Pope Benedict XVI - Man with a mission to keep the faith alive

Published on Friday 3 September 2010 15:05

IONA, the little island off the coast of Mull, has a large place in the heart of Pope Benedict XVI. For it was here among the salt water and sea-spray that St Columba ensured the survival of Christianity in Europe during the Dark Ages.

• Pope Benedict XVI. Picture: Getty Images

So when Benedict XVI touches down at Edinburgh Airport next Thursday, he will be aware of the nation's role and anxious that Scotland's Catholics are prepared for the new 'Dark Age' to come.

Five years ago, when Josef Ratzinger took off the scarlet robes of a cardinal and pulled on the white soutane of Pope he knew his advanced age could herald a short time as the successor to St Peter and so his goal was clear.

As his biographer, John L Allen explained: "His big picture aim is that he wants to equip Catholicism in the West to survive in an era of secularism. His diagnosis on how to do that is that you encourage, however small in number they may be, those Catholics who seem most on fire with the faith. The image he uses all the time is the Church as 'a creative minority'.

"The idea is to foster this numerically small but passionate form of living the Gospel, who will keep the light of the faith alive in an overwhelmingly secular world. That is the goal not just for Scotland and the UK but for the entire Pontificate."

Yet it is a message he has struggled to get across. If John Paul II was a global and charismatic rock star, never happier than when his sermons were interrupted by the cheers of the faithful, Benedict XVI is a quiet professor who frets that those who cheer aren't listening to the words he speaks. The media, however, are only too willing to note each controversial statement and they have not lacked for copy.

In September 2006 during a speech in Regensburg he triggered protests among Muslims by appearing to link Muhammad with violence, while three years later on the Papal plane en route to Africa he said condoms were not the solution to AIDS but, in fact, make the problem worse. Then, there was his decision to lift the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, including one who has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers, and the appointment in Poland of a new Archbishop who was forced to resign after the revelation that he had collaborated with the Soviet authorities.

And yet nothing has damaged the Pope and the Catholic Church more than the issue of child sex abuse by priests.The cases may be largely historical and spread across various nations but the image of a Church more intent on protecting itself than innocent children, will take years to undo. As Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with church discipline, Cardinal Ratzinger would listen as the testimony of victims was read out. "The physical disgust you could see on Ratzinger's face" said an individual briefed by those who attended the meetings. "He would project an almost despair and a sense of disbelief that a priest could do that to someone."

In recent papal visits he has made time to speak in private to the victims of clerical sexual abuse, where he has prayed and wept with them. It is not yet known if he will have a similar meeting in London, but one will not take place in Scotland.

According to the Bishop of Paisley, Philip Tartaglia, a new hostility has flared up against the Church. "It seems to be now that there are people who genuinely hate the Church - not that they are against it, but hate it with an anger and a bitterness and even hate this Pope which is so astonishing when you are in the presence of his gentleness. He is very very gentle and maybe it's because he expresses himself so clearly, in ways that you can't misunderstand what he is saying. He is not the Superstar and perhaps people see him as vulnerable and they can have a right go."

Yet those who know him attest to a deep serenity that comes in thinking "in centuries" not in years. For six years Monsignor Henry Docherty worked side by side with Josef Ratzinger in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and insists the reality was far from the media caricature of 'Cardinal Rottweiler' or the 'Panzer Cardinal', steam-rolling his plans through. "He has a quiet, confident, diffident manner but has a brilliant mind," said Mgr Docherty, the retired secretary of Scotland's Bishop's Conference. "He was also humble, you would always see him walking across St Peter's Square in his black soutane and beret with a battered leather briefcase." Immediately on accepting the role, he defied public expectations by stating that after the papacy of John Paul the Great he was "but a humble worker".

He is also the first Pope to have belonged to the Hitler Youth. The son of a rural Bavarian police officer, he was six when Hitler came to power in 1933. His father, also called Joseph, was an anti-Nazi whose attempts to rein in the activities of Hitler's Brown Shirts forced the family to move home several times. In 1937 his father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria. The young Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth at the age of 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941, though he soon won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. As a Cardinal he said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile.His brother, Georg said upon his brother's election: "Resistance was truly impossible. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy."

As a priest and theologian, Joseph Ratzinger gained attention as a liberal adviser during the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The Marxism and atheism of the 1968 student protests that swept across Europe shocked him to the core. Students threw books at him as he tried to lecture and this prompted him to become increasingly conservative in an attempt to defend his faith against growing secularism. After periods as a theology professor and then archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Ratzinger was appointed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor office to the Inquisition, in 1981. In that office, he first turned his attention to the "liberation theology" popular in Latin America, silencing controversial theologians such as Leonardo Boff. In 1986, he issued a firm Vatican denunciation of homosexuality and gay marriage.

He brought pressure in the 1990s against theologians, mostly in Asia, who saw non-Christian religions as part of God's plan for humanity. A 2004 document he published also sternly denounced "radical feminism" as an ideology that undermined the family and obscured the natural differences between men and women.

During his long career he has condemned women priests, married priests, dissident theologians and homosexuals, whom he has declared to be suffering from an "objective disorder". He also upset many Jewish people with a statement he made in 1987 that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfilment only in Christ, a position which was denounced by some as "theological anti-Semitism".

He can also be other-wordly.When Benedict XVI returned to his native Germany shortly after his election, he was introduced to a man he did not know - despite the fact the other's fame arguably eclipsed his own. As one million young people gathered in a giant park in Cologne, to celebrate World Youth Day, the Pope peered at his guest and said: "Are you Brazilian?" It took an aide to lean over and enlighten him: "He's Pele. He's the world's greatest ever soccer player."

What Pope Benedict XVI may lack in knowledge of the beautiful game, he more than compensates for with his appreciation of beautiful things. He has been noted for his sense of style: he wears, gold Gucci sunglasses and has an iPod nano. When his papal vestments proved too big for him, he had no hesitation in switching from Annibale Gammarelli, the clerical outfitters who have clothed every Pope since 1792, to a lesser-known tailor who made his vestments when he was a cardinal, causing something of an ungodly spat over the lace chasuble.

But what is apparent is that Pope Benedict has settled comfortably into the role despite the controversy.He made a point of transferring all 5,000 of his books, which previously lined the walls of his small flat, into the grand papal apartments of the Vatican, and when asked if he wished to have a new piano he insisted on retaining his old one, on which he still continues to play for 15 minutes every day.

While his last homily before entering the conclave that elected him was an attack on the forces of relativism that make up the modern world, his first encyclical, the official papal letters to the world, was about love.

In the opinion of Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of Scotland's Catholic Community this will be at the core of his message, one that is not restricted to the Catholic Community but to all Christians and people of faith. He said: "I would like to think that the Pope's visit will give a great boost to Christianity in general, because there is so much of the Christian message that will come to all denominations. The Christians in Scotland who have had to carry their different crosses in various ways, to give them a boost to say your faith is important, your faith is worth living and there is all sorts of attacks going on because of secularism and athisim, but you have got your Christianity and so live your Christianity."

As John L Allen, a journalist with the National Catholic Reporter who has accompanied the Pope on many overseas trips said: "When he travels he tries to project the most positive and affirming message possible - I would expect him to in a few of these speeches to make pro-forma references to the gay rights issue and other issues but it is not going to be the top note. It will be him stressing over and over that the Catholic Church wants to be a constructive partner with British society."