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The Catholic New World
Despite ‘hard-nosed’ image, new pope called gracious

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

As the word went out that white smoke had been spotted above the Sistine Chapel and the bells were ringing at St. Peter’s, Catholics around the Archdiocese of Chicago gathered around television sets to wait hear the new pope’s name.

Barely an hour after Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, stepped to the balcony, several of Chicago’s auxiliary bishops and Father George Rassas, the vicar general, met with reporters on the driveway of Cardinal George’s residence to share their impressions of the new pontiff.

Archdiocesan Catholics were to welcome the new pontiff in prayer at special 5:15 p.m. Mass at Holy Name Cathedral April 24, the day of his installation at the Vatican.

The bishops who spoke April 19 emphasized Pope Benedict’s quiet, soft-spoken manner and practice of listening intently in their personal meetings with him when he was prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. They also expected that his pontificate would continue in the direction established by Pope John Paul II.

“I found him to be kind of a quiet, almost grandfatherly figure at the time,” said Auxiliary Bishop John Manz, who met the new pope for the first time about five years ago. In contrast to his reputation as being a “hard-nosed German,” the pope was soft-spoken and had a warm smile, he said.

Auxiliary Bishop Francis Kane said he first met then-Cardinal Ratzinger when he attended a seminar for new bishops shortly after he and Bishops Gustavo Garcia-Siller and Thomas Paprocki were ordained in March 2003—a session they referred to as “bishop school.”

Chicago auxiliaries also met with Pope Benedict in May 2004 during their ad limina visit to Rome.

“I think he’s considered rather rigid and conservative,” Bishop Kane said. “I found him very willing to listen to us. I think he will be somebody who will listen to what people are saying. But he is also someone who is very clear in what he thinks and believes.”

Passionist Father Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union, has spent more time with the new pope than the bishops who spoke because Benedict XVI chaired the Pontifical Biblical Commission on which Senior served for three years.

“My impression of him is he’s a brilliant guy, very gracious,” Senior said. “People think of him as being a heavy, orthodox. That’s his role (in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), but he’s low-key, gentle, interacts nicely with you. He’s very genuine.”

Pope Benedict’s experience in the Roman Curia will help him hit the ground running, Senior said.

“He’s going to bring the strength and knowledge of doctrine with him; he knows all of the players and is certainly going to continue the guardianship of the deposit of faith,” he said. “(But the papacy) is a different job. … It’s being a pastor, pastor of the entire church. The side of him that is gracious will be drawn on.”

As a priest, bishop and cardinal, the new pope did not have much pastoral experience, Senior said, because before serving for a short time as archbishop of Munich, he was an a academic, “a brilliant theologian.”

“He’s one of the few popes who comes to us with a plethora of writings and literature,” said Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry, saying he first met the new pope through the “paper trail” of his theological work.

And he kept writing as a theologian even after becoming a bishop and then a cardinal, said Father Thomas Baima, provost of the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

“What we have to remember is that Joseph Ratzinger was already a theologian before the Second Vatican Council,” said Baima, adding that he shaped the council documents as an expert consultant at the council meetings. “Already, the secular media is criticizing him as a man who does not pay attention to Vatican II. How can he not pay attention to Vatican II when he helped write the documents?”

The key, Baima said, is to read the council documents through the lens of “Lumen Gentium” (“The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church”) and see them in continuity with the documents from earlier councils.

Baima, who served as director of the archdiocesan Office for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for four years, said people involved in interreligious dialogue who know the former Cardinal Ratzinger will react positively to his election.

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith must sign off on all major ecumenical documents, Baima said, so the new pope was heavily involved in such initiatives as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification approved by Catholics and Lutherans in 1999.

When it comes to young people—a group with whom Pope John Paul II always had a special rapport—archdiocesan leaders said the new pontiff will find his own way, but that this summer’s World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, could provide a warm welcome.

Auxiliary Bishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, a native of Mexico, added that the new pope must recognize Latinos as among the largest ethnic groups in the church. Before the election was announced, there was speculation that the cardinals might elect a Latin-American.

“Latinos need to know they are welcomed, they are recognized, they are loved,” said Garcia-Siller, who praised Pope Benedict as a prayerful and articulate man. “I don’t know how all this will turn out. But the Holy Spirit will give him graces.”

Rassas asked the Catholics of the archdiocese to pray for the new Holy Father.

It was in prayer that he was introduced to the Mundelein Seminary community, Baima said.

Seminary students and faculty gather for Mass at 11:30 a.m., and when they began, they knew there was a pope, but not who it was, Baima said. Some students—who had participated in Mass earlier in the day—let out a whoop during the psalm, and someone whispered the name to the rector, Father John Canary, during the Prayers of the Faithful. The congregation learned the news when the celebrant, Father Alberto Rojas, intoned “Pope Benedict XVI, who was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,” during the Eucharistic Prayer.

Worshipers maintained a reverent silence, he said, “but there were a lot of smiles.”

“It was the perfect way to learn about the new pope,” Baima said. “Because Communion is where we all come together as a church.”

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