These last weeks in Rome – what are their meanings?

First of all, the Roman Catholic Church – but not only the Roman Catholic Church – has a successor to John Paul II as Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pastor: Cardinal Ratzinger who has chosen to be called Benedict. He has asked for, and he should have, our prayers as he enters upon this enormously demanding ministry.

I have been moved by these words about him of Bishop Crispian Hollis, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth and a very good friend to me and to our Diocese: “The new Pope comes with the reputation of being “the enforcer”. Cardinal Ratzinger is a man of immense courtesy and gentleness, he is a man of prayer and one who is close to the Lord. Ratzinger the Pope will, I suspect, present a very different image from that with which he has been saddled in the past.”

I value, too, what another friend, Bishop John Hind of Chichester, has written: “I believe that Anglicans should welcome a Pope with a clear sense that common faith and morals are central to the unity of the Church and that we have in Scripture and Tradition authoritative guidance about how we can be faithful to Christ. This welcome will not of course exclude strong debate about how Scripture and Tradition illuminate current issues, but such strong debate must always be integral to a living incarnational Church.”

Much has been written about the crowds who have flocked to Rome through these last weeks, some of it disparaging. Yes, for some there may have been an element of “the Diana factor”, the contemporary urge somehow to experience a unique moment, to be part of a historic event. But the crowds, and the huge media coverage, have responded to something deeper and more significant. When John Paul II was strong and active, and still when he was weak and old, ill and dying but still remarkably, affectingly telling, the late Pope reached out to people of all sorts all over the world; he encouraged millions in their Christian belief – and millions more that they could after all be believers; he built bridges to people of other Faiths; he challenged Governments of every sort, and every one of us, to seek Peace, and to defend the sanctity of Life. 

His long-time colleague who is now his successor, a very different man, has signalled critically important continuities in his first Addresses as Pope – among them pledging himself to reach out to Christians of other traditions and to pray and work for Christian Unity; and his choice of name, Benedict, says two things. It identifies him with Benedict XV, who was tireless in speaking of Peace through the period of the First World War. And by claiming the patronage of St Benedict, the sixth-century monk whose Rule did so much to shape the history of Europe for more than a thousand years, the new Pope calls not only Christians of his own Church but all of us to pray and to work for the return to Christian faith and life of ever-increasingly pagan Europe – which means believing both that this is God’s will, and that this may after all be God’s future for our own country and for our northern-European neighbours. 

There is an Agenda for our Churches - together - in and for Christ in this century!


25 April 2005