Pope Benedict at World Youth Day Sydney 2008. Image: World Youth Day Organisers.
‘God is love’ The key to Benedict’s pontificate STORY ANDREA TORNIELLI For many Australians, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was the Pope they saw in person in their own country when he visited for World Youth Day in 2008 in Sydney. The Diocese of Parramatta joined in mourning his death, which occurred on 31 December 2022. We publish excerpts from Vatican News about the late Pope Benedict’s life. “Teenager” theologian at the Council Born in 1927 into a simple, very <strong>Catholic</strong> family in Bavaria, and the son of a police commissioner, Joseph Ratzinger was a protagonist of the Church in the last century. He was ordained a priest together with his brother, Georg, in 1951, earned a doctorate in theology two years later, and in 1957, was licensed to teach as a professor of dogmatic theology. He taught in Freising, Bonn, Münster, Tübingen and lastly in Regensburg. His death marks the passing of the last Pope personally involved in the work of the Second Vatican Council. As a young man, already esteemed as a theologian, Ratzinger had followed the council sessions as the peritus of Cardinal Frings of Cologne, leaning toward the reformist wing. He was among those who strongly criticised the preparatory drafts prepared by the Roman Curia, which would later be scrapped by the will of the bishops. Guardian of the faith under Wojtyla Just after turning 50, Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Munich in 1977, and a few weeks later, created him a cardinal. Pope St John Paul II then entrusted him with the leadership of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in November 1981. That was the beginning of a strong partnership between the Polish Pope and the Bavarian theologian, destined to end only with the death of Wojtyla. ‘Humble worker in the vineyard’ After the death of John Paul II, the conclave held in 2005 elected Ratzinger – already an old man of 78 years – to succeed him in less than 24 hours. Ratzinger was universally esteemed and respected, even by his adversaries. From the loggia of St Peter’s Basilica, Benedict XVI presented himself as “a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord”. Alien to any sort of protagonism, he declared he had no “programmes”, but that he wanted “to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord”. Encyclical on love of God He dedicated his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, to the love of God. “Being Christian”, he wrote, “is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person.” He even found the time to write a book on Jesus of Nazareth, one sole work that would be published in three volumes. Response to scandals Benedict XVI was determined and unyielding in dealing with the problem of the “filth” in the Church. He introduced strict norms against the sexual abuse of minors and asked the Curia and bishops to change their mentality. He even went so far as to say that the most serious persecution of the Church does not come from external enemies, but from sin committed within it. Another important reform concerned Vatican finances: it was Pope Benedict who introduced antilaundering legislation in the Vatican. ‘A Church free of money and power’ Facing the scandals created by ecclesiastical careerism, the elderly German Pope continually made appeals calling to conversion, penitence and humility. During his last journey to Germany, in September 2011, he invited the Church to be less worldly. “History has shown that, when the Church becomes less worldly, her missionary witness shines more brightly. Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world.” Pope Benedict XVI’s World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008 was the first held in Oceania and attracted nearly 500,000 young people from 200 countries, 600 bishops and cardinals and 6,600 reporters from around the world. The full article by Andrea Tornielli can be viewed at Vatican News – vaticannews.va 13
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