Pope Evaluates First Year as `Gentle and Firm’

c. 2006 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI commemorated the first anniversary of his election Wednesday (April 19), describing his leadership as “gentle and firm” while recalling the emotion he felt being elected to follow the juggernaut papacy of John Paul II. The comments underscored the pontiff’s continuing effort to balance the […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI commemorated the first anniversary of his election Wednesday (April 19), describing his leadership as “gentle and firm” while recalling the emotion he felt being elected to follow the juggernaut papacy of John Paul II.

The comments underscored the pontiff’s continuing effort to balance the hard-line positions he crafted as the church’s top theologian under John Paul with his role as a pastor to more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide.


Speaking before an estimated crowd of 50,000, Benedict revisited the moment when he first appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as the newly elected leader.

“I remember with emotion the first impact of the faithful gathered in the square, seen from the central Loggia right after my poor election,” Benedict said, asking for the prayers and support of the faithful. “More than ever I feel that I could not undergo this task, this mission, by myself.”

Benedict described the shock he felt at learning of his election, describing the outcome of the conclave as “absolutely unexpected and surprising.”

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict went into the papal elections as the leading candidate for the job, delivering a stinging pre-conclave sermon that cast moral indifference in the West as a threatening “dictatorship of relativism.”

His subsequent election made him the first German pope in more than 1,000 years. The choice was greeted with alarm by liberal Catholic circles familiar with the German’s reputation as a hard-line doctrinal watchdog under John Paul II.

Since then, however, Benedict has pushed to distance himself from the image he garnered as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, reaching out to other Christian denominations for dialogue, visiting a Jewish synagogue in Germany, and holding private talks with his intellectual archrival, dissident Swiss theologian Hans Kung.

Benedict also penned his first encyclical, the highest form of papal writing, on the nature of love and its relationship with eroticism _ an unexpected theme for a man once branded “God’s Rottweiler” in the world media.


“I ask you to continue praying that, by God’s grace, I may always be a gentle and firm Shepherd for Christ’s flock,” said Benedict, who turned 79 on Sunday.

Although Benedict’s image appears to have softened, he has also held firm to the conservative policies he crafted under John Paul. In November, Benedict promulgated a controversial ban on gays entering the priesthood _ a move that continues to generate debate among Catholics.

He has not, however, conducted the ideological purge that many liberal Catholics expected. Curial appointments have also been slow to come, and world-wide assemblies of bishops and cardinals have followed a collegial format. During a consistory of cardinals in March, Benedict referred to the college of cardinals as a “kind of Senate” that he aimed to consult.

MO/JL END RNS

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