OUR FEARLESS POPE ... AND WHO STAND BEHIND HIM
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But no one can frighten Ratzinger!
By ANDREA PAMPARANA
He wears white. The wind sometimes carries off his papal cap and ruffles his snow-white hair. He has been derided for his German accent, insulted because he defends his faith, and mocked for his ideas.
Those who consider him an enemy have not read or studied him, and if they have, they have not understood him. Because to love Benedict XVI, one must read him, study him, and thereby appreciate the full moral and intellectual force of this Pope. [
Well, to read him is not necessarily necessary in order to love him - ask any average Catholic who has been raised to love the Pope, any Pope, because he is the Vicar of Christ on earth. Or ask any Benaddict who caught the Benedict bug incurably before knowing very much about him! But of course, once he has caught your interest or devotion, then reading him becomes inevitable - or at least, listening to his words.]
This is a Pope who has written a book on Jesus and alerts his readers, with the humility of a worker in the vineyard of the Lord: "Dear brothers and sisters, this is not a magisterial lesson from me. It is just my own personal research. Criticize me for it, if you must."
Therefore, a man of peace, of reciprocal dialog. A man who speaks about millennial stones that sing the faith - in seeking to overcome the clash of arms, real or verbal, but nevertheless resulting from hate and the evil that lurks in man, from the dark forces which can make our day-to-day existence ugly. A man who, in mourning the assassination of Gemayel in Beirut and the unreason behind it, did not have to blame Iran or Syria.
This man is about to face an important historic trip to Turkey, an ancient land, a great land, gateway for centuries between Islam and the West, today a land of oppressed minorities and genocides that would be erased even from memory (such as the massacre of Armenian Christians in the early 20th century).
Bnedict XVI has wanted very much to make this trip, wanted it with all his heart since he became Pope. Not to bring to Turkey the Cross as an ideological and religious symbol as the Cross of the Crusades was, but the true Cross - that which for centuries has been the tangible sign of peace.
He wants to touch with his hands, to see and to listen to places and traces that recall to him the first teaching of that saint whose name he carries: "Listen, my son, to the teachings of the Master." [
Too bad this writer joins many others in overlooking the ecumenical purpose of this trip!]
The Pope has no fears. He cannot have them. The most radical of Grey Wolves and the Muslim Brothers already gave him a taste of their 'welcome' - their occupation of St. Sophia and their clash with the police who came to arrest them. St. Sophia which was one of the most ancient and beautiful basilicas of Cristianity, made into a mosque in 1453, then into the museum which it remains today in 1934, by decision of the founder of the secular state of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.
The Islamist Party of Happiness has called on all Turks to a grand demonstration on Sunday against the Pope "who unscrupulously insulted the prophet Mohammed". Sixty Islamist organizations and unions have been supporting a campaign against the Pope, issuing manifestos against "the alliance of Crusaders" and are
boasting of organizing more than 2,000 buses to bring to Istanbul over a million protesters.
Instead, it is we who fear for him. Because we have the impression, corroborated by explicit fact, that with this trip, the Pope may upset much within that big catch-all of narrow self-interests, economic and mercantile, military and political, which threaten (and are threatened by) this trip - including the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who, when asked what Italy could do help protect the Pope in Turkey, answered almost obscenely: "Let the Swiss Guard worry about it."
Europe is silent, it sleeps, it has been reduced to stupor by material progress that has slowly eroded its bimillennial cultural patrimony. This is the Europe of the miliion bright and colored lights but fewer and fewer children, a Europe mainfesting ignorance of itself, a lack of pride in what it was and what it ought to be.
And so behind the Pope as he goes to Turkey, there is only us and our prayers for him.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/11/2006 22.19]