Report of a pontificate

“He Reminds Me
of St. Augustine”
He is a theologian and a pastor all in one. He draws the crowds and makes people reflect. “But, above all, he knows that the question on which the Church stands or falls is that of Jesus.” A Vatican observer assesses the first three years of this pontificate.

edited by Roberto Fontolan

Sandro Magister is amongst the most authoritative and competent Vatican correspondents in Italy. He writes for the Italian weekly magazine, L’Espresso, but most importantly he is the author of the site www.chiesa, the website of the editorial group of the daily, La Repubblica, which counts more than ten thousand readers, half of whom live abroad. So he is the right person to make an assessment of the present pontificate, as it reaches the three-year mark.

On April 19th, Benedict XVI arrived on the scene…
Although Cardinal Ratzinger was not amongst the favorites in the world media, at the highest levels of the Church, his candidacy for the succession to John Paul II had been very clearly growing. In the run up to the election, some pertinent events had characterized the vigil of the handover, like his conference on April 1st evening in Subiaco on Europe and Christianity. John Paul II was dying, but Ratzinger did not miss this lecture, evidently because he believed it to be a message of great importance at that crucial moment. Previously, there had been the meditations he had written for the Good Friday Way of the Cross, a very powerful text. Then there was his presidency, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, of the meetings of the Cardinals, in preparation for the conclave: the mastery with which he guided those meetings won him wide consent. This was confirmed by the election, rapid and substantially without competitors. But this did not automatically mean a support of the same dimension, the same intensity. I perceive in the Church a rather tenuous consensus, today slightly stronger than at first.

What have been the fundamental steps over these three years?
Benedict XVI showed himself to the world immediately with a particular profile. He did not try to follow the expressive forms of his predecessor, but used a style of his own, which characterizes him as what he has always been–a theologian who has become Pope. In the history of the Church, it has not often happened. I think the first Pope who can be so defined (he himself spoke in these terms in a recent Wednesday audience) was Leo the Great. Benedict XVI uses his extraordinary theological competence not to impress academics or theological specialists, but to tell the simple people the great truths of the Christian faith, and without simplifying them. It is his fundamental trait. From this point of view, the question and answer format he uses with the priests and with the youth, including the First Communion children in St. Peter’s Square, is brilliant. The questions are anything but easy, and he has never given banal answers; his responses were always very effective and he offered very demanding arguments. He is a Pope who says extremely profound things and makes normal people sit up and think. This can be very easily verified; you just have to mix with the crowd while he is preaching, as I often do. The attention of the people is astounding; the words come over in a silence that is striking–apart from his voice, all that can be heard is the water in the fountains. They are there listening to what he says; the people expect his words to give them something important. A surprising fact about a Pope judged to be cold is that the attendance at his public audiences is very high, even more than for John Paul II.

How can you explain this popularity that is so unspectacular?
There is an autobiographical element. I am thinking of the catechesis on St. Augustine, in which Benedict XVI traced a profile that reproduces his own spiritual adventure. Here, he stressed that, after his conversion to Christianity, Augustine dreamed of retiring with some friends of his to a sort of monastic cenacle to dedicate himself totally to studies and contemplation, but he could not because he was appointed Bishop of Hippo… This to me seems like Ratzinger’s own life story! The professor who would have wanted to finish his days with years of silent study finds himself called to guide the universal Church. But, like Augustine, theologian and pastor, he tried to direct all his interior wealth and studies towards simple people. He knows perfectly well that there is a very strong demand from people, today a prey to great cultural disorientation in today’s mass-culture that shatters certainties and leads to bewilderment.

Do you see the reasons for so much hostility towards him in this?
They protest against him without discussing what he says. They sense that at times he says things that are too demanding, and so they refuse to discuss them; they even refuse to name them, to make them known. They close themselves up in prejudicial refusal of this “anti-modern” Pope. Not only does Benedict XVI deal with great themes that John Paul II had already anticipated (and I remember that he himself had been contested for a long time and only towards the end of his life was “adopted” by the press), but he shows how essential and how rooted in the capital questions of our time they are. He deals with everything, he shows how everything is important, that everything is connected. He speaks of God and of death–what could be more crucial? It is only by artifice that we can avoid discussing these things, and it is precisely artifice to ignore them, not to reproduce them, not to take them into account. But there is no contest: he is the one to decide over the success of his enemies. You just have to go into a bookshop. It’s a paradox.

The Pope and the great men of this world… How is his dialogue with the powerful?
Certainly, the immense authority gained by the Church with John Paul II has not lessened, even though Benedict XVI has not made “religious geopolitics” a key point of his pontificate. His most important addresses are not those to the diplomatic corps, neither when he receives ambassadors nor when he travels abroad. The vision he carries is rather different; it is more a vision of the theology of history than of geopolitics. From this point of view, he is more Augustinian than Thomist; his is the vision of Augustine’s City of God. The city of God is inextricably intertwined with the earthly city, indistinguishable in the pilgrim Church’s journey through time. In this world, in which everything is intertwined and mixed together, he awakens consciences so as to enable them to discern. The relationship with the exterior world is above all religious and cultural, not political in nature. Think of the relationship with Islamic countries. His thesis is that between religions, particularly between Christianity and Islam, the problem is not to attempt an impossible and unrealistic theological mediation; every religion has its own faith and must stick to it without compromise. Understanding must come instead on the terrain that is common to all, to whatever faith they belong–the great principles that are written in the hearts of all men, natural law, the ten commandments, or human rights. Call them what you like, but for him it is there that fruitful understanding can happen.

Two encyclicals, on charity and hope, with a third on the way… How do they mark the pontificate?
The two encyclicals are certainly the great pillars of his magisterial architecture. To this, I would add some of the major addresses: the address to the Roman Curia in December 2005, on the theme of the Church’s tradition; the address in Regensburg; and the one at La Sapienza University. These five steps are the essential nucleus of Benedict XVI’s thought (I have to say that I consider Spe Salvi a masterpiece). The journey is not complete, though, unless we include the book Jesus of Nazareth. To write a book about Jesus means to realize that the question of Jesus is really the question on which the Church stands or falls, that that Man is the center of everything. It means to know that the figure of Jesus is in danger, in the sense that, on one hand, there is a faith that tends to obscure His true identity (think of the protests aroused by Dominus Jesus, not outside the Church, but within), and, on the other hand, a manifest refusal. The Pope felt the dramatic urgency expressed in these attitudes. He wanted to tackle them head-on, presenting Jesus in His essentials. He did this with a book, a universal instrument that can reach everyone, without filtering and mediation. He knows very well that his teaching does not reach people so easily; take his Wednesday catecheses and his homilies: these are amazing in their beauty, but in fact they reach only a small audience.

One of the Pope’s great themes is religious freedom. We have to say that on this point the vast part of the world where there is an Islamic majority has not seen much improvement. And if we take Iraq, we have to speak of outright persecution…
The question is very serious, because we can be optimistically led astray by what is moving among scholars and religious leaders, for example with the “Letter of the 138 Scholars,” but on the ground the situation is much more worrying today than in previous times. For centuries, Christians have managed to survive in the Islamic world. Today, in some countries, there is a risk that Christianity may disappear altogether. Even the Church in some places is not completely aware of this; many people are distracted and detached. Not to mention the media and governments–there is a great mobilization for the Buddhist cause, and it is certainly right, but who is supporting the Christians?

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His work
in the Lord’s vineyard

by Paolo Perego

April 19, 2005. The College of Cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave to elect the new Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, at the third scrutiny. He takes the name of Benedict XVI.

August 18-21, 2005. His first journey: to Cologne, Germany, for the 20th World Youth Day. The Pope meets more than a million young people.

December 25, 2005. The first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.

May 25-28, 2006. Benedict XVI in Poland. In the land of his predecessor John Paul II, the Pope visits the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where he pauses in prayer.

September 9-14, 2006. Bavaria, Germany. The Pope’s return to his native land is not without protests. “Broaden reason” is the invitation he extends in his address at Regensburg University, but he is attacked by Islamic circles, just as he is ignored by the major part of the Western intellectual world. In Benedict XVI’s words is a courageous act of respect for reason, too long “imprisoned,” and an appeal to recuperate the correct use of it.

November 28-December 1, 2006. Visit to Turkey. The Pope participates in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy celebrated by the Patriarch Bartholomew I. He then visits the Blue Mosque, accompanied by the Grand Mufti.

February 22, 2007. Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis.

March 24, 2007. Meeting with the Movement of Communion and Liberation in St. Peter’s Square. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the pontifical recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, the Pope addresses the 100,000 people present: “I invite you to continue along this path, with a deep faith, personalized and solidly rooted in the living Body of Christ, the Church, which guarantees the contemporaneousness of Jesus among us.”
May 9-14, 2007. Journey to Brazil, on the occasion of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM).

October 7-9, 2007. The Pope goes to Austria on pilgrimage on the occasion of the 850th anniversary of the foundation of the Shrine of Mariazell.
November 30, 2007. Encyclical Spe Salvi.

January 15, 2008. Rome. Again, on the theme of reason, the address Benedict XVI was to give at La Sapienza University two days later was published. Forced by protests to cancel his visit, the Pope concluded his speech, saying, “It is the Pope’s task to safeguard sensibility to the truth; to invite reason to set out ever anew in search of what is true and good, in search of God.”

February 29, 2008. Meeting with the participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” for human and Christian promotion.