitable...

I found it really moving to watch him deliver his last speech to the priests of the diocese of Rome, the one on the Second Vatican Council. In that moment, I couldn't help asking myself: Why does this man resign? There was clearly a spiritual force! It was an extemporaneous speech in which he exposed one more time his whole legacy, so to say, on the Second Vatican Council, expressing his wish it might one day be fulfilled...
In fact, that was in the Audience Hall. There was this traditional encounter, established many years ago, where the Pope, every Thursday after Ash Wednesday, met with the clergy of Rome, the clergy of his diocese. There would be questions and answers, or even other forms of encounter.

But in 2013, he was asked to talk about the Second Vatican Council, which he did. He delivered an extemporaneous speech in which he described, one more time and from his point of view, the whole situation and development of the Council, giving also his evaluation. It is something that will remain; something very important for the comprehension of the Second Vatican Council and Ratzinger's interpretation of it.

As far as I know, up to this day there is no other theologian who has defended the documents of the Second Vatican Council on so many levels, and so intensely and cogently as he did. And that is very important also for the inner life of the Church and the people of God! [For which, however, he is 'eternally' faulted by those Catholics who see nothing good at all in Vatican II, which they blame for the crisis in the Church that has culminated so far in Bergoglio - and therefore tar Benedict XVI with the same brush they use to denounce Vatican II in toto... Yet no one can pretend Vatican-II did not happen. It can only be invalidated by another such council, which is unlikely to be invalidate it at all.

Meanwhile, for 35 years, two popes who took part in it have gone to great lengths to underscore the important valid teachings of Vatican II, consider even its ambiguous statements in the hermeneutic of continuity instead of considering Vatican-II as a complete rupture with the deposit of faith (even if that happens to be the fasionable view of the current Successor of Peter).]

And I think it is safe to say that he contributed to the shaping of the Council...
In fact, being the consultor, the theological adviser of Cardinal Frings, he did have a part in it. Many of the theological contributions of the Cardinal of Cologne had actually been written by Professor Ratzinger. There are lots of documents where you can clearly see that. And there are also dissertations on this subject which investigate the possible influence of the then-Professor Ratzinger.

Let's come back to the moment of his resignation, the very last hours. Whoever watched it on TV, was surely moved to see the helicopter departing for Castel Gandolfo. You, too, were visibly moved…And then, the final moment, when the doors in Castel Gandolfo closed. That was the moment when I – and I guess, many others – thought that we might never see Pope Benedict again. But then things turned out quite differently…
Yes, indeed, the farewell: the transfer to the heliport, the flight in the helicopter over the city of Rome to Castel Gandolfo, the arrival at the Papal Villa. And indeed, at 8 p.m. the closing of the doors. Before, Pope Benedict had delivered a short speech from the balcony, his farewell speech.

And then? Well, the work [renovations] in the monastery Mater Ecclesiae hadn't been finished yet, so the question was: where could he stay? And the decision was quickly taken: the best option would be Castel Gandolfo. There he will have everything he needs, since no one knows how long the work would take, and he could stay there as long as necessary.

Two months later, he returned to Rome, and has been living in the monastery Mater Ecclesiae ever since. He himself had said that he would withdraw, going up to the mountain in order to pray. He didn't mean a withdrawal into a private life of invisibility, but into a life of prayer, meditation and contemplation, in order to serve the Church and his successor. His successor often tells him that he shouldn't 'hide'. He invites him often to important public liturgies and consistories like – I remember it well – the inauguration ceremony of the Holy Year on the 8th of December 2015.

He is present, even when no one sees him. But often he has been seen. He simply wants to be present, as much as possible, while remaining all the same invisible.

Many people wish to meet him, and he allows them to. Does he enjoy these encounters? I myself had the chance of a brief encounter with him. There are still many people who ask to see him.
Yes, there are many people who ask to meet him; and many are sad when this is not possible. But those who come, are all very happy, very glad. And the same goes for him. Every encounter is also a sign of affection, a sign, so to say, of approval. And human encounters always do us good.

Do some of these people also ask him for advice?
Definitely. I'm convinced of that. even if I'm never there - these encounters are private. Of course, he sometimes talks about it, we talk about those visits. There are indeed people who seek his advice on personal matters. And I'm convinced that the advice they receive is indeed good…

Does he still receive many letters? Who writes to him?
People he has known in the past. And also people I don't know, and he doesn't know, but who have clearly re-discovered him through his writings. They express their gratitude, their happiness, but also their worries: people from all around the world. The people who write to him are very different; they do not belong to the same category, no: it's people of different ages, of different positions, from all walks of life, a complete mixture.

We have talked about “seeking advice:” Pope Francis, who is of a certain age himself, has always said that we should ask our grandparents for advice. Has Pope Francis ever asked Benedict for advice? What kind of relationship do they have?
Yes, indeed, in one of his interviews, Pope Francis is said to be happy about having a grandfather in Benedict – a “wise” grandfather: an adjective not to be omitted! [Seeing as Benedict is only 10 years older than Bergoglio, the current pope's attitude betrays he recognizes the very wide generational-cultural gap between them.]

And I am convinced that, as far as this is concerned, one thing or another will come up, or come out, from their contacts and encounters.

Your relationship with Benedict is a very close, very personal one. I don't know if it would be appropriate to talk about a relationship between father and son. Have you ever talked with him about your future?
No. [Probably not lately, but it was obvious in December 2012 when Benedict XVI named GG an Archbishop and Prefect of the Pontifical Household, it was so that, being an Archbishop, he could not simply be pushed around by the hierarchy once his patron is gone from the scene.]

It is known that you would love to engage in pastoral care, that you already do engage in pastoral care.
It was always like that: we didn't talk about it. Only the very moment he said that he would resign, he asked me to accept the office I still hold. It was his decision, and he hadn't talked with me about it beforehand. I was very skeptical, and remarked: “Holy Father, that might not be my thing. But if you think it is right for me, I will gladly and obediently accept it.” And he replied: “I do think so, and I ask you to accept.” That was the only time we talked about me and my future career.

What are the subjects you talk about? What are the issues that concern him in our world full of crises; what worries him about the situation of the Church?
Well, of course, Pope Benedict takes an interest in what happens in this world, in the Church. Every day, as the conclusion to the day, we watch the news on Italian TV. And he reads the newspapers, the Vatican press review. That is a large range of information. Often we also talk about actual issues that concern our world, about the latest developments here in the Vatican, and beyond the Vatican, or simply common memories regarding things happened in the past.

Is he very worried about the Church?
Of course, he has noted that the faith, the substance of the faith, is about to crumble, above all in his homeland, and that inevitably worries, troubles him. But he is not the kind of man – he never was and never will be – who will have the joy of the faith taken away from him! On the contrary: he brings his worries to his prayers, hoping that his prayers will help to put things right.

He brings them to his prayers and surely also to Holy Mass. On Sundays, he delivers homilies, and is also keeping notes. What happens to these notes?
Well, it is true that Pope Benedict comments on the Gospel in his homilies. He does so every Sunday, and most of the time only in the presence of the “Memores Domini” and myself. Sometimes there might also be a visitor, or – should I not be there – a fellow priest who will then concelebrate.

His homilies are always extemporaneous. It is true, he has a sermon notebook, and he takes notes. And I have been asking myself the same question: what happens to these notes? Of course we will keep a record of them. I would like to ask him one day if he could take a look at the notes we have, in order to approve them. I don't know, though, if that day will ever come.

Pope Benedict is undoubtedly one of the greatest theologians...as far as of our century is concerned, he surely is! He has been referred to as the “Mozart of theology.” In your introduction to the already mentioned book Über den Wolken mit Papst Benedikt XVI (Above the Clouds with Pope Benedict XVI) you wrote: “Pope Benedict XVI is a Doctor of the Church. And he has been my teacher up to this day.” What have you learned from him, maybe even in the last weeks?
As I already said, my theological thinking started with reading Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity. The theological teacher who accompanied my theological studies, and the time that followed, has always been the theologian Ratzinger, and still is. Being given the chance to meet him in person, to learn from his personal example, is of course an additional gift, something unexpected, and I am very grateful for that. I know it is a grace – a grace for which I will thank the Lord every single day.

So what could be, in your opinion, the lesson Pope Benedict would like us to learn from his pontificate?
His great concern is that the faith could evaporate. And it is surely his greatest wish that every man be in direct relationship with God, the Lord, with Christ, and that we might dedicate to this relationship our time, strength and affection. Whoever does that, will prove the same sentiment Benedict has in mind when he talks about “joy.” I think the greatest gift would be, if men allowed his proposal or what moved him, to become part of their lives.

Our wish to you: could you please assure Pope Benedict also in the name of our viewers, of our thankfulness, our sentiments of appreciation, and convey him our heartfelt best wishes for his 90th birthday! And thank you so much for this conversation!
Thank you. I will gladly convey your wishes, and thank you for having me!

Corriere della Sera offered this bonus for Benedict's birthday.

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Preface by BENEDICT XVI
to the Russian edition of
THE THEOLOGY OF LITURGY
The sacramental foundation of Christian existence
Volume 11, COMPLETE WRITINGS OF JOSEPH RATZINGER
Translated from


Nihil Operi Dei praeponatur — Nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God.

With these words from his Rule (43,3), St. Benedict established the absolute priority of divine worship with respect to every other duty of monastic life. This, even in monastic life, was not always immediately obvious because the monks also had important tasks in agriculture and science.

Whether in agriculture or in artisanal work and in the work of formation, there were certainly temporal urgencies that might have appeared more important that liturgy. In the face of all this, Benedict, with the priority he gave to liturgy, unequivocally highlighted the priority of God himself in our life: “As soon as you hear the signal for the Divine Office, leave everything you have in your hands, and hurry to prayer with maximum attention” (43,1).

In the minds of men today, the things pertaining to God – liturgy among them – do not seem urgent at all. Everything else is urgent, but God never seems to be an urgency. We could say, of course, that monastic life is, in any case, not at all the life of the men in the world, which is true. But the priority of God that we all seem to have forgotten is valid for everyone.

If God is no longer important, then the criteria have changed for establishing what is important. Man, in shelving God, subjects himself to constraints which make him a slave of material forces which can violate his dignity.

In the years following the Second Vatican Council, there was a new awareness of the priority of God and of divine liturgy. But the misunderstanding of the liturgical reform which became widespread in the Catholic Church led to giving priority to the aspect of instruction and man’s own creativity and activity. In this way, man’s actions led to almost forgetting the presence of God.

In such a situation, it became more clear that the existence of the Church depends on the correct celebration of liturgy and that the Church is in danger when the primacy of God is no longer manifested in the liturgy, and therefore, not in life itself.

All this led me to dedicate myself to the subject of liturgy more amply than I had in the past, because I knew that the true renewal of liturgy is a fundamental condition for the renewal of the Church. It is on the basis of this conviction that the studies found in this Volume 11 of my Complete Writings were born.

Basically, with all the existing differences, the essence of the liturgy in the Eastern and Western Churches is one and the same. And so I hope that this book may help even the Christians of Russia in a new and better way the great gift that has given to us in Sacred Liturgy.

Vatican City
Feast of St. Benedict
July 11, 2015

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Corriere’s senior Vaticanista Gian Guido Vecchi wrote the accompanying article:

The test we publish today was written by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican. This in itself is exceptional, as is the occasion which prompted it.

Joseph Ratzinger turns 90 this year on Easter Sunday. By a rare coincidence, both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches celebrate Easter on the same day this year. As a special gift, the Emeritus Pope will be given a copy of Volume 11 of his Complete Writings, The Theology of Liturgy, which was translated and published in Russia by the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow.

It is an initiative that was long in preparation – its translation from German to Russian by Olga Aspisova took three years. It will be followed by the publication in Russia of Benedict XVI’s trilogy on JESUS OF NAZARETH.

All thanks to the scientific and editorial collaboration between the publishing house of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Vatican pubishing house LEV and the international academy ‘Sapientia et Scientia’ (Knowledge and Science) founded and headed by Prof. Giuseppina Cardillo Azzaro to bring together personages from science and culture from both Eastern and Western Europe as well as representatives of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

The ecumenical value of the initiative is evident. Enough to convince Benedict XVI to write the Preface to the Russian edition when he was asked to do so in 2015. He dated his Preface, not surprisingly, July 11, 2015, Feast of St. Benedict, Patron of Europe.

In one of the most central interventions of his Pontificate – his memorable lecture at the College des Bernardins in paris on September 12, 2008 – Benedict XVI explained how the monasticism established by St. Benedict in the 6th century had saved the patrimony of classical culture and formed the basis of Western culture as we know it, thanks to his monks whose primary objective was quarere Deum, to seek God.

In one of his most famous books, Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger in 1967 started with the fable of the clown and the burning village narrated by Kierkegaard: a circus caught fire, the clown was sent to get help from the nearby village, but the people ‘laughed themselves to tears’ in the face of his cries for help, and the circus and the village ended up destroyed by the fire.

Thus, in the above text, one sees the profound consistency of his thinking: his concern for a world in which “things about God no longer seem urgent” and for the Church which is “in danger when the primacy of God is no longer manifested in the liturgy, and therefore, not in life itself”.

And that is why publication of his 16-volume COMPLETE WRITINGS started with the volume on liturgy.

“I asked my Orthodox friends to read this Preface,” says Pierluca Azzaro, translator and editor of the Italian editon of the COMPLETE WRITINGS, and vice-president of the Accademia Sapientia et Scientia. “They found it very powerful and moving. ‘It is clear we are in profound harmony about the liturgy’, they said. The very valuable bridge that Joseph Ratzinger has established between the Eastern and Western Churches is liturgy: It is a path that is not vague or utopian, but concrete and living, towards a true path of renewal along which Catholics and Orthodox can go hand in hand”.
 
I was positive Father Z would react enthusiastically to this news item because he has always actively promoted the slogan 'SAVE THE LITURGY, SAVE THE WORLD'. Here is his commentary.

Benedict XVI's new text
on Sacred Liturgy -
'The Russian Preface'

April 17, 2017

...In 2008 Benedict wrote the preface for the first volume of his Opera Omnia [Complete Writings]that was issued (in fact it’s Vol. XI) which includes his writings about liturgy and liturgical theology.

That was the correct choice: they began with the single issue that connects and roots all other issues even as it also indicates the Church’s direction and goal. After all, the celebration of the Eucharist and the Eucharist Itself is the “source and summit” of the Church’s life.

It is interesting that the Russian Orthodox got on board with this. No?

Do you long-time readers recall I what tagged Benedict XVI? Pope of Christian Unity.

This was an ecumenical signal on the part of the Russians: watching the Catholic Church they, too, are concerned about our worship. They clearly think that Benedict’s thought is worth promoting.

What does Pope Benedict say in his preface to the Russian edition?

He starts off with the famous phrase from the Rule of Benedict 43: Nihil operi Dei praeponitur… Put nothing before liturgical worship of God. Literally, this is “let nothing be put before the work of God”, but ‘opera Dei‘ here means ‘liturgy’, which includes Mass and the public recitation of the Office, especially.

Let nothing have precedence over worship even other great earthly matters are pressing. That was taken literally: when it was time to pray the office, monks were to stop what they were doing and, immediately, go to pray. They subsequently returned to their tasks and their tasks were consequently themselves transformed by what they did.

Benedict spoke about this very phrase “Nihil operi Dei praeponitur” back in 2013 during his final encounter with priests of the Diocese of Rome, when he made the point that Vatican II also started with liturgy. He made that very point again in his first preface to the Omnia Opera liturgy volume.

He clarified even then that, although this rock solid, pivotal principle rises from a monastic context, it nevertheless is a necessary guideline for the rest of the Church. The monastic life provides a guiding force for the life of the active Church.

[Fr. Z then provides his translation from the Italian of the complete text of the Russian Preface...]

Benedict identifies the problem we face as a Church. The Church’s identity has been “freaked out”, as it were, by the upheaval caused by the damage done to our sacred liturgical worship.

And now we are in a situazione, as he put it, a typically Ratzingerian understatement. I wonder what German word he chose: Zustand? Lage? In any event, his calm words ring with an urgent call to action: “Rome, we have a ‘situation’.”

Didn’t Card. Sarah make this same point recently in his address to the conference in Germany for the 10th anniversary of Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum? Yes, he did. He spoke of “devastation”. The usual libs had a nutty, right on schedule.

For years I hammered away at my conviction that Benedict has laid out, especially in Summorum Pontificum and his own ars celebrandi, a kind of “Marshall Plan” for the Church. You long-time readers here will remember this, but it has been a while since I’ve presented it.

Here it is again:
After World War II many regions of Europe were devastated, especially its large cities and manufacturing. These USA helped rebuild Europe through the Marshall Plan so as to foster good trading partners and, through prosperity, stand as a bulwark against Communism.

After Vatican II many spheres of the Church were devastated, especially its liturgical and catechetical life. We needed a Plan to rebuild our Catholic identity so that we can stand, for ourselves as members of the Church and in the public square for the good of society, as a bulwark – indeed a remedy – against the dictatorship of relativism.

NB: In his brief preface, above, Benedict says that if God is obscured, then our criteria for what is important shifts. Relativism dominates us. Where is our most regular and obvious, strengthening and informing meeting and attention with God? Liturgy. Without this constant formation and transformation, we have no idea who we are or what is important.

If we don’t know who we are as Catholics, if we don’t know what we believe or pray as Catholics, then the world has no reason to listen to anything we have to say as Catholics. We will fragment into little self-enclosed groups, islands. Enervated and drifting, we will be all the more easily driven from the public square by the enemies of objective truth, goodness and beauty.

I have been saying for years that, for any revitalization of our Catholic identity to be successful, we must renew our liturgical worship of God.

We need action in every other sphere as well, but … but… without a renewed sacred liturgical worship, nothing else will stand. Everything else we do is inexorably tied to our encounter with the transcendent in worship.

Therefore, we must not give preference to any activity in the Church over our sacred liturgical worship. This is a sine qua non existential priority.

Contrary to the notions of most liberals and progressivists, “the Catholic thing” did not begin in the 1960s. Hence, I believe that Summorum Pontificum is a key to Benedict’s vision, his “Marshall Plan” as I call it.

His new Russian preface bears out exactly what I have been saying for years and it reaffirms me in my work.

HENCE….

We must work for the prudent and yet energetic application of Summorum Pontificum as far and as widely as possible.

Never be discouraged.

My recommendations follow:
1) Work with sweat and money to make it happen. If you thought you worked hard before? Been at this a long time? HAH! Get to work! “Oooo! It’s tooo haaard!” BOO HOO!

2) Get involved with all the works of charity that your parishes or groups sponsor. Make a strong showing. Make your presence known. If Pope Francis wants a Church for the poor, then we respond, “OORAH!!” The “traditionalist” will be second-to-none in getting involved. “Dear Father… you can count on the ‘Stable TLM Group” to help with the collection of clothing for the poor! Tell us what you need!”

3) Pray and fast and give alms. Think you have been doing that? HAH! Think again. If you love, you can do more.

4) Form up and get organized. You can do this. Find like minded people and get that request for the implementation of Summorum Pontificum together, how you will raise the money to help buy the stuff the parish will need and DO IT. Make a plan. Find people. Execute!

5) Get your ego and your own petty little personal interpretations and preferences of how Father ought to wiggle his pinky at the third word out of the way. It is team-work time. If we don’t sacrifice individually, we will stay divided and we won’t achieve our objectives.

6) Fathers… MAN UP. Get informed. LEARN YOUR RITE! Educate.

7) Don’t whine and blame others.

8) When you get what you want… DON’T REST.

As I have previously posted Pope Benedict gave you, boys and girls, a beautiful new bicycle! He gave you a direction, some encouragement, a snow cone, and a running push. Now, take off the training wheels and RIDE THE DAMN BIKE!

Homage to Benedict XVI,
misunderstood prophet of our times

April 17, 2017

“April is the cruelest month,” Eliot said in his poem “The Wasteland”. Perhaps no one more than Benedict XVI understands this: he was born on a Holy Saturday in mid-April, baptized on the same day, and he turned 90 on April 16, Easter Sunday. It is the fourth year since he retired to the mountain, to the monastery of Mater Ecclesiae.

April is a cruel month because – as Christopher Altieri, General Manager of Vocaris Media, explains – “we always talk of spring in positive terms, but we undervalue the effort and fatigue of spring: all of that pollen given off, of which only a small part will get to flower; the effort of a reawakening that needs to bring about summer. Spring is beautiful, but also deeply painful.”

Pope Benedict lived this spring, beautiful and painful at the same time. Spring in the Church’s history was, for him, the Second Vatican Council. He described the first day of the Council as “a beautiful day,” but his words in fact referred to the whole assembly. That very day was also a painful day.

Since Benedict ascended the mountain to live out the rest of his days in prayerful intercession on behalf of the Church, the bitterness [Was it ever? Let down by its many false intepretations, obviously. but bitter?] he felt during his pontificate when he spoke of the Second Vatican Council has been forgotten.

Nevertheless, he felt the need to clarify that period of Church history since the beginning of the pontificate. In his first Christmas speech to Roman Curia back in 2005, he stressed that the Council has to interpreted through the lenses of continuity. That is: the Council was not a destructive spring, but a spring called to harvest new fruits. It was a renewal within continuity, not a genetically modified organism of faith, just as every year nature renews itself in spring.

At the end of his pontificate, during his last meeting with the clergy of Rome, he returned to the topic, as if that was the thread of the whole pontificate. [We learn now that the clergy asked him to speak of Vatican-II - and he gave them a masterfully memorable 45-minute extemporaneous overview of its highlights and significance]. He said that there was a media Council and a real Council, noting how the 'media Council' media Council overtook the real Council [in the perception of the public, and of course, much to the delight of the Council's progressivists who had actively fostered the media Council during the four years between 1962-1965.]

That the experience of the Second Vatican Council was a crossroad for Benedict is testified by the short off-the-cuff speech he made at the end of the torchlight procession that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. It was October 11, 2012. Leaning out of the window of the Apostolic Palace as St. John XXIII did 50 years before, Benedict bore the feeling of a changed world and of betrayed expectations.

He said: “We were happy — I would say — and full of enthusiasm. The great Ecumenical Council had begun; we were sure that a new spring of the Church was in sight, a new Pentecost with a new, strong presence of the freeing grace of the Gospel.”

Then, he added:

---

"We are also happy today, we hold joy in our hearts, but I would say it is perhaps a more measured joy, a humble joy. In these 50 years we have learned and experienced that original sin exists and that it can be expressed as personal sins which can become structures of sin. We have seen that in the field of the Lord there are always tares. We have seen that even in Peter’s net there were bad fish. We have seen that human frailty is present in the Church, that the barque of the Church is even sailing against the wind in storms that threaten the ship, and at times we have thought: ‘the Lord is asleep and has forgotten us’.”

---

Showing an awareness that the sin was present in the Church revealed the good faith of Pope Benedict, a professor full of faith who had learned, firsthand, that not everything done within the Church is really for the greater glory of God. But he also became ever more aware that sin could be overcome only setting one’s gaze on Christ with ongoing prayer. “I have no other program than being guided by Him,” he said at the beginning of the pontificate.

Epitomizing in a few lines the extraordinary legacy left by such a master of thought is impossible. But it is possible to give an overview. Pope Benedict XVI’s thought is built like one of the great medieval cathedrals: it is a real journey of the mind to God (itinerarium mentis in Deum).

Reading him, we immediately think of the Duomo of Milan, of the 1000 years of the Strasbourg Cathedral, of Notre Dame de Paris or of the Cologne Cathedral, but also of the Sagrada Familia that Pope Benedict XVI consecrated in 2010. All of these buildings were rationally founded, and were aimed at giving a rational and precise explanation of the presence of God, while encouraging others in prayer.

For Pope Benedict there are no doubts: believing means seeking after the truth. And truth cannot be possessed. [It must possess us, he often says.] It must be searched for continually and without bad faith. That is an ambitious project for pure men, perhaps comparable to the huge spiritual renewal undertaken by St. Gregory the Great. If one believes, all else is a consequence.

This is how Pope Benedict XVI’s Magisterium is in the end a cry of pain because the world has lost faith. In his 1951 paper, “The New Pagans and the Church,” Benedict speaks about Europe's Christians who are convinced they live as Christians, but have really become pagan. He came to this conclusion from hearing the confessions during his intensive year as parish vicar in three churches of Munich. The paper was published in the 1950s. Today, after pragmatic nihilism has dramatically made its way into the lives of Christians, the issue is more current than ever.

Benedict does not launch pragmatic challenges. His Church must be a Church committed to social issues, to helping the poor and caring for the least ones. But this pragmatic commitment is only what comes from faith. Benedict challenged the world, and above all he challenged Christians - by asking them to quit living as though God does not exist.

The model he offers is that of the medieval monks. Not by chance did he take the name of Benedict, founder of Western monasticism [and savior of Europe's cultural patrimony during the Dark Ages]. the The first aim of those monks was quaerere Deum, seeking God, as Benedict emphasized in his memorable lecture at the College des Bernardins in Paris in 2008.

The goal is that of a Church less chained to works, and freer to believe in God, as Benedict explained in his speeches during his last trip to Germany in 2011. He was speaking before the German clergy he knew well, who are wealthy because of the Church tax, and at the same time very poor in vocations and even in practicing faithful, as shown continually by annual data in the past many decades.

For Benedict, there can be no dialogue without a common search for truth. He pointed out that atheists who search for God would enter the Kingdom of heaven ahead of merely nominal Christians. In this way, he invited Christians not to take the faith for granted, which is unfortunately one of the signs of our times.

How much Benedict believed that faith cannot be taken for granted became evident when he faced the scandal of clergy pedophilia, a worldwide phenomenon that came on the scene as a slap in the Church’s face.

The letter he wrote in 2010 to the Catholics of Ireland was not just about the Pope’s apology for the scandal but also a very lucid reading of the facts that occurred after the Second Vatican Council [the context in which the clerical sex abuse crisis . Benedict wrote:

---

“The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings.”

---

Setting one’s gaze on Christ also means, being aware of our narrowness, of our sin.

These are the great topics of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate. Any evaluation of his government becomes secondary, because everything is part of this search for truth. Being Christian, for Benedict, is real life.

We see, however, that his pontificate was perfectly linear, even in terms of the decisions of his government: from the lifting of restrictions on the use of St Pius V’s Missal to the reforms for financial transparency; from establishing a dicastery to promote promotion new evangelization to his decision to reform access to the seminaries [i.e., to carefully screen homosexual applicants] and his tireless work to purify the Church from scandals, especially in the field of sex abuse by clergy; from the new statutes of Caritas Internationalis to the reform of the Penal Code of Vatican City State, which Benedict started and Pope Francis signed. And lastly, diplomacy based upon truth.

The search for truth bore fruit. One example above all: the Regensburg Lecture. Although it created turmoil, it was the only possible way to motivate a group of Islamic leaders to give Islam a new interpretation and to solve the biggest crisis within Islam, as Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, SJ, has put it. That lecture brought about a letter signed by 138 Muslim leaders, and it led to a Catholic-Islamic Forum of which Pope Francis can harvest the fruits, even by rekindling relations with Al-Azhar University [center of Sunni learning and ideology].

Pope Benedict XVI carried forward a silent reform, characterized by precise thinking that only a few understood. The aim was to foster the unity of the Church starting from a collegiality based upon mutual collaboration, with consciousness that only the truth and the true faith can make of churchmen examples who are able to attract others to Catholicism. Churchmen must be examples of joy, because in the end Benedict always preached the Gospel of Joy.

This is, in my view, the greatest legacy of Pope Benedict XVI. This legacy is one of the best tools to respond to the issues raised by the secular world. I
- The Protestant way of thinking would never fascinate anyone if faith were considered not as something merely pragmatic, but as the guiding principle of life.
- Gender would never be an arbitrary option if men and women would consider themselves as part of creation and as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
- Europe would not live from one crisis to another, if rationalist and post-Enlightenment movements had not detached it from the search for God.
- And today there would not be a movement of thought holding that less religion would lead to less violence: instead, everyone would be aware that the opposite is true.

So no one would be frightened to defend babies and to decry abortion, as there would be no Catholic universities such as Louvain ready to get rid of those who speak clearly on the issue in an effort to be politically correct.

It seems simple. It is not. You need faith, lucidity of thought, love of God and of neighbor.

Joseph Ratzinger wrote in his essay, “Liberation Theology and Other Challenges” that

---

“the human mind seems ever more capable of devising new means of destruction rather than new paths to life. It is more ingenious in sending weapons to war in every angle of the world than in bringing bread there. Why does all of this happen? Because our souls suffer from malnutrition, our hearts are blind and hardened. The world is in disorder because our hearts are in disorder, since they lack love and therefore cannot reason in the way of justice.”

---

These words represent the most precise diagnosis of the current situation.

Pope Benedict XVI was born in April, the cruelest month. He did not live only during the Church’s spring, but also during the so-called spring of the world.[???] In his lifetime, the Church has gone through the challenges of secularization, to which many Christians have yielded.

Religion today has been reduced to a social agency, with no weight in history. In Europe, God was put aside - subtly, not violently, as it was in the communist countries [I don't think the rampant secularism and anti-Catholicism pervading the all-reaching bureaucracy of the European Union is subtle at all. In fact, it is just as violent an institutional force as the more openly repressive forces of Communism were] . In fact, today, it seems to be the former
Communists of the Soviet Union in its largest component, Russia, who are showing that they understand the importance of faith in public life.

Ratzinger’s Schuelerkreis, the circle of his former students, discussed all the various aspects of this world crisis in their annual summer seminars at Castel Gandolfo.

And Benedict's most significant response was to ask the world to set its gaze on Jesus - Jesus as the Gospels present him to us, not according to rationalist interpretations [that discount his divinity], - and to this end, he wrote his trilogy, JESUS OF NAZARETH, the last of his theological works. In this, showed that the forces of the world which aim at 'liberating'the Church from the chains of doctrine' were in fact forces that aim to chain the salvific message of Jesus.

We are talking of strong forces, of lobbies that do not suffer when their economic power is questioned, but rather suffer when their thought is unmasked. Perhaps, it is the season of the new catacombs for the Church.

Certainly for Benedict XVI it is a time for prayer. After he led the Church to penance in Fatima and relaunched the new evangelization with the Year of Faith, now is the time for intercession.


BTW, Italian state TV RAI had a second hourlong documentary tribute to Benedict XVI aired on their series LA GRANDE HISTORIA, which can be seen at this link:
http://www.raiplay.it/video/2017/04/La-Grande-Storia---Ratzinger-33aab853-83e1-42e3-bb12-a9db89200620.html

Partially catching up on headlines...

April 16, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com


PewSitter


April 17, 2017 headlines
Canon212.com


PewSitter

April 19, 2017 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com

Caudillo Bergoglio's chutzpah [unmitigated effrontery] knows no limits, it seems...

Who knew? Pope can forbid
foreigner from visiting Rome

April 19, 2017

Ever since the Porta Pia fell, in 1870, and Rome became the capital of a newly united Italy, no Pope has ever again claimed the right to forbid anyone from coming to Rome. The city is not owned by the Pope, after all, and the temporal power of the papacy has, since 1929, been reduced to the very small limits of Vatican City and a few additional buildings in the region.

Alas, that was before Caudillismo had reached the City! If only John Paul II and Benedict XVI had known about this extra-muros absolute power of the Pope. El Caudillo Jorge knows better: who cares about law and rights, if he hates you, he can just order you out, muchacho!

It's what happened to the former head of the Knights of Malta, Fra Matthew Festing -- first forced by the Pope to resign, now ordered (!!!!!) not to come to Rome during the time of the Election of his own successor!


Vatican orders Matthew Festing
not to come to Rome for
Order of Malta election
Some Knights say move is designed to keep Fra' Festing from
having any influence in the election of a new Grand Master

April 18, 2017

In a surprising move, Pope Francis’s special delegate to the Order of Malta has instructed Fra’ Matthew Festing, the Order’s former Grand Master, not to travel to Rome for the election of his successor.

In a letter dated April 15, Archbishop Angelo Becciu said that many of the Order had “expressed their wish” that Fra’ Festing not travel to Rome for the election on April 29 as they felt his presence would “reopen wounds” and prevent a return to harmony following the dispute earlier this year regarding the dismissal and later reinstatement of Albrecht von Boeselager as Grand Chancellor.

The archbishop said he had “shared the decision with the Holy Father” and that he [Festing] should therefore forego his trip to Rome “as an act of obedience.”

The news is surprising as sources inside the Order say Fra’ Festing, who the Pope asked to resign in January, remains very popular within the Order and could even be re-elected. The Pope has also [reportedly] said he would accept his re-election. [Obviously that was a calculated pre-emptive PR ploy.]

They claim this move is therefore an attempt by some who wish to take the Order in a distinctly new direction to keep Fra’ Festing from having any influence in the upcoming election.


Interdict on Festing:
The pope forbids him to set foot
in Rome for Order of Malta election

April 18, 2017

For April 29, a meeting has been scheduled in Rome of the full Council of State of Professed Knights, the organ that according to statute will proceed with the election of the new Grand Master of the Order of Malta.

As is known, the previous Grand Master, Fra' Matthew Festing of England, delivered his resignation on January 24 into the hands of Pope Francis, in obedience to his command.

Since then, the supreme authority of the Order has been represented, in the capacity of interim lieutenant, by Grand Commander Fra' Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein.

On February 4, however, Pope Francis also placed over the Order his own Special Delegate and “exclusive spokesman,” endowed de facto with full powers, in the person of Archbishop Angelo Becciu, Deputy Secretary of State [whereby the pope completely and unceremoniously - without as much as an excuse-me, much less a formal letter - obliterated the role of the nominal Patron of the Order, Cardinal Burke].

The letter is glaring proof of the exercise of these full powers.

In the name of the pope, Becciu prohibits the former Grand Master from taking part in the election of his successor. Not only that. He even forbids him to go to Rome on the occasion of the conclave.

Benedict XVI celebrates
90th birthday with beer


VATICAN CITY, April 17, 2017 (AP)- Benedict XVI has celebrated his 90th birthday with a glass of beer and the company of visitors from his native Bavaria in Germany.

Benedict sipped the beer alongside his brother, Mgr Georg Ratzinger, and received a gift basket that included pretzels.

The retired pontiff was born on April 16, 1927, in southern Germany. But since the birthday coincided this year with Easter Sunday, the occasion was celebrated on Monday.

On a sunny, mild day, guests sat outside the monastery on Vatican City grounds where Benedict has lived since he became the first pope to resign in 600 years.

Benedict XVI drinks beer
on his 90th birthday
ROME REPORTS
2017-04-18



Benedict XVI received a surprise from his homeland for his 90th birthday. He was visited by the Bavarian prime minister who brought him a basket of bretzen (German soft pretzels).

The pope enjoyed an interlude in the little plaza in front of his Mater Ecclesiae residence entertained with music, dances and typical costumes reminding him of Bavaria.

As in every good German party, he could not miss the toast with beer mug in hand.

He said in brief remarks:

---

" Bavaria is beautiful; as Creation but the land is especially beautiful because of the church towers, because of the houses and their balconies full of flowers, and because of the good people. It is beautiful, because God is known there. It is known that He created the world, which comes to fruition when we cooperate with God to build it. I thank you with all my heart for this Bavarian presence, which you bring to me. It is a Bavaria that is open to the world, which is lively and joyful. It can be this way precisely because it has its root and foundation in faith."

---

Of course, Benedict said the best gift was to spend the day with his brother Georg, 93, who came from Regensburg to be with him.

A Bavarian birthday celebration
in Rome for Benedict XVI
Translated from
PASSAUER NEUE PRESSE
April 17, 2017

With bretzen, beer and Bavarian white sausages, visitors from Bavaria greeted Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI on his 90th birthday. Around 50 visitors, including Bavarian politicians and the Bavarian Alpine Guard, travelled to Rome on Easter Monday for the event.

They were led by Bavarian Prime Minister Seehofer and his wife Karin, Bavarian Parliament president Barbara Stamm, Culture Minister Leudwig Apenle, and the chief of staff of the Bavarian Canchellery, Marcel Huber.

The emeritus pope celebrated his actual birthday the day before, Easter Sunday, with his ‘little family’ – his brother Mons Georg Ratzinger, who travelled from Regensburg for the occasion; his personal secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, and the four Memores Domini who have kept house for him since be became Pope in April 2005.

Benedict thanked his Bavarian guests warmly “for the presence of Bavaria, which you have brought to me”, saying that in his heart, he is always in Bavaria. Later, he sang along in the Bavarian state hymn, "Gott mit Dir, du Land der Bayern" (God is with you, land of Bavaria).

Seehofer said later, “We are very proud of our pope”, and said he was very glad to find Benedict XVI so well and bright as ever, and that he was, as always, very well-informed. He said they exchanged views about world matters.

Link to Bavarian state TV video of the event:
http://www.br.de/mediathek/video/sendungen/nachrichten/benedikt-xvi-geburtstag-besuch-bayern-100.html

Papa Ratzinger:
‘I have lived through difficult times;
but God has seen me through them’
Translated from the Italian service of

April 17, 2017

“My heart is full of gratitude for the 90 years that the good God has given me. There have been trials and difficult times, but he has always guided me and seen me through, so that I could proceed on my way”.

Thus spoke Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI yesterday, Easter Monday, during a celebration of his 90th birthday with a delegation from his homeland of Bavaria led by Horst Seehofer, Prime Minister of Bavaria, with 30 members of the Bavarian Alpine Guard.

Also present at the festivity were the pope’s brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger, who came from Regensburg specially for this occasion, and Mons. Georg Gaenswein, Prefect of the Pontifical Household and Benedict’s private secretary.

In his remarks, Benedict XVI said:

---

“I am full of gratitude above all that I was given such a beautiful homeland which now you have brought to me. Bavaria is beautiful by Creation, and the land is also beautiful for its church towers, for its balconies full of flowers, and for its good people. Bavaria is beautiful because there, God is known, it is known he created this world and that the world is good when we build it up together with him…

I thank you all for bringing Bavaria to me, the Bavaria that is open to the world, lively, happy, and which is happy because its roots are grounded in the faith. To all of you, vergelt’s Gott [“May God reward you”, a beautiful Bavarian way to say ‘Thank you’], starting from the leadership of Bavaria, and to you all. I am happy that we have been able to reunite once again until this beautiful Roman sky of blue, which with its white clouds reminds us of Bavaria’s blue-and-white state flag.

I wish you all the blessings of God. Please bring back my greetings to those at home, my gratitude, and with what pleasure I continue in my heart to walk around and experience our land, and I hope it will always be what it is. Vergelt’s Gott”.

---

THE PHOTOS (courtesy of LA REPUBBLICA:]

















A 6-MINUTE VIDEO FROM BAYERISCHE RUNDFUNK:

On what would have been the completion of

THE TWELFTH FULL YEAR

OF YOUR BLESSED PONTIFICATE...

AD MULTOS ANNOS, SANCTE PATER EMERITE!

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU HAVE BEEN

AND CONTINUE TO BE

FOR THE CHURCH, THE WORLD, AND ALL OF US.

WE COULD NEVER LOVE YOU ENOUGH.







Those who may want to relive the days that led to the election of Benedict XVI {with pictures and news accounts of the day-to-day events,
all the way to the Mass to inaugurate his Petrine Ministry), along with how various individuals experienced it and reacted to it, may want
to check out, if they have not seen it before, a special section entitled THE EXPERIENCE OF APRIL 19, 2005 in the PAPA RATZINGER FORUM
at this link:
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354517&p=1
It never fails to bring back all the emotions - and floods of joyous and sentimental tears! The scene is indelibly etched in our memory but
it is always worth reliving.

---

A video of Benedict XVI's first appearance to the world as Pope may be seen on youtu.be/RIFn5u_3pyE
And herewith, my favorite personal recollection about Benedict XVI:


Perhaps of all the words that the Holy Father said during his never-to-be-forgotten visit to the United States and to the United Nations - and every word was precious and significant - what will remain etched in my brain are the spontaneous words he spoke to thank the congregation at St. Patrick's for remembering the third anniversary of his Pontificate. All the more since I heard the words 'directly' as he spoke them, through the front-door speakers of the cathedral's audio system, as I stood on the steps to the front door. These were his extemporaneous words delivered in English:

---

At this moment I can only thank you for your love of the Church and Our Lord, and for the love which you show to this poor Successor of Saint Peter.

I will try to do all that is possible to be a worthy successor of the great Apostle, who also was a man with faults and sins, but remained in the end the rock for the Church.

And so I too, with all my spiritual poverty, can be for this time, by virtue of the Lord’s grace, the Successor of Peter.

It is also your prayers and your love which give me the certainty that the Lord will help me in this my ministry. I am therefore deeply grateful for your love and for your prayers.

And my answer to all that you have given to me in this moment and this visit is my blessing at the end of the Holy Mass.

- BENEDICT XVI
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York
April 19, 2008.

---

Eight years ago, Benedict XVI undertook an apostolic visit to the United States on April 15-22, 2008, during which he also addressed the United Nations.


For an extensive coverage of that visit, please visit the special thread dedicated to it in PAPA RATZINGER FORUM, starting on Page 15
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=7092407&p=15
The earlier pages were devoted to all the material leading up to the visit.







The above is a commemorative video prepared by Gemma for Lella's blog.

And the tributes continue as we move from Benedict XVI's 90th birthday to the anniversary today of his election as pope. I have three interviews to translate so far, and I will start with this one, with Vittorio Messori. The others are by Fr. Lombardi and by Spanish theologian Fr. Pablo Cervera Barranco who has translated many of Joseph Ratzinger's books in Spanish and is undertaking the translation of some volumes of the COMPLETE WRITINGS for its Spanish edition...

Joseph the giant
Interview with Vittorio Messori
By Riccardo Caniato
Translated from
GENTE, April 16, 2017

On this Easter Sunday, Benedict XVI turns 90.

Gente conveyed birthday greetings to the Emeritus Pope through Vittorio Messori, the journalist and writer perhaps best qualified to speak about the man Joseph Ratzinger, not just about Benedict XVI who led the Catholic Church from April 2005 to February 2013. (Messori himself was born on April 16, 1941).

He first made a name for himself in 1976 with the publication of his book Ipotesi su Gesu, of which 2 million were sold in Italy alone. He also became the first Vaticanista to ‘co-author’ a book with a pope (with Varcare la soglia della speranza (Crossing the threshold of hope), written with John Paul II in 1993.

But that had been preceded in 1985 by an interview book with the man who was then Prefect of the till-then ‘impenetrable’ Holy Office, known by its post-Vatican II name of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That book was Rapporto sulla fede (Report on the faith) [published in English as THE RATZINGER RRPORT], of which Messori says, “It was the outcome of three days of close contact with Joseph Ratzinger, which established a relationship between us that has never been interrupted”.

What do you remember of those days?
The Prefect of the CDF agreed to meet with me in Bressanone on the eve of Assumption in 1984. He was spending his summer vacation in that city, staying at the local seminary, where he dedicated time to study and meditation. When I arrived at the seminary just before dinnertime, I was told that His Eminence was still out presiding at some Confirmations.

He arrived in an old Volkswagen with Munich plates. He was all dressed in his cardinal robes, and I was struck by the contrast between his austere intelligent figure and the modesty of the car which was driven by an older priest in black clergyman suit – whom he introduced as his older brother.

When I think back on it, the image says a lot to illustrate the misunderstanding of which Ratzinger has been a victim all his life.

Can you explain that more?
The first time I met him, all it took was a few exchanges to perceive what kind of a human being he is. His wisdom and the vastness of his culture – not just doctrinally – of the person himself, before whom one felt like a dwarf. So many enemies of the Church, well aware that in him they were facing a genuine thoroughbred who can support the faith with the keenness of reason and who can therefore not compete with him in terms of argumentation, have distorted their view of him on the basis of aspects like his nationality, or his extreme reserve, in order to create a media stereotype. From this black legend came the images and epithets of Joseph Ratzinger as the ‘German shepherd’, the ‘Grand Inquisitor’, the ‘Panzerkardinal’, or the ‘Iron Prefect’.

And instead?
Instead, Joseph Ratzinger is one of the most amiable, discreet and truly good persons that I have ever known. Like all true wise men, he does not boast, and he listens to others. He is also gifted with a sense of humor, even about himself. Do you know that when we would meet each other in a trattoria near the Vatican [and near where the cardinal used to live], he would ask me to tell him all the jokes and anecdotes circulating about him? He would laugh with gusto when I told him. What would his detractors say if they knew this?

But Papa Ratzinger is also remembered for upholding ‘non-negotiable principles’ and the firmness of his positions on the faith…
Certainly he is someone who never disregards the truth. When I sent him the drafts of the book, I insisted that he review everything himself because he had made some explosive statements and a very firm condemnation of some post-Vatican II contestations and about new currents of thought at the time like Liberation Theology. But he made practically no corrections, nor did he soften his most hardline positions.

Indeed, he was surprised by my concerns. “Controversial?”, he asked in German, looking at me with his innocent blue eyes. “Warum? Why ever?” Here, in expressing surprise that saying the truth could stir up controversy at all, one appreciated his evangelical transparency which characterized him even as Pope.

But he has not lacked for controversy, such as that which followed the Regensburg lecture on faith and reason with what he said about Islam and violence…
When it comes to that, even as a cardinal, he stirred up much discussion. Because of the condemnations I referred to that he made in the book, he received death threats [And so did Messori, branded as an accomplice of Ratzinger, who had to hire bodyguards and go into hiding for months because of the threats from elements associated with those men of the Church who felt alluded to in Ratzinger’s post-Vatican II critique].For his safety [something I am reading about for the first time], he was asked to find ‘asylum’ at the American Embassy to the Holy See, and when he invited me to see him there, I had to undergo a close body search by the US Marine guards. But all that security was a contrast to the man I found who seemed to be serenely ‘at home’.

Can you tell us more about Joseph Ratzinger’s human sensitivity?
To get back to the matter of dress, I did not see him again in official robes in Bressanone. He was wearing his cardinal robes that first day because he had to perform liturgy, and of course, for the children who received Confirmation from him, expecting to be confirmed by a Prince of the Church. But he changed quickly and put me quite at ease with his informal well-worn clergyman suit.

During those three days, we worked all day, and in the evening, we would go over the notes of the day before we retired. He woke up much earlier than me in order to say his daily Mass, and in the evening, he would pray in the chapel while I retired to my room to prepare my questions for the next day. He never asked me to fall in with his daily rhythm.

Months later, in Rome, having become more confident with him, I told him that in Bressanone, I had made a great sacrifice by not smoking at all for three days because I did not want to annoy him. He replied with apparent sincerity, “But why didn’t you tell me? It si true I do not some, but I like the smell of burning tobacco “. I am sure that was not true but he did not want to offend me.

Did you eat together?
Yes. At the time I had just turned 40, and at lunch he would urge me to eat more, even as he was restrained. Every afternoon, he arranged so that we would have a break for a snack of the strudel prepared by the Tyrolese sisters in the seminary. I soon realized that the snack was prepared especially for me, since he was content with sipping from a glass of water, allowing me to eat at leisure. I asked him why he would not partake of that excellent dessert, but he answered courteously with another white lie: “Caro dottore, it is better that I refrain from eating sweets”. This is a man who is demanding and austere with himself, but full of attention for others. Indeed, few are aware of his constant capacity for self-mortification – but that is Jospeh Ratzinger.

When did you meet him first after he had become Pope?
After a General Audience in St. Peter’s Square. He asked me to come after the publication of the book Perche credo?(Why I believe) which I had written with Andrea Tornielli. He embraced me, and I found the courage to ask him whether the time had come to update Rapporto sulla fede. “But how shall we do it?”, he asked. “Like we did the other time,” I answered. “Holiness, if you would give me three days…”

“Vittorio”, he stopped me, smiling, “how can I give you three days when no one allows me even three hours of respite?”

Your last meeting?
Months ago, already Emeritus. Once again, the occasion was the publication of another one of my books [‘Bernadette non ci ha ingannati’ (Bernadette did not deceive us) about the apparitions in Lourdes], and it was his initiative, because since he became pope, I was unable to work up enough courage to take the first step. He received me at Mater Ecclesia, the little monastery in the Vatican Gardens which had been equipped for the cloistered nuns that John Paul II wished to live in the Vatican to pray specially for the Church.

What can you say of how he lives these days?
Among his books, his piano, music – Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner… He receives selected guests and has enough to do keeping with correspondence coming from all over the world. I saw two newspapers on his desk – Corriere della Sera and Sueddeutsche Zeitung from Munich. In the evenings, he watches TG-1 on RAI. His residence is a place of light, full of flowers – it communicates peace. Benedict is surrounded bu affection and respect. He continues to live with the Memores Domini of Comunione e Liberazione, and with Mons. Georg Gaenswein, who remains his private secretary when he is not occupied with his duties as Prefect of the Pontifical Household.

But it was Mon. Gaenswein who last year alarmed many people when he likened Benedict to a candle that is slowly guttering out…
At our last meeting, we chatted until way past one p.m. I had hoped we could lunch together, but (I had to leave in order not to tire him out. I do not if he did eat lunch nor what he ate. He is rather thin these days. In the house he goes around using a walker, and for his daily spin in the Vatican Gardens, he rides a golf cart.

But in our conversation, he was every bit the man with an uncommon mind and lucid talk that is engaged and engaging. Obviously, last year, he also followed closely the publication of his last interview book, as well as a new biography [the one by Elio Guerriero].

The metaphor with the candle fits, but even if the candle may be waning, the light he emanates is still dazzling.