Catholic Outlook Magazine | Lent & Easter | 2023 Issue

‘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 Catholic 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
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