Pope of surprises

by Editor · Published January 3, 2007 · Updated October 6, 2017

Last month Catholic newspaper editors in the United States, polled by Catholic News Service in Washington, voted Pope Benedict as their Newsmaker of the Year 2006, a result that would surely be replicated in any country with a Catholic media presence.

The result is hardly surprising: popes tend to win these polls as a matter of course. Indeed, Pope John Paul II in particular was a pontiff with a gift for making regular headlines.

Pope Benedict’s pontificate was not styled to hit the headlines with much frequency. Nevertheless, the Holy Father has established himself as a regular presence even in the headlines of the secular press.

This can be partly ascribed to the magnified fascination with the papacy following the astonishing public response to Pope John Paul’s final days, death and funeral. Suddenly the Catholic Church became a focus of interest again. With a new pope, the media is looking for clues that might signpost the direction the world’s biggest institution would take after a long, exhausting pontificate.

The media interest is also rooted in the enigmatic personality of Pope Benedict, one so at odds with the widespread expectations that greeted his appearance on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square on April 19, 2005.

The pope has turned out not to be the hardline enforcer of conservative orthodoxy many had feared (and many others hoped), but a pontiff firm in is own views which he is unafraid to state forthrightlyand open to those of others. In short, Pope Benedict has acquired a public aura of refreshing unpredictability.

Who would have predicted that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who as the Holy See’s doctrinal prefect had been nicknamed the Panzerkardinal, would devote his first encyclical not to a doctrinal theme or a scholarly theological discourse, but to the subject of love and do so with such enormous pastoral sensitivity.

Pope Benedict fascinates the media because he surprises and does so on his own terms.

The papal calendar for 2007 suggests another busy year for the pope-watchers in the media.

In March, Pope Benedict will publish a book his first as pope on Jesus. While he has stressed that the content of the book will be a private reflection which Catholics are free to challenge, it surely will reveal much about the Holy Father’s inner spiritual life.

The pope has been informally invited to address the United Nations in New York this year, possibly in September. Should he accept the invitation he is said to be seriously considering it his address may well outline how the pope sees the Catholic Church’s position and role in the world today. Such a speech could well be a defining moment of Benedict’s papacy.

It is likely that potentially controversial issues such as the Vatican’s position on condoms in HIV/Aids prevention or the sainthood cause for Pope Pius XII will arise in 2007. Whatever direction Pope Benedict may take on these issues, it will be eminently newsworthy and the subject of much debate.

The pope may also name new cardinals; by June there will be at least 14 vacancies.

After neglecting Africa in 2006, when he named only one retired African archbishop to the College of Cardinals, the pope might well see the next consistory as an opportunity to acknowledge the phenomenal growth of Catholicism in Africa, and the continent’s maturing significance in the life of the Church even in Europe.