9781622824588

Benedict and Francis

Gerhard Cardinal Müller 

BENEDICT 

AND 

FRANCIS 

Their Ministry as Successors to Peter 

Translated by Michael J. Miller 

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS 

Manchester, New Hampshire

Original German edition: Benedikt und Franziskus: Ihr Dienst in der Nachfolge 

Petri: Zehn Jahre Papst Benedikt, copyright © 2015 by Verlag Herder GmbH, 

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. 

English translation copyright © 2017 by Michael J. Miller 

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. 

Cover design by Coronation Media. 

On the cover: Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis meet, September 28, 

2014, St. Peter’s Square (E818X9) © Realy Easy Star/Alamy Live News. 

Interior design by Perceptions Design Studio. 

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible — Second 

Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council 

of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. 

All rights reserved worldwide. 

Citations from Heinrich Denziger, Enchiridion Symbolorum (cited as DH), are 

taken from the 43rd edition, edited by Peter Hünermann (San Franciso: Ignatius 

Press, 2012). 

Citations from Vatican II documents are taken from Austin P. Flannery, ed., 

Documents of Vatican II (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1975). 

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted 

in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or 

otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a 

reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. 

Sophia Institute Press 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Names: Müller, Gerhard Ludwig, author. 

Title: Benedict and Francis : their ministry as successors to Peter / Gerhard 

Cardinal Müller; translated by Michael J. Miller. 

Other titles: Benedikt und Franziskus. English 

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2017. | 

Includes bibliographical references. | Petrine office 

Identifiers: LCCN 2017012271 | ISBN 9781622824588 (pbk. : alk. paper) 

Subjects: LCSH: Popes — Primacy. | Apostolic succession. | Benedict XVI, Pope, 

1927- | Francis, Pope, 1936- | Catholic Church — Doctrines. 

Classification: LCC BX1805 .M8513 2017 | DDC 262/.13 — dc23 

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012271 

First printing

Contents 

The Primacy of Peter in the 

Pontificate of Benedict XVI . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 

Truth and Freedom: What Does 

Laicity Mean for Christians? . . . . . . . . . . . 31 

Poverty as a Way of Evangelization: 

Reflections in the Spirit of Pope Francis . . . . . 63 

Theological Criteria for Ecclesial 

and Curial Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 

Tenth Anniversary of Pope Benedict. . . . . . . 109 

v

Benedict and Francis

The Primacy of Peter in the Pontificate of Benedict XVI 

The Primacy of Peter 

in the Pontificate 

of Benedict XVI 

Rome, Campo Santo, April 17, 2015 

3

On April 19, 2005, the Catholic world heard the 

unforgettable words from the Loggia [balcony] 

of Saint Peter’s Basilica: “Annuntio vobis gaudium 

magnum. Habemus Papam: Eminentissimum ac 

Reverendissimum Dominum Josephum Sanctae Romanae 

Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger.” The pontificate 

of Benedict XVI lasted almost eight years, until 

February 28, 2013. 

This is not the occasion to evaluate the place of 

this pontificate in Church history or to get involved 

in controversies that arise in evaluating any historical 

personage. Rather, it is a matter of asking theologically 

how our faith in Jesus Christ was promoted 

by Pope Benedict and how we were led to a deeper 

understanding of the whole mystery of salvation: the 

revelation of the Triune God and consequently of the 

Church’s mission in our time. 

5

Benedict and Francis 

Peter as the visible principle of unity 

The popes, as successors of Peter, are the visible head 

of the pilgrim Church, and as pastors and teachers of 

the Universal Church they are vicars of Jesus Christ, 

who, on account of the Incarnation, is inseparable 

from the Church, His Body. 

The cardinals are not the ones who confer authority 

to the newly elected pastor of the Universal 

Church. Therefore, neither does the Pope exercise 

his authority in the name of the Church, or of the 

College of Bishops, which he heads, or of the Roman 

Church, which, by means of the College of Cardinals 

and the dicasteries of the Roman Curia, shares 

responsibility for the Pope’s duties with regard to the 

Universal Church. The Pope answers to Jesus Christ 

alone and is supported in his universal ministry by 

the Church of Rome. Jesus Christ, the Lord and Head 

of His Church, is the sovereign; from Him proceeds 

all spiritual authority to govern, teach, and sanctify 

the people of God in the power of the Holy Spirit 

(cf. Lumen Gentium [LG] 20). The deliberations of 

the cardinals in the preconclave, along with their 

search for a suitable candidate and a coalition of votes 

6


forming a moral majority of more than two-thirds 

in the conclave, are only a prayer to God: “Show us 

whom you have chosen” (cf. Acts 1:24). 

Jesus Christ, the true Head of the Church, bestows 

on the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of the 

apostle Peter, the fullness of authority to represent 

Him visibly as the universal teacher and pastor in the 

pilgrim Church on earth. The sacred primacy belonging 

to the Bishop of Rome, with its infallible teaching 

authority, is nothing less than the actualization of 

the perpetual and visible principle and foundation 

of the unity of faith and the communion that Christ 

Himself instituted forever in the Church in the person 

of Saint Peter (cf. LG 18). The primacy of the 

Roman Church with its bishop is due not to a claim 

of superiority over other local churches or to some 

will to power cleverly organized over the centuries 

by the clergy in the capital of an empire, but rather 

to the foundational will of the Lord of the Church. 

Peter suffered martyrdom in Rome, and thus his primatial 

apostolate devolves upon the Church of Rome 

and consequently upon its visible head, the Bishop 

of Rome. The primacy of Peter did not flare up at 

7


some point over the real world as an ideal, only to 

grow dim over the course of history and increasingly 

lose its contour in history’s vicissitudes. In order to 

comprehend the nature and mission of the episcopal 

ministry and of the primacy, one must go beyond a 

naturalistic understanding of the Church as a legal 

assembly. The Church has its origin in God’s salvific 

will and is the instrument thereof. By its nature and 

mission it is not merely a religious assembly organized 

by men. The dualism between a supratemporal ideal 

image and its pale reflection in its historical realization 

must be overcome also. 

The one mediator, Christ, established and ever 

sustains here on earth his holy Church, the community 

of faith, hope and charity, as a visible 

organization through which he communicates 

truth and grace to all men. . . . This is the sole 

Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess 

to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which 

our Saviour, after his resurrection, entrusted to 

Peter’s pastoral care (Jn 21:17), commissioning 

him and the other apostles to extend and rule it 

8


(cf. Mt 28:18, etc.), and which he raised up for 

all ages as “the pillar and mainstay of the truth” 

(1 Tim 3:15). (LG 8) 

The Church as incarnate reality 

Only in terms of the Incarnation is the utter novelty 

of the Church revealed to us: it signifies the real and 

symbolic presence of the Lord. “Head and body: the 

one Christ and the whole Christ” (Augustine, Sermo 

341, 1). With this famous formula Augustine, the lifelong 

conversation partner and friend of the theologian 

Joseph Ratzinger, put the Pauline understanding of 

the Church in a nutshell. God is not merely an ideal 

of pure reason; neither did Christ merely found an 

ideal image of Church. The Second Divine Person assumed 

human nature, and by that very fact the visible 

communion of the disciples who followed Christ also 

became a sacrament that represents and concretely 

brings about the supernatural fellowship [Lebensgemeinschaft] 

of the faithful (cf. LG 8). 

This visible Church, led by the pope and the bishops 

in union with him, is the house and people of God, 

the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. 

9


Jesus called specific men by name, so as to give them a 

share in His mission and authority (see Mark 3:13–19). 

First in the list of the Twelve Apostles mentioned by 

name is the fisherman Simon, to whom Jesus gave the 

name Peter so as to indicate his permanent role in the 

Church. The Incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ, 

humbled Himself in the servile form of His human 

body, which was subject to the law of suffering and 

death. Part and parcel of this is also the risk of handing 

over His mission and authority to men who — trapped 

within the limitations of their individuality — may fail 

in office, become bogged down in mediocrity, and deny 

and betray their Lord. The dark sides of Church history 

and the moral failings even of many of the Church’s 

highest dignitaries do not justify, however, the retreat 

of the faithful into a purely otherworldly ideal Church 

or the rejection of the concrete Church by citing an 

alleged ideal image of the ancient Church that supposedly 

existed in an earlier historical period, or even 

the projection of a Church imagined according to one’s 

own image and likeness into a utopian future. 

Although Christ Himself remained free of sin, He 

suffered in His body and redeemed everything human 

10


that had been disfigured by sin. Christ, the Head of 

His Body, “loved the Church and gave himself up for 

her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her 

by the washing of water with the word, that he might 

present the Church to himself in splendor, without 

spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be 

holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25–27). 

The Church, in her sacramental holiness, which is 

not identical with the moral holiness of her members, 

is an effective sign of the redemption that has already 

been accomplished in Christ, but at the same time — in 

the sins and failings of her members — an indication 

of all humanity’s need for redemption in the past, the 

present, and the future. Therefore when a Catholic 

says, “Credo Ecclesiam [I believe the Church],” he does 

not mean a mystical, otherworldly, or utopian ideal image 

of Church, but rather the concrete Church that is 

“at once holy and always in need of purification” (LG 

8). The concrete Church “follows constantly the path 

of penance and renewal. The Church, ‘like a stranger 

in a foreign land, presses forward amid the persecutions 

of the world and the consolations of God,’ announcing 

the cross and death of the Lord until he comes” (LG 8). 

11


Anyone who becomes aware of the full import 

of salvation history and of the Incarnation will not 

be scandalized by the concrete historical form of the 

Church, which, as Pope Francis says, is not only splendid 

but also “dented.” He does not flee from the earthly 

Church into an abstract ideal that remains untouched 

by the dust and dirt of all-too-human behavior. We 

do not awaken from a beautiful dream only to be confronted 

with miserable reality. True piety does not 

dream but places itself bravely and joyfully at the service 

of redemption through Christ, who in His Body, 

the Church, walks through this real world, with its 

hope and joy, but also with its sin and disbelief. 

The historical development of the dogmas of 

ecclesiology, which includes a deeper understanding 

of the episcopal ministry and of the papal primacy, 

does not appear in retrospect as a conglomerate of 

heterogeneous elements that were cobbled together 

by an ideology of power and special interest. It was 

instead the intellectual-conceptual and existential 

[lebensmässige] unfolding of what is contained in the 

revealed faith in the Mystery of the Church, so that 

the Church can carry out her mission in ever-new 

12


societal circumstances and in the challenges of intellectual 

and cultural history. 

The Petrine ministry as a personal commission 

All the words commissioning and sending Simon Peter 

that Jesus spoke during His earthly life and work are 

spoken personally in each era to the successors of the 

first of the apostles on the Chair of Peter. Simon, the 

fisherman from the Sea of Gennesaret, was a historical 

man, not an ideal artistic figure. This concrete, individual 

man with his heritage and life history, with human 

strengths and weaknesses, becomes the instrument of 

grace, the servant of the Word, and the eyewitness of 

the crucified and risen Lord, who promised to remain 

always with the Church until the end of the world. 

Once near Caesarea Philippi, Peter summarized the 

Church’s profession of faith, which is derived from the 

revelation by the Father, as follows: “You are the Christ, 

the Son of the living God!” Thereupon he hears for 

himself and for his successors the promise and the commission: 

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock 

I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall 

not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the 

13


kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:16, 18–19). Jesus asks 

the whole company of disciples who they think He is, 

and Peter answers in his person for all of them. And 

Jesus addresses the whole Church in the person of Peter. 

In the Cenacle on the night before His death, as 

the ultimate fate of all mankind is being decided, Jesus 

says to Peter: “And when you have turned again, 

strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32). He, the Son, 

has prayed to the Father with infallible efficacy that 

Peter’s faith might not fail and consequently that Peter, 

after his conversion, might strengthen his brothers 

and sisters in their faith in Christ, the Son of the 

living God, the Word of God made flesh. 

The risen Lord reveals Himself to the disciples at 

the Sea of Tiberias. Three times he asks Peter whether 

he loves Him more than these do. Peter is sad to be 

reminded in this way of his failure and denial in the 

courtyard of the high priest’s house. But this relationship 

to Jesus in unconditional trust and unlimited love, 

even unto martyrium — witness by his word and by his 

life — bestows on Peter a unique authority for the Universal 

Church. Jesus says to him three times: “Feed my 

lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17). 

14


In Peter the popes carry out the pastoral ministry of 

Christ, who came to lay down His life for His sheep. 

Vatican I, in keeping with the entire Tradition, formulates 

it as follows: “Therefore, whoever succeeds Peter 

in this chair, according to the institution of Christ 

himself, holds Peter’s primacy over the whole Church” 

(DH 3057). 

All three ecclesiological munera, or offices, that 

describe the nature of Peter’s primacy are accompanied 

by references to the human limits of Simon Peter, 

whether the fact that he tries to separate Jesus’ 

Messiahship from His suffering in the form of a slave, 

or the fact that when his life and reputation are at 

risk he publicly evades professing his faith in Jesus, 

the Son of the living God. 

Again and again, non-Catholic exegesis has tried 

to see a relativization of the promise of primacy in 

the rebuke of Peter and of his denial, or else in the 

incident in Antioch when Paul opposed Peter because 

the latter was wrong about the practical consequences 

of the fellowship of the circumcised and the uncircumcised 

(cf. Gal. 2:11). If that were the case, one 

would also have to assume that Christ had allowed 

15


Himself to be deceived in His choice of His apostles 

or that reality had caught up with His ideal notions, as 

though He had failed miserably in founding a Church 

as God’s house for all nations. 

“But why did Christ in his divine power and omniscience 

not choose the wise, the strong, the highly 

regarded to be his apostles, bishops, and popes?” we 

of little faith ask all too humanly, and we get the answer 

from Paul: “So that no flesh might boast in the 

presence of God” (1 Cor. 1:29). But in keeping with 

God’s grace, the apostles are like master builders of 

God’s house, which once and for all has its foundation 

on Christ. Those who come after the apostles should 

take care how they continue to build upon it — with 

gold and silver, precious stones, or with wood, hay, and 

straw (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10ff.). The last word about another 

person, and even about a pope, belongs to no one but 

God, for He alone judges rightly and justly. Everyone 

should collaborate in building up the kingdom of God, 

each according to the measure of the grace and natural 

talent he has received. Only in God’s tribunal is judgment 

passed on our work as “God’s fellow workers” (1 

Cor. 3:9) and “fellow workers in the truth” (3 John 8). 

16


Thus we can understand every pontificate of a pope 

as a stretch of Church history, as a specific realization 

of the permanent Petrine primacy — mediated 

through the personality of him who has been called 

by God Himself to build up His house. 

Religiously and theologically speaking, it makes 

little sense to compare the individual persons on the 

Chair of Peter and their pontificates with one another 

according to worldly criteria. The decisive thing is the 

relation to the primacy of Peter, which must be the 

measure and guide of every pope. For, strictly speaking, 

every pope is the successor of Peter and not just 

of his chronological predecessor. 

Joseph Ratzinger — Pope Benedict XVI 

One important characteristic of the pontificate of 

Benedict XVI was his extraordinary theological talent. 

By this I mean not simply skills resulting from 

his professorial activity, but the great originality of 

his theology on the most important themes of the 

doctrine of the Faith. What is true of every Christian 

in general is true also about popes in particular: the 

most varied charisms are given by the Spirit of God 

17


so that they might benefit others, and thus the Body 

of Christ is built up in the knowledge and love of 

God. Thus, in the collaboration of its members, the 

whole Body grows toward the fullness of Christ, so as 

to become the perfect man. Let him who has received 

the gift of teaching teach! — “in proportion to our 

faith” (Rom. 12:6–7). 

This analogy of faith, the insight into the inner 

connection between revealed truth and the goal of 

salvation for every person, is based on the analogy of 

being, that is, on the truth-capability of created reason 

also, which recognizes in what really exists in the 

world the esse, verum, et bonum [being, the true, and 

the good], which in turn are the mirror and likeness 

of God’s reason and love. On the basis of the analogia 

entis, theology is possible as the science of revealed 

faith according to the analogia fidei. 

Theological knowledge does not cater to the intellectual 

curiosity that preens in the private club of 

a few specialists and delights in its own intelligence. 

Without the constant exchange with theology, as it 

has been developed by the Fathers of the Church and 

by the great theologians of the Middle Ages and the 

18


modern era in a wide variety of schools, the Magisterium 

could not live up to its responsibility. For the 

Church’s Magisterium testifies to the revealed Faith of 

the Church in the Creed, the auditus fidei [the hearing 

of the faith], whereas the intellectual presentation 

thereof is accomplished rationally and conceptually, 

so that the intrinsic reasonableness of the entire depositum 

fidei comes to light in theological reflection 

and becomes fruitful in preaching and pastoral care. 

Certainly, in its authority the Magisterium, as an 

authentic witness to revelation by virtue of the assistance 

of the promised Holy Spirit, is superior to 

academic theology, but at the same time it makes use 

of the latter out of an inner necessity. The Pope and 

bishops can correctly and completely teach and present 

for belief only those things and all those things 

that are contained in God’s historical revelation. As 

for the linguistic and conceptual form, however: “The 

Roman Pontiff and the bishops, by reason of their office 

and the seriousness of the matter, apply themselves 

with zeal to the work of enquiring by every suitable 

means into this revelation and of giving apt expression 

to its contents; they do not, however, admit any new 

19


public revelation as pertaining to the divine deposit of 

faith” (LG 25). For the Pope and the bishops, unlike 

Peter and the other apostles, are not personally bearers 

of revelation. Nor do they receive any inspiration, as 

the authors of Sacred Scripture did; rather, they are 

bound by the testimony of the word of God in Scripture 

and Tradition. In truly handing on the Faith in 

their teaching office, however, they enjoy the assistance 

of the Holy Spirit (assistentia Spiritus Sancti). 

Even Peter in his first letter, an “Encyclical,” exhorted 

Christians and especially priests and bishops to 

have an answer ready for anyone who asks about the 

“Logos of hope” (cf. 1 Pet. 3:15) that is ours through 

faith in Christ the Lord, “the Shepherd and Guardian 

of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:25). 

A major theme of Joseph Ratzinger, not only as a 

theologian but also as the Prefect of the Congregation 

for the Doctrine of the Faith and as the Pope, 

with different responsibilities in each instance, was 

to point out the intrinsic connection between faith 

as hearing and as understanding, between the auditus 

fidei and the intellectus fidei. Here the faith is not 

measured by an external standard and subjected to a 

20


criterion that is foreign to it, as in the rationalistic 

concept of reason that is reduced to feasibility. One 

cannot study philosophy, history and the social sciences 

more geometrico [in a geometric fashion]. Faith 

as enlightenment by the light of Christ (lumen fidei) 

is, instead, reasonable in itself, in keeping with the 

Logos of God — a rationabile obsequium [rational worship] 

(cf. Rom. 12:1). To academic theology belongs 

the task of mediating between the knowledge of God 

in faith and the knowledge of the world through natural 

reason (lumen naturale), as it is presented in the 

natural sciences and the humanities, so that in the 

consciousness of believers the truths of the faith and 

natural knowledge do not fall apart but, rather, form 

a new synthesis in every age. 

Of course one cannot reduce the entire work of 

a pontificate to a single priority, and anyway it is 

reserved to God alone to judge the fruitfulness of it. 

But the theological elaboration of the intrinsic unity 

and interdependence of faith and reason is nevertheless 

one aspect that lends a particular character to 

the pontificate of Benedict XVI. Faith and reason 

are not mutually limiting or mutually exclusive but 

21


rather serve the perfection of man in God and in His 

Word, which assumed our flesh, and in His Spirit, 

who reveals the most profound being and life of God: 

God is love, as the great Encyclical Deus caritas est 

explains. 

So we can say: Benedict XVI was one of the great 

theologians on the Chair of Peter. In the long series 

of his predecessors a comparison suggests itself with 

the outstanding scholarly figure of the eighteenth 

century, Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758). Likewise 

one will think of Pope Leo the Great (440–461), who 

formulated the decisive insight for the Christological 

profession of the Council of Chalcedon (451). In the 

long years of his academic work as a professor of fundamental 

and dogmatic theology, Benedict XVI accomplished 

independent theological work that places 

him in the ranks of the most important theologians 

of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For more 

than fifty years the name Joseph Ratzinger has stood 

for an original comprehensive outline of systematic 

theology. His writings combine scholarly knowledge 

of theology with the living form of the Faith. As a 

science that has its genuine place within the Church, 

22


theology can show us the special destiny of man as 

God’s creature and image. 

In his scholarly works, Benedict XVI could always 

fall back on a marvelous knowledge of theological 

and dogmatic history, which he conveyed in such a 

way that God’s vision of man, which supports everything, 

comes to light. This is made accessible to 

many people by Joseph Ratzinger’s use of [Umgang 

mit] words and language. Complex subjects are not 

made incomprehensible to the average reader by a 

complicated presentation; instead these matters are 

made transparent, revealing their inner simplicity. 

The point is always that God wants to speak to every 

person, and His Word becomes a light that enlightens 

every man (cf. John 1:9). 

Faith and reason 

To point out only one of the groundbreaking theological 

speeches of the Pope, I would like to mention the 

Regensburg Lecture from the year 2006. In it Benedict 

XVI once again emphasized the intrinsic connection 

between faith and reason. Neither reason nor 

faith can be thought of independently of the other 

23


and still achieve its real purpose. Reason and faith 

are protected from dangerous pathologies by mutual 

correction and purification. Benedict XVI thereby 

connects with the great tradition of the theological 

sciences, which, in the overall structure of the university, 

can prove to be the element that binds everything 

together. 

The encyclical Fides et ratio by John Paul II comes 

to mind whenever there is a discussion of the tragic 

developments in European intellectual life. In nominalism 

a voluntaristic picture of God had developed. 

In order to remove God entirely from the reach of our 

metaphysical reason, He was thought of as sheer will, 

which man must accept in blind obedience, without 

any possibility of understanding Him rationally. In 

opposition to Him, man had to declare his autonomy 

so as to ensure his freedom. Modern atheism as humanism 

without or against God has one of its roots 

in a theological aberration. But if God Himself is reason 

and will, word and love, then the knowledge of 

God and our understanding of the world, nature and 

grace, reason and freedom do not come into conflict 

but rather prove to be the expression of the personal 

24


communion of God and man in Jesus Christ, the Godman. 

God is not man’s rival, but rather the fulfillment 

of all searching for truth and for the perfection of man 

in freedom as love and self-gift [Hingabe]. 

The figure of Jesus of Nazareth 

The fortunate combination of the Pope as the universal 

teacher of the Faith with the theological thinker 

Joseph Ratzinger probably appears most convincingly 

in his three-volume work, Jesus of Nazareth. 

As the successor of Peter, the Pope professes the 

revealed truth, which goes beyond natural reason, 

that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of the 

living God. The theologian Ratzinger, based on his 

lifelong study of the question of Jesus in historical 

criticism, has at his disposal the intellectual means 

of making very clear, that is, of communicating intellectually 

the consistency and inner truth of the fact, 

that the Jesus of history is identical with the Divine 

Word made flesh who is recognized in faith. 

Joseph Ratzinger’s lifework culminates in his book 

on Jesus. With his three volumes on Jesus he has stimulated 

a vigorous discussion about Jesus of Nazareth, 

25


whom Christians profess as the universal Savior and 

the sole Mediator between God and mankind. In this 

individual man, Jesus of Nazareth, God definitively 

and irreversibly made the historical coincidence of divine 

revelation and human self-surrender to the Father 

become a concrete event. Hence we profess with the 

Church that Jesus is the Christ, in whom it becomes 

possible for mankind to experience the historical salvific 

presence of God. He is the one who accomplishes the 

Father’s will and wishes to lead all mankind along the 

way to the knowledge of the truth (cf. 1 Tim. 2:4–5). 

In the New Testament we find the formation of 

the apostolic Church’s profession of faith, which is 

achieved in the living faith of the disciples; this faith 

originated in the encounter with Jesus of Nazareth as 

a historical person, with the words of His preaching 

of the kingdom of God, and in the experience of His 

death and Resurrection from the dead. In the event 

on Easter morning and in light of God’s self-revelation 

in His Son, the believer meets with a person 

who is his Creator and Perfecter: Jesus Christ is the 

Lord whom we profess in faith, the Lord and Head 

of His Church. 

26


In its epilogue, the Gospel of John mentions the 

justification for its composition and for the Church’s 

entire witness to the Faith in Scripture and Tradition, 

so as to oppose all attempts to read the Gospel as a 

simple historical biography. The purpose is not merely 

to give information about a person, but rather it was 

written “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, 

the Son of God, and that believing you may have life 

in his name” (John 20:30–31). 

This look at the six decades of intensive intellectual 

and scholarly penetration of the various themes 

of Christology in the theological work of Joseph Ratzinger 

brings to light the continuity of his thought. 

His long wrestling with the figure of Jesus, which he 

himself formulates in the first volume of the trilogy 

on Jesus can be traced through his writings. From the 

very beginning he asks himself the question: “Who is 

Jesus of Nazareth” — for men, for the world? 1 

1 

Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 

trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 

2007), 6. 

27


He decisively opposes an attitude of skepticism 

that considers God incapable of revealing himself definitively, 

and he shows a fine sense of the ideological 

constraints that may monopolize people’s attention. 

With the clarity that can be derived from the 

Church’s profession of faith, he develops from historical 

findings and the Gospel accounts an inviting overall 

view of Jesus of Nazareth that stimulates further 

reflection. On the basis of the historically consolidated 

formulations of the Christological dogmas, as 

they were formulated in the great ecumenical councils 

of Nicaea and Chalcedon, Joseph Ratzinger develops 

his approaches to Christology and to Catholic 

theology as a whole, which now are being presented 

synoptically in the sixteen volumes of his Collected 

Works in German [Gesammelte Schriften]. 

Finally, in looking to the crucified and risen Lord 

Jesus, man finds his ultimate fulfillment in the one 

“whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and 

sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30), “in whom 

are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” 

(Col. 2:3). Until the second coming of Christ, Peter 

unites the many disciples in their profession of the 

28


one Faith: You are Christ, the Son of the living God. 

This is the mission of the papacy for the Church and 

for the world. 

The primacy — quotations and thoughts 

In the Decretum Gelasianum, some parts of which go 

back to a set of documents compiled by Pope Damasus 

I (366–384), the primacy of the Roman Church 

(i.e., of the pope with the clergy and the people) is 

justified not politically by the rank of the capital and 

residential cities of the Roman Empire, but rather in 

strictly ecclesiological terms; it is derived Christologically 

from the authority of the Lord of the Church: 

After [all these] prophetic and evangelical and 

apostolic writings [which we have set forth 

above], on which the Catholic Church by the 

grace of God is founded, we have thought this 

(fact) also ought to be published, namely, that, 

although the universal Catholic Church spread 

throughout the world is the one bridal chamber 

of Christ, nevertheless the holy Roman Church 

has not been preferred to the other Churches 

29


by reason of synodal decrees, but she has obtained 

the primacy by the evangelical voice of 

the Lord and Savior, saying: You are Peter, and 

on this rock I will build my Church. (DH 350) 

The conviction that Jesus Christ, the Head of the 

Church speaks in Peter to each of his successors “day 

in and day out” (Sermo III, 3) the words: “You are Peter 

and on this rock I will build my Church,” and that 

in every pope, even if he should be personally unworthy, 

Peter professes on behalf of the whole Church: 

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is 

expressed poignantly by Pope Leo the Great in a solemn 

sermon “On the Anniversary of His Elevation 

to the Pontificate”: “Just as what Peter believed about 

Christ is always valid, so too what Christ instituted in 

Peter continues forever” (Sermo III, 2). And therefore 

this feast is celebrated with the right disposition “if 

everyone sees and honors in my person the one (i.e., 

Peter) who eternally unites in himself the concerns of 

all pastors with his custody over the sheep entrusted 

to him and even in the case of an unworthy successor 

loses none of his dignity” (Sermo III, 4). 

30

What Does Laicity Mean for Christians? 

Truth and Freedom: 

What Does Laicity 

Mean for Christians? 

Paris, Académie Catholique de France, 

March 26, 2015 

31

As a child and a youth in the postwar period, I 

had the good fortune and the grace to grow 

up in the young democracy of the Federal Republic 

of Germany. The stories our grandparents told 

about the First World War and our fathers told about 

the National Socialist dictatorship and the horrors 

of World War II were ever present in our mind and 

imagination. We were shaped and positively attuned 

to the future, however, by other events and images. 

I am thinking about the meeting between Konrad 

Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle in the cathedral in 

Rheims, when the representatives of the two states 

extended their hands to each other — a symbol of 

reconciliation, which should be understood most 

profoundly as an expression of a Christian way of 

thinking. Hereditary enmity and rivalry are no longer 

the keys to a common house of Europe and for the 

33


worldwide family of nations, but rather friendship and 

trust. I like to remember the German-French youthexchange 

program in which I participated with our 

whole class in Alsace. We experienced and learned 

that different languages and cultures do not alienate 

us, but rather enrich us, and they can bring about a 

happy sense of expanding one’s intellectual horizons. 

The intellectual cosmos of Catholic life is unimaginable 

without French history, literature, philosophy, and 

theology. Henri Blondel, Étienne Gilson, Henri de 

Lubac, Yves Congar, Louis Bouyer, and Jean Daniélou 

became friends of mine who accompanied my journey 

as a European citizen and a Catholic Christian. 

The Christian faith does not alienate us from life 

and modern culture. In the encounter with Jesus Christ, 

who proclaimed the kingdom of God and made it real 

through His Cross and Resurrection, God reveals Himself 

as the origin and goal of every man. The mystery 

of man is truly elucidated only in the mystery of the 

Incarnate Word (cf. Gaudium et spes [GS] 22). Faith 

in the transcendent God (“Glory to God in the highest”) 

and responsibility for the immanent world (“peace 

on earth”) intrinsically belong together in Christ, the 

34


God-man. The hope that there will be justice in eternal 

life for the victims of injustice and violence obliges 

Christians to serve the poor and to work for peace and 

justice in this world. Wholehearted love for God and 

love of neighbor as oneself are the heart of Christian 

life (see Mark 12:29–31). The God of truth guarantees 

and promotes human freedom, which is perfected in 

love. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my 

disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth 

will make you free” (John 8:31–32). 

Lessons from history 

The political ideologies of National Socialism and 

Communism — the latter did not fall in Eastern Europe 

until 1989 — taught us that opposition to the 

truth is not the humble search for it, but rather a lie 

that destroys the trust that is necessary as the foundation 

of every society. And freedom is far more than 

the absence of compulsion and force, or even the 

opportunity to follow my impulses and interests exclusively. 

True freedom is freedom for the good and 

liberation for an unconditional commitment to the 

good. In every truth that is acknowledged, God is 

35


implicitly acknowledged, and in every good that is 

done, a person aims at God’s goodness. Freedom presupposes 

the internal and external possibility of living 

according to one’s conscience, doing good for its own 

sake, and not obeying immoral and criminal orders. 

We must draw two lessons from the catastrophes 

of the twentieth century that were brought on by the 

relativization of truth and morality and the absolutization 

of state, nationality, and race: 

1. The inalienable dignity, the essential equality, 

and the rights and duties of all men must 

always be respected. 

2. As understood by social justice, a share in the 

earth’s resources and in cultural goods must 

be made possible for all men (cf. GS 39). 

From these it follows that ethical principles must be 

universally valid and must never be subordinated to 

the interests of a nation, a class, or a religious or ideological 

group. 

Based on our experience, first with the mentality 

that favored the authoritative state in Prussia 

and then with two misanthropic, godless dictatorships, 

we in Germany are skeptical about any form 

36


of governmental omnipotence. The state is relatively 

necessary for the common good. Nevertheless in its 

legislative, executive, and judicial authority it must 

never claim absolute control over the intellectual 

and moral life of the citizens. The state is not above 

the conscience of its citizens, and it is not above the 

natural moral law. It is not the master of its citizens, 

and it does not own the land. The state exists for 

persons and for society. It has to regulate the temporal 

concerns of its citizens and guarantee respect 

for fundamental human rights. Conversely, a societal 

group must not take control of the state in order to 

favor a prevailing ideology through the opportunities 

offered by school education, university formation, 

or the news media. State control of the mainstream 

media not only betrays a mentality in favor of the 

authoritative state, but also contradicts the human 

right to objective information and freedom of opinion. 

People must not suffer discrimination and restriction 

of their civil freedoms merely because they 

oppose a momentarily dominant ideology. 

The modern democratic state, which on the basis 

of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience 

37


faces a pluralistic society, not only acknowledges the 

individual citizen as a partner, but also must develop 

a partnership with the religious and civic groups in 

civil society. Since man is a social being, freedom of 

religion too can never be interpreted in a merely individual 

sense, but necessarily has a social component. 

Therefore one inviolable human right is people’s freedom 

to join together in a religious community with a 

common profession of their fundamental intellectual 

and moral principles, with common public worship 

and an independently drawn-up constitution for the 

community. These individuals must not be forbidden 

to participate in public life on an equal footing, and 

the state must recognize their activity for the common 

good. The state cannot make Christianity or Islam or 

any other community the state religion, nor can it 

officially adopt agnosticism or atheism and relegate 

dissenters to the status of a merely tolerated minority. 

This is a matter of genuine equal treatment. If it 

favors one, it inevitably disadvantages the others. The 

creed of the nineteenth-century liberals and socialists, 

whose ethics and teaching about the state were 

directed toward the interests of their own class, along 

38


with twentieth-century forms of political absolutism, 

consolidated in the axiom: Religion is a private matter. 

That statement, however, fundamentally contradicts 

individual and social human rights. What right does a 

citizen have to say: “My view of the world is scientifically 

superior to yours; I consider you less enlightened 

than myself, and therefore my hermeneutical and ethical 

principles will define public life in politics, science, 

public life, and culture”? What group has the right to 

decree, “The place for our opinions is the public forum, 

and the place for your intellectual and moral convictions 

is your private residence. Behind the walls of 

your church you can say what you like, but the street 

in front of the church belongs to us”? 

Since the eighteenth century there has been a 

peculiar restriction of the acknowledgment of truth, 

while agnosticism has been made into an absolute. Is 

it possible, though, to prove philosophically that human 

reason as a matter of principle is incapax infiniti, 

incapable of grasping the infinite? How can anyone 

try a priori to rule out the possibility that finite, created 

reason can be elevated by God to participate in 

His reason through the mediation of His Word, which 

39


became flesh? It is the nature of reason to be ordered 

to truth, and it is part of the dynamic of freedom to 

be united with the good in love. No one can take 

from the Church the freedom to bear witness and to 

testify publicly: “Grace and truth came through Jesus 

Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten 

Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made 

him known” (John 1:17–18). 

The dramatist Lessing, with his parable of the 

ring [in the comedy Nathan the Wise] did not prove 

that there can be no sure knowledge of revelation 

and that religions can therefore have only moral and 

humanitarian, i.e., functional usefulness. He merely 

illustrated his agnostic position without proving its 

universal validity. Kant by no means disproved once 

and for all the possibility of metaphysics, but only 

pinpointed the impossibility of bridging the gap between 

rationalism and empiricism. Feuerbach, who 

considered faith in God to be a projection that alienates 

man from his nature, overlooked the fact that 

the events of historical revelation are not derived 

idealistically from the individual and collective consciousness 

of believers, and consequently his whole 

40


argument just begs the question. Auguste Comte’s 

law of three stages is his subjective schema with 

which he tries to brand intellectual history, without 

taking into account the spontaneity of philosophical 

knowledge, which is qualitatively different from 

the knowledge of empirical things. Nor is religion by 

any means — Marx and Lenin notwithstanding — the 

“opium of the people.” 

Religion, the worship of God, the Creator and Father 

of all men, is instead the most profound source for 

the humanity and respect of our neighbor as a brother 

or a sister, in whose sufferings and needs Christ Himself 

meets me. Respect for freedom of religion and 

freedom of conscience forbids legal discrimination 

against or persecution of citizens with equal rights 

who belong to a particular religious community or to 

Christ’s Church. The state is not religious or atheistic; 

rather it must be neutral with regard to worldviews. 

The modern state does not govern civil society as an 

authoritative state, but rather ensures the free space 

for the involvement of its citizens and free associations. 

For this reason it must not only ensure the equal 

treatment of religious communities and associations 

41


that represent a worldview, but must also promote the 

constructive involvement of its citizens for the benefit 

of society in all areas. 

Laicism and laicity 

Someone who does not come from the Romance culture 

in Belgium, France, or Italy has difficulties at first 

with a laicist worldview of the state, which declares 

itself to be the supreme norm of public discourse and 

consequently makes itself absolute vis-à-vis pluralistic, 

free society. In Germany, this term and the concept 

of the state behind it cannot be translated literally. 

“Separation of church and state” has no hostile undertone 

there, but rather means mutual respect for 

the different responsibilities and consequently cooperation 

— for instance, in education and in the field 

of social services and charitable works. The common 

goal is the common good. If a school or a hospital that 

is owned privately or even by the Church is partially 

financed by tax revenues, the ones who are acting 

generously are not the politicians, but the citizens, 

who with their taxes help to support the institutions 

that benefit everyone. 

42


In Europe we face the challenge of rethinking the 

various traditions for determining the relationship 

between the state and the Church or the non-Christian 

religious communities. The ideological power struggle 

over the European Constitution, in which the 

mere mention of the religious and Christian roots of 

European culture was rejected by so-called laicism, 

must not be repeated. It is always a sign of ideological 

narrow-mindedness when historical facts are denied. 

All the citizens in a pluralistic society should participate 

on an equal footing, and on this basis we must 

find a constructive relation of states to communities 

of believers or of persons who share a worldview. 

The laicity of the state needs a new, positive definition 

if society is not to be robbed of the intellectual, 

moral, and charitable resources that come from man’s 

religious predisposition and from the historical religions. 

For citizens cannot be compelled by state laws 

to embrace moral principles and to practice solidarity 

if people’s consciences are not formed by moral philosophy 

(“the categorical imperative”) and religion 

(“I am the Lord, thy God. Thou shalt . . .”) in such a 

way that they acknowledge the fundamental moral 

43


law: good must always be done for its own sake, and 

evil must be avoided unconditionally. 

The concept laikos (First Letter of Clement 40, 5) 

in the Christian context has had a positive meaning 

from the beginning. The layman is the Christian as 

citizen of the kingdom of God and member of the 

household in the Lord’s family, as believer in Christ 

and person filled with God’s Spirit who enjoys “the 

glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). 

Through faith and Baptism, Christians have been 

included in the People of God. The doctrine of the 

common royal priesthood emphasizes the equal dignity 

of all baptized persons as well as their duty to 

testify by word and deed to God’s universal salvific 

will for all men and to proclaim the Gospel (see 1 

Pet. 2:5, 9). 

The Church as the communion of salvation in 

Christ, the High Priest of the New Covenant and the 

bearer of hope for every man, is not divided thereby 

into two classes, so that a few from the company of 

disciples are appointed shepherds by Christ Himself 

and lead the pilgrim People of God to meet the Christ 

who is to come. The whole Church, as one salvific 

44


communion in Christ, is the sacrament of salvation 

for the world (see LG 1). 

The faithful (priests, religious, and laity) are citizens 

of the one People of God, and the clergy are 

holders of a sacred authority for the entire Church; a 

note of opposition crept into this ecclesially defined 

view when societal and political developments were 

superimposed on the theological terminology. Think 

of the educational offensive of the Carolingian Renaissance. 

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, 

the intellectual achievements of the Greco-Roman 

culture and the great patristic heritage were preserved 

chiefly in the cloisters and passed on to the empires 

that arose after the barbarian invasions. Bishops in 

governmental service, monks and priests in cathedral 

and monastic schools and in the later universities of 

the High Middle Ages were responsible for education 

and science, while “layman” became the designation 

for the uneducated. Over the long term this resulted 

in a drive to emancipate the laity from the educational 

monopoly of the clergy. From the fifteenth century 

onward, this was connected with a certain anticlericalism. 

The Protestant Reformation considered itself to 

45


be the rediscovery of the dignity of the layman (“We 

are all priests in like manner”), and by way of its anticlerical, 

anti-Roman sentiment it was able to make 

its concerns plausible to a broad populace. In contrast, 

the Catholic Church in the Tridentine Reform 

strengthened the hierarchical structure of the Church. 

A political form of anticlericalism first developed 

against the papal universal monarchy in temporal matters 

in the Investiture Controversy in Germany. In 

France the tendency to set the state over the Church 

began symbolically with the attempt by Guillaume de 

Nogaret, the Chancellor of King Philip IV, to arrest 

the Pope in Anagni (September 7, 1303). This was 

supposed to break the political power of the clergy 

and to subject the Church to the state. The Church 

became an instrument of absolutism. The Edict of 

Fontainebleau (1685), with which King Louis XIV 

revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had called for 

tolerance, was not only an act of violence against the 

religious liberty of the Reformed Christians but also 

an abuse of the Catholic Faith, which was forced to 

serve the ideology of France’s absolutist unity (“State 

religion”: un roi, une loi, une foi [one king, one law, 

46


one faith]). The Declaration of the Rights of Man 

and of the Citizen (1789) and the 1791 Constitution 

could only be welcomed as a victory over the religious 

persecution of minorities, even though they were later 

thwarted during the Jacobin Reign of Terror. The anticlericalism 

of the French Revolution was aimed at the 

religious and Christian trimmings of state absolutism, 

but it maintained the absolute character of the state 

and even heightened it, because it no longer recognized 

any higher moral authority to which rulers had 

to answer in conscience. 

The liberal anticlericalism in the nineteenth century 

saw its mission as the exploitation of state and 

culture to liberate enlightened citizens, the “nonclerics” 

— precisely the “laity” — from “rule by priests” 

and “religiously caused ignorance of the masses.” The 

secularization of Church property, the disbanding of 

cloisters and monasteries, keen supervision of pastoral 

work and preaching by state officials, and a constitutional 

oath as a prerequisite for pastoral activity were 

considered a boon for mankind by those who were 

politically responsible for the culture wars in Italy and 

Germany and by the champions of the laicist laws 

47


establishing the Separation of Church and State in 

France (1905) and in other countries. In how many 

formerly Christian states of Europe did laicism lead 

to the open persecution of Christians — and even to 

the plan to eradicate Christianity and above all the 

Catholic Church? 

What a transformation: from the originally positive 

concept of the layman as someone called to be a citizen 

in the kingdom of God, to laicism as an ideological-political 

movement fighting against the Church! 

Both within the Church and in the Church’s relations 

with the non-Christian world, we must overcome the 

harmful battle between clericalism and laicism, which 

has been and still is responsible for so many infringements 

of freedom of conscience and for violations of 

human dignity. Society, politics, and culture need to 

be de-ideologized and liberated from the mania of dividing 

people into the categories of revolutionary and 

reactionary, right and left, liberal and conservative, 

and so forth. Ideologies always aim to marginalize their 

alleged opponents. Faith and reason, nevertheless, are 

founded on the recognition of the dignity of the other 

and of his otherness, and they motivate us to solidarity 

48


and to common action for the common good. Mere 

tolerance as mortar binding the individuals in a pluralistic 

society is not enough. Much more is required: willingness 

to understand the other and preexistence (being 

for others) (Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and the cooperation 

of everyone for peace between nations, for the freedom 

of every person, and for the political and economic 

participation of millions of poor people in the material 

and spiritual goods that belong to mankind as a whole. 

Church and State according 

to the Second Vatican Council 

In the gradual development of a positive definition 

of the laicity of the state, the Second Vatican Council 

has epochal significance. The great challenges of 

the present and the future confronting all mankind 

cannot be met with a continuation of the ruinous 

ideological trench-fighting of the past. 

First of all, within the Church the connotation 

of merely passive membership in the Church that 

has been associated with the term layman since the 

early Middle Ages has been overcome. The Decree on 

the Apostolate of the Laity Apostolicam actuositatem 

49


adopts the new overall approach to ecclesiology and 

puts it into concrete terms. The wider context is, as 

the Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium elaborates, 

an understanding of the Church in the mystery 

of God’s universal salvific will and thus also the depiction 

of the Church as the People of God, as the Body 

of Christ and the Temple of the Spirit, as sacrament of 

the most intimate union of men with God and sacrament 

of the unity of mankind. The special ministry of 

bishop, priest, and deacon — in contrast to the participation 

of all in the Church’s overall mission — is 

justified not functionally (in the Protestant sense) 

but rather sacramentally (in the Catholic sense). It 

is a matter of carrying out one mission with various 

forms of authority and charismatic gifts. 

In connection with our topic, however, we must 

now turn to the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, 

which essentially was prepared by French theologians. 

In it the Council addresses all people of goodwill, 

including atheists, to offer them an honest dialogue 

about the momentous topics of peace and war, about 

the immense potential of science and technology, and 

about the future of the human family. And no one 

50


can look away when people are starving, deprived of 

their rights, and enslaved in growing numbers, when 

the tragedy of refugees advances into the European 

house, and the globalization of opportunities and risks 

has become the greatest challenge for the world. The 

Church in today’s world is not a special-interest group 

that lobbies for its own interests alone. Everything 

that Gaudium et spes says “about the dignity of the 

human person, the community of mankind, and the 

deep significance of human activity provides a basis 

for discussing the relationship between the Church 

and the world and the dialogue between them” (GS 

40). The Church therefore is offering not only dialogue 

but also collaboration in building the fraternal 

fellowship that corresponds to man’s noble, divine 

vocation. “The Church is not motivated by an earthly 

ambition but is interested in one thing only — to carry 

on the work of Christ under the guidance of the Holy 

Spirit, for he came into the world to bear witness to 

the truth, to save and not to judge, to serve and not 

to be served” (GS 3). 

This is also a major theme in the pontificate of 

Pope Francis: “A poor Church for the poor.” The 

51


Church is poor in the totality of the faithful laypeople 

and their pastors who see themselves as following 

their Lord in His mission. Church property should not 

be given up, as idealists and enthusiasts demand, but 

rather used with great determination as a means to 

an end, namely, the fulfillment of the Church’s pastoral 

and charitable works. “The poor” are all persons 

in their existential need and material neediness, to 

whom Christ proclaims the gospel (see Luke 4:18). 

The whole drama of human history — the human 

condition, its hopes and disappointments, its joys and 

sorrows, love and death, man as a creature and in his 

God-given vocation to eternity, the whole mystery 

of man — finds in Christ its solution and redemption 

[Lösung und Erlösung]: “And that is why the Council, 

relying on the inspiration of Christ, the image of the 

invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, proposes to 

speak to all men in order to unfold the mystery that 

is man and cooperate in tackling the main problems 

facing the world today” (GS 10). 

The knowledge about man derived from divine 

revelation does not detract from the rightful autonomy 

of man, of society, and of the sciences but rather 

52


puts it into the proper light: created realities have 

their own order and laws; after all, they are the result 

of the reason [Vernunft] that the Creator Himself 

placed in them (see GS 36). This assessment of the 

rightful autonomy of human research and activity 

in the sciences, in culture, in business, in the legal 

system, in medical advances, and in the service of 

politics for the common good of citizens and states 

should also allay the suspicion of some political parties 

that the Church would use her authority to tip 

the scales in the fight for political power. On principle 

the Church maintains an equal distance from 

political parties that stand on the common ground 

of human rights and democracy. Nevertheless she 

cannot help intervening constantly on behalf of the 

personal dignity of every single human being from 

conception until natural death. As she follows Christ, 

however, her preferential option for the poor is not 

taking sides with any one class or ideology in the fight 

for power, but rather participation in the fight for the 

non-negotiable dignity and essential equality of all 

human beings, regardless of their religion and social 

status. A human being must never become a means 

53


to an end — this is the necessary “interference” of 

the Church in politics. 

The Church recalls that in a pluralistic society 

there are various competencies in relation to these 

earthly realities. But all discussions must remain on 

the common ground of the universally binding natural 

moral law, which is accessible to human reason 

and must not be ignored. The only alternative to 

the natural moral law would be the social Darwinist 

principle of the survival of the fittest, or “might 

makes right” in a battle of everyone for himself. Here 

we see clearly the prophetic service that the Church 

cannot fail to offer to a pluralistic society and to the 

whole human family. This also makes clear, however, 

the ethical criterion for the public activity of every 

Christian who becomes involved in government, 

business, law, culture, and sport for the common good. 

For this purpose the Congregation for the Doctrine of 

the Faith composed in 2002 a special Doctrinal Note 

on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics 

in Political Life. According to this document, all 

Christians as citizens of their country are called on to 

take part in societal, cultural, and political life. Every 

54


Christian in a parliament, in a governmental office, or 

in the administration and the judiciary has the civil 

right and at the same time the personal responsibility, 

in conscience before God, to align his political work 

with Christian anthropology and Christian teaching 

about society and government. The duty of loyalty 

and obedience to civil laws and institutions can never 

be absolute, inasmuch as a real democracy is already 

the alternative plan to state absolutism and totalitarianism. 

In his Apostolic Letter Proclaiming Saint 

Thomas More Patron of Statesmen and Politicians, John 

Paul II observes that this great witness to conscience 

did not abandon loyalty to the civil authority and the 

legal institutions, yet with his life and death testified 

that “man cannot be sundered from God, nor politics 

from morality” (AAS 93 [2001]: 78f.). 

This is the constructive critical laicity that we 

Christians owe to the common good. What we expect 

of a state founded on the natural law — according 

to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas about 

government and the teaching in Francisco de Vitoria 

about international law — is only the theoretical and 

practical recognition of the human dignity and the 

55


human rights of all, and by no means any compliance 

with the doctrines of the Faith that result from 

supernatural revelation, which can be accepted only 

by free consent anyway. 

The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration Dignitatis 

humanae is of the utmost importance in defining the 

Church’s relation to the nonconfessional, philosophically 

neutral state that is founded on the natural law. 

In this document the Church affirms “the principle 

that religious liberty is in keeping with the dignity 

of man and divine revelation” (DH 12). The only 

possible foundation of a society is the dignity of man. 

He is endowed with it by the Creator. It is part of his 

intellectual-moral nature and constitutes the mystery 

and the uniqueness of his person. This dignity belongs 

to man from the very start, and no power in the world 

can deprive him of it. Man is a goal and end in himself 

and never a means to an end. His conscience is the 

sanctuary in which he is encountered by his Creator, 

to whom alone he must ultimately give an accounting, 

a sanctuary that must be protected against profanation 

and consequently from exploitation [Funktionalisierung]. 

From this come the rights of associations to 

56


self-determination and to protection from influence 

or restriction by the state. 

For its part, the exercise of religious freedom is 

bound up with the natural moral law and has to respect 

the lawful public order and legitimate authority 

(see DH 7). No man may be forced to act against his 

conscience that is aligned with the natural moral law. 

Therefore, it would be a violation of human rights 

if a physician were compelled to kill a child in his 

mother’s womb or to assist a suicide. Likewise no one 

may commit immoral actions or disregard lawful public 

order by citing certain traditions of his religion. 

Any religiously based destructive violence, in other 

words, the brutal violation of fundamental human 

rights to life and physical integrity, is a contradiction 

in itself. Whether and how a more than merely pragmatic 

ethics can be developed in theoretical atheism 

remains moot. How a moral action can be required 

without acknowledging the unconditional obligatory 

character of the good, in other words, on the basis of 

convention and consensus alone, is to this day not 

clear to me. In the religious act, in contrast, man recognizes 

that he is finite and ordered to a transcendent 

57


mysterium tremendum et fascinosum [awesome, fascinating 

mystery]. However he may understand the mystery 

of the absolute, he can never feel entitled to take from 

others what he himself has received. 

The fact that destructive violence has been committed 

in the name of religion does not mean that it 

can be religiously justified, much less authorized. The 

purpose of the religious act is the worship of God, 

and consequently also the acknowledgment of the 

natural moral law that calls man in his conscience to 

render an account to his Creator. According to Jewish 

and Christian belief, the Decalogue is part of positive 

historical revelation and is written on the hearts and 

consciences of all those who do not know the revelation 

of the moral law (see Rom. 2:14). 

This natural religious and moral ordering toward 

God, the Creator and Judge of every man, and the 

revealed faith in the same God, who revealed Himself 

in Jesus Christ as Love, categorically forbids any justification 

of violations of fundamental human rights, 

because God is the author and guarantor of human 

dignity in the first place. The good in creation is a 

manifestation and participation in the uncreated good 

58


of God. Appealing to God’s will in order to justify an 

evil deed is plainly a denial of the worship that is 

owed to God and a refusal to recognize His will, which 

always wants good, truth, and life for man. Something 

is not good because God commands it; rather, because 

something is good, God makes it the goal of our ethical 

activity. Therefore, no one can cite God so as to 

compel others with threats to acknowledge a concrete 

historical religion. 

Christianity is about a self-revelation by God as 

Truth and Life for everyone in His Son Jesus Christ. 

Therefore, the God-man Jesus is Himself in His person 

the criterion for interpreting Sacred Scripture and 

apostolic Tradition, which testify to the revelation 

event. “God so loved the world that he gave his onlybegotten 

Son, that whoever believes in him should 

not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Only 

when a person lays down his life for another does 

he act in the spirit of Christ. Where lies and murder 

prevail, God is not at work, but rather the devil, 

“the father of lies . . . a murderer from the beginning” 

(see John 8:44). “This is the message which you have 

heard from the beginning, that we should love one 

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another, and not be like Cain who was of the Evil 

One and murdered his brother” (1 John 3:11–12). 

No one can cite a saying in the sacred writings of 

his religion in order to justify the evil that he does to 

his brother. Either he is worshipping an idol instead 

of God, or he has misunderstood a statement. Recognition 

of the natural moral law, which raises its 

hand to speak in the conscience of every man, is the 

only secure foundation for a peaceful coexistence in 

solidarity in pluralistic societies and in the family of 

nations. 

The position of the Catholic Church in today’s 

pluralistic world is clearly set forth by the Second 

Vatican Council — and I would like to conclude my 

comments with this description: 

Whatever truth, goodness, and justice is to be 

found in past or present human institutions is 

held in high esteem by the Council. In addition, 

the Council declares that the Church is 

anxious to help and foster these institutions insofar 

as it depends on it and is compatible with 

its mission. The Church desires nothing more 

60


ardently than to develop itself untrammelled in 

the service of all men under any regime which 

recognizes the basic rights of the person and 

the family, and the needs of the common good. 

(GS 42) 

61

Poverty as a Way of Evangelization 

Poverty as a Way 

of Evangelization: 

Reflections in the 

Spirit of Pope Francis 

Vallendar, Cardinal Walter Kasper Institute, 

March 10, 2015 

63

The “preferential option for the poor” is justified 

primarily and on principle Christologically. 

About Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was 

sent by His Father “in the likeness of sinful flesh” in 

order to condemn sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3), the 

apostle Paul says: “You know the grace of our Lord 

Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your 

sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might 

become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). Through His poverty and 

humiliation of Himself, we poor beggars before God, 

we mortals doomed to death, share in His universal 

message of salvation and are clothed with the glory 

of God. 

Prompted by the Conciliar Constitution Gaudium 

et spes, Latin American liberation theology expanded 

this insight to the Church: 

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For theirs is a community composed of men, of 

men who, united in Christ and guided by the 

Holy Spirit, press onwards towards the kingdom 

of the Father and are bearers of a message 

of salvation intended for all men. This is why 

Christians cherish a feeling of deep solidarity 

with the human race and its history. (GS 1) 

Church is authentic wherever the Good News is 

proclaimed in fidelity to Jesus’ mission to the poor 

(see Luke 7:22). Along the way of this universal mission 

to all mankind until the end of time, the Church 

does not let herself be defined by earthly splendor, 

wealth, and ambition, but solely by one motive: “to 

carry on the work of Christ under the guidance of the 

Holy Spirit, for he came into the world to bear witness 

to the truth, to save and not to judge, to serve and 

not to be served” (GS 3). 

A poor Church for the poor 

Benedict XVI addressed a concern with his demand 

for a certain “liberation of the Church from forms of 

worldliness,” in other words, its constant alignment 

66


with the gospel; Pope Francis takes up this theme 

again in Evangelii gaudium when he writes: “I want a 

Church which is poor and for the poor” (EG 198). 

The no to spiritual worldliness (see EG 93–97) 

contrasts with a yes to the challenge of a truly missionary 

spirituality (see EG 78–80). When Jesus calls 

the “poor in spirit” blessed and promises them the 

kingdom of heaven (see Matt. 5:3), he is not justifying 

an escapist, irresponsible spiritualization and 

idealization of His gospel. Instead, spiritual poverty 

means being radically conformed to the mind and the 

destiny of Christ. This means that the spirit-filled person, 

unlike the earthly-minded person, actively agrees 

with what the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, says 

to him (see 1 Cor. 2:14). A disciple of Jesus cannot set 

his heart on deceitful wealth, fleeting power, or public 

esteem. He is liberated from slavery to false idols so as 

to serve others with all his material possessions and 

his intellectual and spiritual gifts, so as to become, 

like Jesus, a “man for others” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). 

That is the true freedom for which “Christ has set us 

free” (Gal. 5:1). This attitude of spiritual poverty, as 

interior freedom in Christ, connects those who have 

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married in the Lord, who are rightly concerned also 

about the physical well-being of their family, with 

those Christians who have taken a vow of poverty. 

This charism of symbolic voluntary poverty points to 

the comprehensive dependency of everyone on God 

and to solidarity with all the poor who find themselves 

in material or spiritual need. Believers in Christ 

are united above and beyond all social and ethnic barriers. 

And they set their hope solely on the One and 

Triune God, who through the Church continues His 

work of redemption and liberation in history, until 

He Himself perfects it at the end of time. 

The Church and we as her members are always 

tempted to present ourselves to the world as indispensable 

through the activism of a well-institutionalized 

spiritual–social-service operation, so as to gain 

recognition from the powerful and the leaders of public 

opinion. The Church’s institutions, her cultural 

accomplishments and charitable efforts, and Church 

property, instead of serving as means, threaten here 

to become ends in themselves by which we allow 

ourselves to be ruled. This is the malevolent spirit of 

worldliness and the desire to please men more than 

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God. Pope Francis tirelessly warns us precisely against 

this. Jesus promises to send a counselor from the Father. 

The Spirit of God is “the Spirit of truth, whom 

the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him 

nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, 

and will be in you” (John 14:17). 

The problem is to overcome the crisis of relativism 

and secularism in many parts of the Church, without 

just falling into the opposite extreme of spiritualizing 

and idealizing the Faith and the Church. An apocalyptic 

mood and “inner emigration” [the decision of 

some German writers who opposed National Socialism 

to remain in Germany when the Nazis seized 

power] are overcome by a new trust in Divine Providence, 

which in the end will make everything turn 

out for the best. This requires personal love for Jesus 

Christ and a Spirit-filled profession of the Faith, instead 

of principled reliance on activity and a merely 

technical professionalism. Although externally we 

appear firm in our dogmatic convictions and religious 

practice, nevertheless we often secretly cling to economic 

security, to a feeling of power and esteem, 

instead of offering up our life for others in mission. 

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“Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of missionary 

enthusiasm!” Pope Francis exhorts us (EG 80). 

The Church, which in Christ’s human nature has 

become poor and in His divine nature — rich, follows 

the way of the Gospel. She is evangelized by Christ in 

the poor and brings the Good News of Christ to the 

poor (see EG 198). In the fire of her love for Christ, 

in those who hunger and thirst, and in all works of 

corporal and spiritual mercy, the iceberg of spiritual 

worldliness must thaw. With the proclamation of the 

gospel to those who are materially, socially, and spiritually 

needy, and to all who long for justice, love, and 

eternal life with God, the Church fulfills her task of 

making Christ present in her communion by carrying 

out martyria, leiturgia, and diakonia [witness, worship, 

and works of service]. 

The task of evangelization 

In His Incarnation, Jesus Christ assumed the poverty 

of creatureliness in all its aspects. We must not 

stop at the material, economic, and political surface 

of poverty. As Pope Francis writes in the foreword 

to the book On the Side of the Poor: The Theology of 

70


Liberation, which I published with Gustavo Gutiérrez, 

in a primordial sense, poverty is a paraphrase of our 

contingency. We are creatures and stand before God 

empty-handed. But our empty hands and our open 

mind are given to us by God, and they reach out 

toward our Creator. We receive from him the bread 

that we need each day, not humiliated and hurt on 

account of our reliance on the Creator and Father, but 

gladly and gratefully — eucharistically. Because we are 

created with Him as our end, our longing for truth and 

love does not exist in a vacuum. God communicates 

with us in His Word, His Son Jesus Christ, who assumed 

our humanity and shared our human lot. He is 

the true Bread from Heaven. He gives Himself to us as 

food and drink unto eternal life. Thus the transience 

of all earthly things does not lead us astray into tragic 

existentialism. Our existence in the world is directed 

instead toward a Logos-defined, that is, meaningful 

participation in God’s truth and love in creation, salvation 

history, and perfection in His eternity. Instead 

of pessimism, melancholy, and a yearning for death à 

la Schopenhauer, we live on “hope [which] does not 

disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured 

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into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been 

given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Our PIN — the Christian’s 

personal identification number — is not Weltschmerz 

[weariness with life], but Evangelii gaudium, the joy 

of the Gospel. 

Human existence by faith in Jesus Christ is always 

Eucharistic existence. But Christ took human nature 

upon Himself not only abstractly but also in the historical 

concreteness of its enslavement and disfigurement 

by sin. In a formula that bursts every paradigm 

of human understanding, Paul expressed the inclusion 

of sin with all its destructive power in the theandric 

mystery of Jesus: “For our sake he made him to be sin 

who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the 

righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Everything that 

can be called hatred of God — the brutal violation 

of human rights, slavery and exploitation, the refusal 

to show solidarity and brotherly love that cries out 

to heaven — is thus encompassed by the mystery of 

love and mercy, so that we might become children of 

God, sisters and brothers of the Lord. The sin of the 

world is borne, suffered, and overcome by the Lamb of 

God. He who suffers in His own person all destructive 

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violence becomes through His nonviolent response 

the one who overcomes evil and suffering. His Cross 

becomes the sign of hope and the sacrament of the 

reconciliation of men with God and with one another. 

He assumed our creaturely poverty, our proneness 

to death and sin, and filled it with the wealth of 

His divinity. He created us anew, “that we might die 

to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). 

In following Christ we recognize that Christianity 

is not an elite, philanthropic worldview with a 

humanitarian social praxis, placidly lulled in sentimental 

religious personal experiences, a narcissistic, 

self-indulgent ego trip. The intrinsic form and external 

measure of Christian life is not self-realization, the 

pursuit of one’s interests and passions, but rather service 

to the kingdom of God, namely, “to present your 

bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, 

which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1) — the 

logiké latreia. Our faith in Christ is the beginning of a 

lifelong process of the death of the old Adam and a 

daily pilgrim fellowship with the risen Lord. “I have 

been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, 

but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live 

73


in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who 

loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). A 

withdrawal from the real world into the realm of the 

ideal, a farewell to personal and public responsibility 

in nostalgia for lost paradises and golden ages, and a 

privatization of the Christian message that makes it 

exclusively otherworldly contradict what God has revealed 

to us in creation and in the redemption event, 

and everything that He has given to us with His Son 

and His Spirit. Indeed, Christ overcame the world of 

sin and wickedness, of suffering and death. He came 

to His own, not to emphasize the infinite distance 

between God and world, but in order to dwell among 

us, in order to stay with us always as God with us. “To 

all who received him . . . he gave power to become 

children of God” (John 1:12). 

Only from the vantage point of Jesus Christ do we 

recognize in the light of man’s divine vocation the 

whole economic, political, and societal extent of the 

poverty and misery of people who must lead a life beneath 

the standard of a dignified human life. Millions 

of our fellow men lack the most basic necessities of 

food, clothing, and shelter; can afford neither medical 

74


care nor assistance in their old age; are denied a fair 

share in cultural goods; and politically are not recognized 

as full citizens with equal rights. Rather, to the 

detriment of the common good, they are demeaned 

as pawns in the pursuit of a monopoly on influence, 

esteem, and wealth by the powerful. Think of the 

countless hosts of people who became victims of injustice 

and violence: in war and genocide, through 

enslavement and rape, criminality and terrorism. 

Some stretches of history read like a mockery of the 

just by the wicked: “Where is your God?” (Ps. 42:10). 

These are our brothers and sisters, living beings of 

flesh and blood who are robbed of their human dignity. 

In view of this ocean of blood and tears that 

floods the history of mankind, no one could resist the 

feeling of despair, of abysmal nihilism, or of protest 

against fate or against God, had not the God and Father 

of Jesus Christ provided justice for the victims of 

unjust violence in the Cross and Resurrection of His 

Son; indeed, had He not revealed to men, who had 

lost all their glory, “the righteousness of God through 

faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 3:22). The judgment of 

the world is the victory of love over hatred. 

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Given the tragic failure of modern ideologies of 

progress and of the attempt at self-redemption in a 

capitalistic or socialistic paradise on earth, in short, 

the failure of a “godless humanism,” the basic questions 

arise once again, as they are so vigorously formulated 

in Gaudium et spes: “What is man? What 

is the meaning of suffering, evil, death, which have 

not been eliminated by all this progress? What is the 

purpose of these achievements, purchased at so high a 

price? What can man contribute to society? What can 

he expect from it? What happens after this earthly life 

is ended?” (GS 10). 

The Church does not set up another monument of 

self-redemption alongside all the global declarations 

and programs to improve the world that are designed 

by men and doomed to defeat, because her Faith does 

not come from men but rather from God. By word and 

deed she gives witness to the Faith that was given and 

entrusted to her through God’s self-revelation. For the 

Church believes: “Christ, who died and was raised for 

the sake of all, can show man the way and strengthen 

him through the Spirit in order to be worthy of his 

destiny. . . . The Church likewise believes that the key, 

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the center and the purpose of the whole of man’s history, 

is to be found in its Lord and Master” (GS 10). In 

the light of Christ, therefore, the Church carries out 

her mission, namely, to speak to men so as to illumine 

the mystery of man and to collaborate in his search 

for solutions to the problems of our time. 

By proclaiming the Good News of Christ to the 

poor and the oppressed and by collaborating in the 

building up of a communal life in freedom, solidarity, 

and justice while acknowledging the unqualified 

dignity of every person, the Church follows the way 

of Christ, who “carried out the work of redemption 

in poverty and oppression” (LG 8). He was equal to 

God, but He emptied Himself and assumed the form 

of a slave like us. Therefore, He was also exalted by 

God (see Phil. 2:6–11). And we expect that the exalted 

Lord, who will come again as Judge, will transform 

our miserable body into the form of his glorified 

body (see Phil. 3:20–21). 

God’s glory is revealed in the servile form of the 

Son. The sacrum commercium is the exchange of wealth 

and poverty between God and man. In Jesus Christ an 

intrinsic unity is displayed between theologia crucis and 

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theologia gloriae [the theology of the cross and the theology 

of glory] both in Christian anthropology and in 

ecclesiology, because for us Christ is the crucified and 

risen Lord at the same time. The unknown and ineffable 

God granted that we might know Him and have 

the privilege of calling Him “Abba, Father” through 

the Son in the Spirit (Rom. 8:15), because we are not 

only called children of God but are so in truth (see 1 

John 3:1). That is our situation and at the same time 

the eschatological dynamic that defines our approach 

to the world in relation to the mystery of redemption 

and communion of life with God: “Creation itself will 

be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the 

glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). 

Divine glory shines upon the face of the Church, so 

that in this way all men might be enlightened with the 

light of Christ through the Gospel. But this is certainly 

not “the deceitfulness of riches” (Mark 4:19, KJV), 

the splendor of earthly glory, pomp, and power. The 

Church follows her Lord. If she suffers and is persecuted, 

then precisely in this Cross shines the splendor 

of God, the “glory of the Lord” (Luke 2:9), the “fullness 

of his grace” (see John 1:16). 

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The Church as a visible community in this world 

needs material means only to carry out her task, “not 

. . . to seek earthly glory, but to proclaim, and this by 

her own example, humility and self-denial. . . . [Like 

Christ,] the Church encompasses with her love all 

those who are afflicted by human misery and she recognizes 

in those who are the poor and who suffer, the 

image of her poor and suffering founder. She does all 

in her power to relieve their need and in them she 

strives to serve Christ” (LG 8). Whereas Christ, her 

Founder and her Head, was holy and sinless, “the 

Church, however, clasping sinners to her bosom, at 

once holy and always in need of purification, follows 

constantly the path of penance and renewal” (LG 8). 

An authentic theology of liberation 

This is the place to talk about true liberation theology. 

It came about as a special response to the challenges 

of the poverty, exploitation, and degradation of 

millions of people in Latin America, a Catholic continent. 

Its Christological paradigm is the encounter 

with Jesus, the imitation of the merciful Samaritan. 

For Jesus did not appear as a guru of a supernatural 

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mysticism or of a world-disdaining asceticism. On the 

contrary: in His proclamation of the kingdom of God, 

along with His healing of the blind, the lame, and the 

deaf, and His care for the poor and the outcast, the 

unity between the transcendent dimension of salvation 

related to God and the immanent dimension 

among our fellow men is evident. His death on the 

Cross does not manifest tragic failure but rather grants 

redemption from sin and injustice and reveals the new 

union of creature and God. 

Jesus died on the Cross to show the liberating love 

of God that transforms the world and gives to every 

man a real hope, not an illusory one. Jesus’ death on 

the Cross made the world and history a place in which 

the new creation begins — in the here and now. And 

so liberation is bestowed on us not just in a purely 

interior way and at the moment of our individual 

death. Rather, the end of history is also the moment 

in which salvation is perfected: in God’s sight, in the 

eternal communion of love with Him and all His 

saints. In Jesus Christ, the God-man, an entirely new, 

eschatological, and definitive relation between God 

and world is brought about. Christianity cannot be 

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reduced to a feeling of dependence on the absolute 

(Schleiermacher), an awareness of the infinite love of 

a heavenly Father with a bit of social commitment 

(Harnack). Being a Christian is not the sum total of 

metaphysics and ethics or the reduction of one set of 

questions to the other. Being Christian is not beautiful 

liturgy on Sunday plus social ethics for the rest of 

the week, nor is it traditional form plus social critique. 

Being a Christian starts in the encounter with 

Jesus and is lived out as a venture for others. In his 

“Outline for a Book,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer sketched 

in prison in 1944 his answer to the question: “What 

is Christian faith in actuality?” as follows: 

Our relationship to God is no “religious” relationship 

to some highest, most powerful, and 

best being imaginable — that is no genuine transcendence. 

Instead our relationship to God is 

a new life in “being there for others,” through 

participation in the being of Jesus. The transcendent 

is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, 

but the neighbor within reach in any given situation. 

God in human form! Not as in oriental 

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religions in animal forms as the monstrous, the 

chaotic, the remote, the terrifying, but also not 

in the conceptual forms of the absolute, the 

metaphysical, the infinite, and so on, either, nor 

again the Greek “god-human form of the human 

being in itself.” But rather “the human being 

for others”! therefore the Crucified One. The 

human being living out of the transcendent. 2 

In this perspective I would like to highlight some 

of the most profound insights of liberation theology. 

In a lecture that Gustavo Gutiérrez gave in the mid- 

1990s — with Cardinal Ratzinger attending — he 

emphasized: “It is important that in a final step the 

preferential option for the poor is an option for the 

God of the kingdom that Jesus announces to us.” And 

he continued: “Consequently, the ultimate reason for 

engagement on behalf of the poor and the oppressed 

lies not in the analysis of society that we employ, 

nor in the direct experience that we may make with 

2 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 

trans. Christian Gremmels et al. (New York: Fortress 

Press, 2010), 501. 

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poverty, nor in our human compassion. All these are 

valid reasons that no doubt play an important role 

in our life and in our relationships. Nevertheless, for 

Christians this engagement builds fundamentally on 

faith in the God of Jesus Christ. It is a theocentric 

option and a prophetic option, which has its roots 

in the gratuitousness of God’s love and is demanded 

by it.” 

Jesus Christ died so that man might experience 

God as salvation and life in all areas of existence. 

From this results the original — Christological — impulse 

of liberation theology, which can be formulated 

as follows: it is not possible to speak about God without 

active, transformative, and therefore practical 

participation in the complex, integral liberating action 

launched by Him, whereby history becomes a 

process in which freedom is realized. And conversely 

the Church cannot restrict her efforts to improving 

the living conditions of the poor and at the same time 

cheat them out of God and the gospel. That would 

be an even worse kind of discrimination, a lack of 

spiritual care that would cause additional harm to the 

poor. In Evangelii gaudium Pope Francis states: 

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The great majority of the poor have a special 

openness to the faith; they need God and we 

must not fail to offer them his friendship, his 

blessing, his word, the celebration of the sacraments 

and a journey of growth and maturity in 

the faith. Our preferential option for the poor 

must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential 

religious care. (EG 200) 

If the Church, therefore, together with the human 

race and in history, is at the service of this plan of Christ, 

then she can — as Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes — “be 

Church only when she is there for others.” 3 This results 

in a final discernment of spirits, and each person is confronted 

with an interior choice. Either it is true that: 

“the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties 

of the men of this age, especially those who are poor 

or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, 

the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ” (GS 

1), or they are not really followers of Christ. To put it 

another way: either the Church shows in this way that 

3 

Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 502. 

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she is not a self-satisfied community cut off from the 

world but rather the universal sacrament of salvation 

(see LG 48), or the Church is not fully Church as far 

as her nature and mission are concerned. The Church 

is truly Church when she is faithful to her liberating 

mission for the integral salvation of the world, which 

has its origin in the message of Jesus about freedom 

and liberation and in Jesus’ actions, as spelled out also 

in the Instruction Libertatis conscientia (1986) by the 

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 

As in the times of Bartolomé de Las Casas, to 

whom Gustavo Gutiérrez devoted a comprehensive 

study, today too God consistently stands on the side 

of the poor and works to lead them to freedom and 

to make it possible for them to participate in the fulfillment 

of the integral salvation that He promised 

for all men. From this perspective, finally, it becomes 

absolutely clear that talk about the “historical power 

of the poor” (Gutiérrez) is far removed from the formulation 

of an ideology at the service of “eternally 

recurring” utopian projects or plans that give rise to 

violence. “Historical power of the poor” is not to be 

understood as the violent elimination of one societal 

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class, ethnic group, or religion by another as a way to 

abolish oppression and injustices, so as to arrive at a 

supposed paradise on earth or the classless society. The 

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned 

against such tendencies of an ideologically falsified 

liberation theology in the Instruction Libertatis nuntius 

(1984). Finally, aid programs from capitalist-laicist 

countries that make developmental aid dependent 

on the acceptance of gender ideology and population 

control policies involving abortion and compulsory 

sterilization are discriminatory — and thus are guilty 

once again of the crime of colonialism. 

God’s love also embraces rulers, exploiters, human 

traffickers, drug dealers, and Mafiosi. Even the threat 

of eternal damnation, which is only fair and should 

always be justified along the lines of a necessary theodicy, 

springs ultimately from the divine love that in 

Christ took the world’s sins and crimes upon itself 

so as to make repentance and conversion possible. 

Preaching about judgment and grace liberates them 

from their own form of slavery: from the typical slavery 

of greed, the “root of all evils” (1 Tim. 6:10), and 

from the idolization of money and power. These idols 

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keep their worshippers from finding peace of heart, 

and in the end their own greed swallows them up. 

Above all, though, liberation theology shows — in 

contrast to what Marxism says along with its twin 

brother, capitalistic liberalism — that Christianity is 

not an “ideology of consolation” or “Platonism for the 

people” at all (Nietzsche), nor mere illusion and projection. 

Genuine liberation theology makes it clear 

that in reality only God, the Father of Jesus Christ, and 

the gospel of grace and truth can plan an authentic, 

ongoing role in the humanization of mankind, both in 

the individual and in the societal-social respect. John 

Paul II splendidly summed up this same idea in other 

words in his 1986 Letter to the Brazilian Conference of 

Bishops: Rightly understood, liberation theology “is 

not only opportune, but useful and necessary.” 

The judgment of Pope John Paul II has lost none 

of its relevance; it is even more valid today. In a time 

when hostility and greed have become predominant, 

in a time when we need as never before the living 

God, who loved us unto death, the Good Samaritan 

in his immense love, in the fleshliness of everyday life 

[der konkreten Existenz], bends over the suffering, the 

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oppressed, and those who need salvation most. Pope 

Francis put it strikingly on July 27, 2013, in Rio de 

Janeiro: “So we need a Church capable of rediscovering 

the maternal womb of mercy. Without mercy we 

have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a 

world of ‘wounded’ persons in need of understanding, 

forgiveness, love.” 

The liberating mission of the Church 

A look at Sacred Scripture shows that covenant history 

is a history of liberation: with an ever more clearly 

apparent preferential option of God for the poor, the 

suffering, and the exploited, so that soteriology must always 

result in a social ethics also. Social ethics is meant 

as a theological discipline, because diakonia [service], 

caritas [charity], is an essential act of the Church. The 

liberating mission of the Church takes as its point 

of departure the liberating message of Jesus and His 

kingdom-of-God praxis. The Church promotes “the 

foundations of justice in the temporal order” (Libertatis 

conscientia 62) and remains faithful to her propheticcritical 

mission “when she condemns the forms of deviation, 

slavery and oppression of which people are 

88


victims” (ibid., 65). The Church, however, in keeping 

with her mission, condemns also methods that repay 

violence with violence, terror with terror, and the deprivation 

of rights with disenfranchisement. 

As for the relation between personal sin and social 

structures, it must be said that there is such a thing 

as “a structure of sin,” 4 the result of collective aberrations 

and the expression of false mentalities. These 

can be called sin because, like evil concupiscence, 

they come from original sin, the death of the soul, 

and lead to sin. But this does not rule out the personal 

responsibility of the individual. No one can excuse 

himself by saying that the economic-political system 

forced him to exploit other people and ruin them. In 

no case do so-called historically necessary processes 

fatalistically define a person, as it were, and relieve 

him of the free exercise of his responsibility in God’s 

sight. “Fate” or “historical laws” (pertaining to ethnic, 

cultural, and sociological facts) do not determine 

the course of history, but rather Divine Providence 

4 

John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, December 30, 1987, 

no. 36. 

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(providentia Dei) in relation to human freedom and 

its fulfillment in love — both in this earthly life and 

with respect to man’s supernatural vocation. 

Consequently the priority of person over structure 

remains. This is why the liberating praxis of Christians, 

which results from redemption from sin and the 

communication of grace, has as its consequence the 

change and the constant improvement of material 

and societal living conditions, and also understands 

the personal encounter of one person with another 

in the love of Christ as the heart of Christian life. 

“Christians working to bring about that ‘civilization 

of love’ which will include the entire ethical and 

social heritage of the Gospel are today faced with an 

unprecedented challenge. This task calls for renewed 

reflection on what constitutes the relationship between 

the supreme commandment of love and the 

social order considered in all its complexity.” What is 

needed is “an immense effort at education: education 

for the civilization of work, education for solidarity,” 

and “access to culture for all” (Libertatis conscientia 81). 

Such an effort by the entire Church is necessary for 

the poor in the one globalized world, God’s creation. 

90


I would like to conclude these reflections on poverty 

as a way of evangelization with words by Pope 

Francis: 

For the Church, the option for the poor is primarily 

a theological category rather than a cultural, 

sociological, political or philosophical one. 

God shows the poor “his first mercy.” This divine 

preference has consequences for the faith life of 

all Christians, since we are called to have “this 

mind . . . which was in Jesus Christ” (Phil 2:5). 

Inspired by this, the Church has made an option 

for the poor. . . . This is why I want a Church 

which is poor and for the poor. They have much 

to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus 

fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering 

Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized 

by them. The new evangelization is an 

invitation to acknowledge the saving power at 

work in their lives and to put them at the centre 

of the Church’s pilgrim way. . . . 

The poor person, when loved, “is esteemed 

as of great value,” and this is what makes the 

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authentic option for the poor differ from any 

other ideology, from any attempt to exploit 

the poor for one’s own personal or political interest. 

. . . Only this will ensure that “in every 

Christian community the poor feel at home. 

Would not this approach be the greatest and 

most effective presentation of the good news 

of the kingdom?” (EG 198–199) 

92

Theological Criteria for Ecclesial and Curial Reform 

Theological Criteria 

for Ecclesial and 

Curial Reform 

Rome, L’Osservatore Romano, 

February 8, 2015 

93

The Church is concerned about the gospel, the 

truth, salvation. The history of the last two millennia 

teaches us that whenever the Church 

liberates herself from worldly thinking and earthly 

models of exercising power, this clears the way for a 

spiritual renewal in Jesus Christ, her Head and the 

source of life. The point of reference of the Church’s 

doctrine, life, and constitution is not the dominium 

of kings, but rather the ministerium of apostles: “Not 

that we lord it over your faith; we work with you for 

your joy” (2 Cor. 1:24). 

This is evident in all attempts at a reform in capite 

et in membris [in the head and in the members] — for 

instance, in the eleventh-century Gregorian reform 

movement, when the libertas Ecclesiae was at stake; in 

the sixteenth-century Tridentine Reform; or even in 

the new springtime of the Church at Vatican Council 

95


II, into which flowed the biblical, patristic, liturgical, 

and ecclesiological renewal movements of the nineteenth 

and twentieth centuries. The temporal power 

of the pope and of the prince bishops had often been 

superimposed on the Church’s spiritual mission. In this 

liaison between political power and spiritual ministry, 

the pernicious influence of the mentality of power and 

prestige was often manifest. Even more devastating 

were the modern state-church system in Gallicanism, 

Febronianism, and Josephinism and royal patronage in 

the Spanish and Portuguese empires with the subjection 

of the Church to the authority of the state. Yet 

the Church derives her significance not from social 

consensus, the function of Christianity as a civil religion, 

or contacts with those in political power, but 

rather from the Word of salvation for mankind, especially 

for the poor on the margins of life. 

The Lord instituted the Church as the universal 

sacrament of salvation for the world (see Lumen gentium 

[LG] 48) so that “all men may be saved and come 

to the knowledge of the truth” (see 1 Tim. 2:4). The 

Church cannot understand herself or try to justify herself 

in the sight of the world according to standards of 

96


power, wealth, and prestige. Reflection on the nature 

and mission of the Church of God is therefore the 

basis and prerequisite for any genuine reform. 

Given people’s failures, there is always the temptation 

to spiritualize the Church and to relegate it to 

the realm of ideals and dreams — beyond the abyss of 

temptation, sin, death, and the devil, as if we did not 

have to go through the valley of crosses and suffering 

in order to reach the glory of the Resurrection. In a 

sort of analogy with the Incarnation of the Word of 

God, the Church forms an interior unity of spiritual 

communion and visible assembly, and thus serves the 

Holy Spirit as a sign and instrument of salvation for 

the purpose of continuing Christ’s work among men. 

The Church, therefore, is holy and sanctifying because 

she has been sanctified by God, and at the same time, 

as far as we on the pilgrimage of faith are concerned, 

she is “always in need of purification [and] follows 

constantly the path of penance and renewal” (LG 8). 

In this sense Benedict XVI spoke about the need 

for an Ent-Weltlichung of the Church, that is, a liberation 

from forms of worldliness, to counteract her Ver- 

Weltlichung, or increasing worldliness. Pope Francis 

97


took up this idea resolutely with the theme of the 

“Church that is poor and for the poor.” The Church 

must not give in to the temptation to secularize herself 

by conforming to secular society and a life without 

God. 

In the speech in which he extended his Christmas 

greetings on December 22, 2014, the Holy Father emphasized 

the priority of the Church’s spiritual purpose 

over any earthly means, which must not become an 

end in itself. This address is a spiritual exhortation and 

an examination of conscience for the whole Church. 

The compass for renewal is not the extent of the 

Church’s property or the number of people employed 

in our bureaucracies, but rather the spirit of love in 

which the Church serves men through preaching, the 

sacraments, and charitable works. The reform of the 

Roman Curia, which had been the subject of debates 

during the 2013 preconclave, should be an example 

for the spiritual renewal of the whole Church. 

The Curia is not a profane administrative structure 

but a spiritual institution rooted in the special mission 

of the Church of Rome, which is hallowed by the 

martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul. The goal of 

98


reforming the Curia will not be reached if we expect 

the master plan from experts in politics and business, 

however helpful their recommendations may be. If 

the Church is not a worldly organization, she cannot 

be renewed by sidestepping her nature with merely 

worldly methods, but only in terms of her spiritual 

and sacramental nature. 

“In exercising his supreme, full and immediate authority 

over the universal Church the Roman Pontiff 

employs the various departments of the Roman Curia, 

which act in his name and by his authority for the 

good of the churches and in the service of the sacred 

pastors.” 5 Taking this theological description as its 

point of departure, the Second Vatican Council initiated 

a reorganization of the Curia to bring it up to 

date. The organizational structure and functioning 

of the Curia are subordinate to the special mission of 

the Bishop of Rome. He, as the successor of Peter, is 

given by Christ to the Church as “the perpetual and 

visible source and foundation of the unity both of 

5 

Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in 

the Church Christus Dominus, October 28, 1965, no. 9. 

99


the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful” 

(LG 23). Just as we can distinguish the Church 

from a merely human religious community only by 

the light of revealed faith, so too only in faith do we 

understand that the Pope and the bishops have a sacramental 

authority of mediating salvation that unites 

us to God. This distinguishes them from the leaders 

that every religious community has for sociological 

and organizational reasons. 

In the local Church, the bishop appointed by the 

Holy Spirit (see Acts 20:28) is by no means just a delegate 

or representative of the Pope, but rather Christ’s 

representative, the principle and foundation of unity 

in the Church entrusted to Him. The doctrine of 

the primacy of the Pope and the collegiality of the 

bishops is to be understood as the expression of their 

common concern for the whole Church as communio 

ecclesiarum [a communion of churches]. Therefore, 

the relation between universal Church and particular 

churches cannot be comprehended in terms of 

worldly forms of organization. The universal Church 

is not a sum total of the particular churches, nor are 

the particular churches subordinate branches of the 

100


universal Church. It is a matter of an inner meshing 

of universal and particular Church. The Church 

is the one Body of Christ; it is led and represented 

by the college of bishops cum et sub Petro [with and 

under Peter]. 

The Pope, in whom the unity and indivisibility 

of the episcopate and of the whole Church is made 

visible, presides at the same time as bishop of the 

local Church of Rome. The primacy is forever connected 

with the Roman Church by the work of the 

apostle Peter as Bishop of Rome and above all by his 

martyrdom. Just as “the bishop is in the church and 

the church in the bishop,” 6 so too the Roman Bishop 

is never pastor of the universal Church without his 

connection to the Church of Rome. Just as the head 

cannot be separated from the body, so too the connection 

between the Bishop of Rome and the Roman 

Church is indissoluble. This is why Tradition often 

speaks also about the primacy of the Roman Church. 

The Pope always exercises the primacy together with 

the Roman Church. 

6 

Cyprian, ep. 66, 8. 

101


As the visible head of the Church of Rome, he is at 

the same time the visible head of the whole Church. 

On account of the special authority of its founding by 

Peter and Paul, 7 every other Church must agree with 

the Church of Rome in its apostolic Faith. In this 

way the essential marks of the one holy, catholic, and 

apostolic Church a fortiori are realized in the Roman 

Church. Since ancient times it has also been called 

the Holy Roman Church — not on account of the 

subjective holiness of its head and its members, but on 

account of the holiness of its specific mission, which 

consists of preserving intact the apostolic Tradition, 

the depositum fidei, and handing it on faithfully. The 

primacy of the Roman Church has nothing to do with 

any sort of dominion over other churches. According 

to its inner nature it consists of “presiding in charity,” 8 

in service to the unity of the Faith and of the communion 

of all churches. 

7 

Propter potentiorem principalitatem: Irenaeus of Lyons, 

Adversus haereses III, 3, 3, 2. 

8 

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans, prologue. 

102


The Pope carries out his universal pastoral ministry 

personally and immediately, because in his person 

he is the successor of Peter, on whom the Lord 

built his Church. But he performs this ministry also 

through the support that is due to him from the Roman 

Church. Over the course of history the College 

of Cardinals developed out of the bishops of the suburbicarian 

dioceses and the most important priests 

and deacons of the Church of Rome. As in a diocese 

the presbyterate, represented by the council of priests, 

assists the diocesan bishop, similarly the College of 

Cardinals is, so to speak, the “presbyteral” consilium 

for the Pope in his universal pastoral ministry. The 

recent regulation [issued by John XXIII] that Curial 

cardinals must also receive episcopal consecration 

corresponds to their incorporation into the College 

of Bishops; this fact is of considerable importance; for 

instance, for the bishops’ ad limina visits. 

Through all the vicissitudes of history the basic 

idea has persisted, that the Roman Church, in the 

form of the College of Cardinals, collaborates in the 

Pope’s universal pastoral and magisterial responsibility. 

Rather large groups of cardinals and a few bishops 

103


who are appointed by the Pope make up the Roman 

Congregations, to each of which a particular area of 

competency is assigned. The Roman Curia essentially 

consists of the Congregations, the Pontifical Councils, 

and the tribunals. It does not form an intermediate 

authority between the Pope and the bishops, because 

through episcopal collegiality there is an immediate 

connection between the Pope and each individual 

bishop. The cardinals and bishops of the Curia support 

the Pope in his service to Catholic unity and make 

available to him the means necessary for carrying out 

his pastoral and teaching ministry. Within the framework 

of their assigned task and decision-making competency, 

the cardinal prefects ensure the collaboration 

of the members, the consultors, and the coworkers of a 

dicastery with the associated commissions and give an 

account of the results of their consultations and labors 

to the Pope. The latter is in no way restricted by the 

Curia’s activity, but only supported in the exercise of 

the primacy, which is entrusted to him as the successor 

of Peter for the benefit of the universal Church. 

The way in which the Roman Curia works is collegial, 

analogous to the collegiality of the presbyterate 

104


under the leadership of their diocesan bishop. The 

prefect of a Congregation is only the chairman and 

representative, whereas the Fathers in the plenary 

assembly bear the same responsibility for the welfare 

of the whole Church. For the reform of the Curia it is 

important for it to be understood as a spiritual family. 

Collaboration, care for one another, prayer and Eucharist, 

retreats, and cooperation in pastoral work and 

preaching give a spiritual character and the necessary, 

fundamentally pastoral approach to the official work. 

In this context it is important to distinguish the 

Roman Curia from the civil institutions of the Vatican 

State, whose organization is subject instead to 

the laws of governmental administration; these institutions 

guarantee the political independence of the 

Church. The Synod of Bishops, strictly speaking, is 

not part of the Roman Curia either. It is an expression 

of the collegiality of the bishops in communion with 

the Pope and under his direction (see Christus Dominus 

5). The Roman Curia, in contrast, helps the Pope 

in the exercise of his primacy for all the Churches. 

Therefore, the Curia and the Synod of Bishops are 

formally different, inasmuch as the Curia supports 

105


the Pope in his service on behalf of unity, whereas 

the Synod of Bishops gives expression to the catholicity 

of the Church. Indeed, all bishops share in the 

concern for all Churches (see LG 23). Concretely, 

these two missions are interconnected, because as a 

rule the heads of the Roman dicasteries participate 

in the Synod, and many Synod participants are also 

members of Congregations and Pontifical Councils. 

The Synod of Bishops, the conferences of bishops, 

and other federations of bishops belong to a theological 

category different from that of the Roman Curia. 

Only someone who thinks in terms of power, influence, 

and prestige interprets the organic correlation 

of primacy and episcopacy as a dispute over competencies. 

Rather, the Holy Spirit, from whom we must 

never close ourselves off, creates harmony between the 

poles of unity and multiplicity, between the universal 

Church and the particular churches, as he does also 

within the particular Churches themselves. The spirit 

of the world, however, sows quarrels and mistrust. 

Healthy decentralization cannot mean that now the 

bishops’ conferences get more “power,” but rather that 

they exercise the genuine responsibility that belongs 

106


to them on the basis of the episcopal teaching and 

governing authority of their members — always, of 

course, in union with the primacy of the Pope and 

the Roman Curia. 

Curia and Church reform is more than just increased 

efficiency, reorganization, reducing costs, and 

controlling expenditures. Its goal is to bring to light 

more clearly the mission of the Pope and of the Church 

in the world of today and tomorrow. The Church is 

facing a challenge from worldwide secularism, which 

in unprecedentedly radical ways is defining man without 

God, barring his way to transcendence, and pulling 

the rug of humanity out from under his feet as well. 

In the dictatorship of relativism (Benedict XVI) and 

in the globalization of indifference (Pope Francis), the 

boundaries between truth and falsehood, good and 

evil are blurred. The challenge for the officials and 

the members of the Church is not to let themselves 

be infected by these worldly diseases, or else to be 

cured of them. In order to make God’s glory shine in 

the Church as a light for every person, Pope Francis is 

conducting a “spiritual cleansing of the Temple” that 

is at the same time painful and liberating. What the 

107


reform of Church and Curia is supposed to accomplish 

may dawn on us when we, like the disciples, remember 

the Scripture verse: “Zeal for your house consumes me” 

(see John 2:17). 

108

Tenth Anniversary of Pope Benedict 

Tenth Anniversary 

of Pope Benedict 

Afterword by the German publisher 

Manuel Herder 

109

The present volume is the result of a program of 

lectures on the occasion of the tenth anniversary 

of the election of Pope Benedict, for which 

I invited guests to the Campo Santo Teutonico [the 

“Teutonic Cemetery,” adjacent to Vatican City, site 

of the German College and the Roman Institute of 

the Görres Society]. Gerhard Cardinal Müller gave a 

ceremonial address there on April 17, 2015, which is 

made available in this volume in revised form under 

the title of “The Primacy of Peter in the Pontificate 

of Pope Benedict XVI.” Additional lectures and brief 

remarks by Gerhard Cardinal Müller now supplement 

this lecture. Together they make up a whole, a look at 

the two popes, Benedict and Francis. Both with the 

event and with this volume [the German publishing 

house] Verlag Herder and I wish to express our respect 

for the German Pope. The book is dedicated to Pope 

111


Emeritus Benedict XVI on the tenth anniversary of 

his election to the papacy. 

The pictures that I selected for the back cover of 

this publication stand for the respective pontificates 

of the two Popes, Benedict XVI and Francis. First and 

in somewhat greater detail about Pope Benedict XVI: 

the picture was taken at an exhibition. It was the exhibition 

of all the books penned by Joseph Ratzinger/ 

Benedict XVI that have ever been published — more 

than six hundred books; all languages, all editions, 

one copy each. I had launched this exhibition on the 

occasion of the journey of Pope Benedict to Germany. 

It was organized by our reader Dr. Stephan Weber, who 

takes care of the Collected Works of Joseph Ratzinger, 

and the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. It was displayed in 

Castel Gandolfo, in the Campo Santo Teutonico and 

in the Herder publishing house in Freiburg, before and 

during the papal visit in 2011. 

Benedict, of course, viewed it only in Castel Gandolfo. 

Within the framework of an audience we were 

able to open the exhibition, which the Frankfurter 

Allgemeine Zeitung dubbed “Benedict’s Book Fair.” 

The photo on the cover was taken on that occasion. 

112


What does it show? Through the long row of two 

book tables the viewer sees the Pope sitting on a 

golden chair. Around him stand people who turn 

toward the Pope. One person (the director of the 

Libreria Editrice Vaticana) offers a word of greeting. 

All the others are listening, the Pope too. Between 

his books, however, on the smooth, polished marble 

floor of the Sala Svizzera [Swiss Hall], the Pope’s image 

is reflected. For me this photograph expresses a 

phenomenon that we are becoming aware of with 

the increasing distance from Benedict’s pontificate, 

namely, the great discrepancy in how this Pope is 

perceived by those who try to understand him by 

his documents, writings, and homilies, and by those 

who evaluated his pontificate primarily according to 

short-term political standards. 

The work of Joseph Ratzinger, which developed 

over decades, comes together as a great publishing 

oeuvre in the sixteen-volume German edition, Joseph 

Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften [Collected Writings]. 

If one interprets the pontificate of Benedict XVI 

through his writings and documents, there are many 

surprises for the reader as a result. The surprises, of 

113


course, have to do with the author and writer of 

these documents, but also with the reader himself. 

The thinking of Benedict XVI is characterized by a 

magnificent familiarity with European intellectual, 

cultural, and theological history. The reader’s expectations 

of this author are derived from his own 

personal path of development and his own expectations 

of the offices that Joseph Ratzinger held in the 

Church. This does not seem to have bothered Pope 

Benedict; on the contrary. He publishes his books on 

Jesus under the name Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI 

and writes in the foreword to the first volume: “It goes 

without saying that this book is in no way an exercise 

of the magisterium, but is solely an expression of my 

personal search ‘for the face of the Lord’ (cf. Ps. 27:8). 

Everyone is free, then, to contradict me. I would only 

ask my readers for that initial goodwill without which 

there can be no understanding.” 

After the publication of the volumes on Jesus it 

was fascinating for me to see how various readers, 

women and men, drew quite different interpretations 

and personal conclusions from the text. They were, 

it seemed to me, like people who for many years or 

114


decades have gone for a walk every week in the same 

park or big botanical garden, Sunday after Sunday. 

They know the entrance and the exit, the hours 

when it is open; they know where the kiosk is and 

where each group of plants is located, from small 

ferns to the great giant trees. Their reading of the 

Jesus books was for them as though someone took 

them by the hand and led them through the familiar 

garden. He took them with him to the individual 

plants and explained to them the origin, history, 

and peculiarities of each: where they originally grew, 

what researcher first discovered them and brought 

them back home, how they are to be tended, and 

what medications can be derived from these plants. 

From a garden that was initially perceived in an 

undifferentiated way as a whole, countless details 

emerged. Many readers thus came to have a new understanding 

of the individual components that make 

up this garden — to remain with the image. Everyone 

listened attentively at a different place and did not 

take everything in the same way. Nevertheless each 

one recognized that in the writings of Benedict XVI 

there are suggestions for understanding his faith in 

115


God that are of personal significance for him. Thus, 

Pope Benedict gave these readers a direct insight 

into his thought. 

Later generations will be astonished at what you 

could read about this Pope in contemporary newspapers. 

In retrospect, I think, the most credible accounts 

will be those that can explain the pontificate 

through their understanding of the documents. Then 

press reports and newspaper articles will no longer 

be consulted, but rather the books of Benedict XVI. 

The first book of his pontificate was Values in a 

Time of Upheaval. We received the manuscript of this 

small book in January 2005, and consequently it was 

ready just in time for the conclave. I had taken a few 

advance copies with me to Rome and was carrying 

one in my coat pocket when I was in Saint Peter’s 

Square and heard the joyful news about the election 

of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope. Not far from where I was 

standing were youth groups. Very soon they began to 

chant the name of the new Pope, accompanied by 

rhythmic hand clapping — still somewhat clumsily at 

first, but after a few minutes already in the intonation 

that we then got to hear from the faithful so often 

116


during his pontificate: “Be-ne-detto, Be-ne-detto.” 

Together with the enthusiasm of the young people 

on Saint Peter’s Square I returned the next day to 

the publishing house in Freiburg to begin work for 

the new Pope. Only much later did I notice that my 

Catholic compatriots had missed the Saint Peter’s 

Square experience and the resulting enthusiasm for 

the new Pope and the new pontificate, and that many 

could find their way out of an attitude of embarrassed 

brooding only with the passage of time. 

With the book Values in a Time of Upheaval the new 

Pope also started out on the best-seller lists in German-speaking 

lands. From then on we made almost 

all of Benedict’s writings available in a short time. 

Much later, specifically during his trip to Germany 

in 2011, I met a woman psychologist of the same age; 

she herself had grown up far from the faith, much less 

from any Catholic education, but after the election 

of Benedict she began by chance to read this short 

book. She was so enthusiastic about it that gradually 

she took an interest in the books of the new Pope and 

through them found a way of addressing the question 

of God in her life. 

117


A reader of the book Light of the World could read 

as early as 2010 in this interview with Benedict that 

“if a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer capable, 

physically, psychologically and spiritually, of carrying 

out the duties of his office, then he has a right and, 

under some circumstances, also a duty to resign.” And 

he also mentioned the suitable time for a resignation, 

namely, “at a peaceful moment or when one simply 

cannot go on.” This too is an example of how we can 

learn to understand this Pope by way of his books. 

In the following remarks I would like to turn to 

Pope Francis. The picture of him that I selected for 

this publication shows the Pope among refugees on 

the island of Lampedusa. I see it as a symbol of his 

administration. 

His pontificate too began for us in Verlag Herder 

with books. Only a few weeks after his installation we 

were able to present to him in Saint Peter’s Square his 

first books in the German language. We, that is, my 

brother Raimund Herder, the publisher of Editorial 

Herder in Barcelona, and I. The very night after his 

election as Pope, by brother began from his office in 

Barcelona to obtain rights to the Spanish-language 

118


books that until then had existed only in South America, 

in order to have them translated for German readers 

and consequently to secure them for our publishing 

house. Eventually Verlag Herder in Freiburg was able 

to print thirteen books penned by Pope Francis. 

The first two books are substantial and may well 

say more about the Pope and his way of thinking than 

the German-speaking public has come to know so far. 

First we published the book Open Mind, Faithful Heart 

and his phenomenal book-length interview, Conversations 

with Jorge Bergoglio: His Life in His Own Words. 

Both books allow insight into the thinking of Jorge 

Mario Bergoglio. It got suspenseful for German readers 

with the two smaller books, Corruption and Sin 

and On Self-Accusation. With these, at the latest, it 

became clear that the new pontificate was not going 

to be a comfortable one — neither for him nor for 

us. The pictures on Lampedusa make visible what is 

already evident in his writings before his pontificate. 

We are serving Pope Francis as a publishing house 

during his pontificate as we served Pope Benedict. 

119


On the basis of these books one can see a variety of 

topics and yet always a reference back to the images 

from his first trip at the beginning of his pontificate, 

to Lampedusa, to the margins of the Church. I am 

glad that we at Verlag Herder have the opportunity 

to accompany the change in the Church under Pope 

Francis just as we did during Benedict’s pontificate. 

For Verlag Herder, printing books is an entrepreneurial 

task that goes beyond economics. 

My cordial thanks to Cardinal Müller for his lecture 

in Campo Santo Teutonico and for the publication 

of this and other texts in this volume in honor 

of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI commemorating his 

election as Pope ten years ago. 

Manuel Herder 

Freiburg, April 19, 2015 

120

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