Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO – Most Americans awaiting Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the U.S. this month likely know little about him beyond his fluffy white hair, his taste for red Prada shoes and his reputation as a hard-nosed church enforcer.
But since the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elevated to pontiff three years ago, the exacting professor with the authoritarian image has shown his pastoral side. His predecessor’s magnetism captivated crowds, but Benedict’s own low-key charisma has drawn record numbers to his appearances at the Vatican, including tens of thousands who braved heavy rains two weeks ago to hear him celebrate Easter mass.

“Becoming pope, he’s moving out of a very bureaucratic post into what is a pastoral role,” said the Rev. Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Commission. “With Benedict, you feel like he is really fixing his gaze on you. There’s a very earnest connection, and I think that’s projected even to the large crowds. It’s not the rock star. It’s more intimate.”
Despite his gentler papal persona, Benedict hasn’t softened his stance on defending the distinctiveness of Roman Catholicism and clarifying what he believes are misinterpretations of the Second Vatican Council. At heart, the German pope remains a religious intellectual devoted to guarding church doctrine and bringing Catholics back to the core message of the faith.
In his first years as pope, Benedict has issued a document upholding a ban on gay priests, approved a text asserting Catholicism as the “true church,” stressed God’s role in evolution, revived the pre-Vatican II Latin mass and displayed a preference for traditional vestments and altar decorations.
Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who will accompany the pope on a six-day visit to Washington and New York beginning April 15, said Benedict’s pastoral side has always been there but is more visible now.
“The Joseph Ratzinger that was head of the Congregation (for the) Doctrine of (the) Faith was a caricature,” George said. “Americans didn’t know him. They knew an image. Those of us who know him don’t see any change, except he has a different stage. … But what he was saying 10 years ago, he’s still saying today.”
Apparently, many Americans still do not know the pope. A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 32 percent of Americans say they do not know enough about him to offer an opinion.
As leader of 1 billion Catholics, Benedict’s great concern has been restoring a strong sense of Catholic identity, which he believes the secularized modern world has eroded over the last 40 years. Some have criticized the pope’s support of the Latin mass as a rollback of Vatican II reforms. The Rev. John Wauck, professor at the Santa Croce Pontifical University in Rome, disagrees.
“The reason it’s important to Benedict is that the liturgy goes to the heart of Catholic identity. There is the saying, `You are what you eat.’ Well, in Catholicism, `You are what you pray,'” Wauck said.
“Maybe America is the next place for him to make a statement,” he added. “The pope is clearly interested in addressing the Catholic faith in full and unapologetic ways – and let the chips fall where they may.”
Still, Benedict, who turns 81 on April 16, defies simple definition. A 2006 charity calendar captured intimate portraits of the pope strolling in his garden and playing piano. His fondness for cats was revealed in the children’s book “Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told By a Cat.”
Observers were struck that his first two encyclicals dealt with the simple, fundamental themes of love and hope. About eternal life, Benedict wrote: “It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time – the before and after – no longer exists.”
Historian R. Scott Appleby, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, said the encyclicals were “elegant, precise, pastoral in nature and, still, very much teaching documents in which the concepts of love and hope have laid a foundation for a vision of the church’s role in the world.”
A central theme of Benedict’s papacy has been his argument that reason without faith leads to materialism and selfishness, while faith without reason leads to fundamentalism.
That concept was at the heart of a controversial 2006 speech in which Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor who described the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman.” The speech sparked protests across the Muslim world.
Marco Politi, Vatican expert at the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, said the incident showed the difficulty in making the transition from theologian to Holy Father: “The pope is a great theologian, a great thinker and, we could say, in a high sense, a great preacher of the gospel. But he doesn’t have a spontaneous instinct for politics.”
Benedict used the misstep to plan a groundbreaking Catholic-Muslim summit to be held at the Vatican in November. But last month he stumbled again after he publicly baptized Egyptian-born journalist Magdi Allam. The Vatican later distanced itself from Allam’s anti-Islamic views.
“He’s had a rougher road on this very important issue of Catholic-Muslim relations,” Appleby said. “And I think because he’s smart and absorbs the realities that he faces, he’s rebounded.”
George said he believes the pope’s childhood experience under the Nazi reign shaped his view of religion’s role in society. The Bavarian-born Ratzinger enrolled in the Hitler Youth program like other young Germans and was drafted into the army in the last months of World War II, though he deserted in the war’s final days. The pope has said the horrors of the period deepened his devotion to God and ultimately moved him to become a priest.
“He is probably, because of the experience of Nazis, a man with a sense of history and the way in which history can be betrayed by secular utopians,” George explained.
“Nazism is supposed to be, after all, a scientific philosophy of national socialism based upon racist philosophy that resulted in the murder of millions and millions of people. Therefore he has wariness, a critical distance from … any kind of social teaching that divorces itself from the critique of faith.”
Though John Paul II and Benedict worked together for more than two decades and share a similar mind-set on church doctrine, Vatican observers note key differences in their management style. Politi, who co-wrote a book on John Paul II, said the late pope enjoyed interacting with a circle of Vatican advisers. Benedict works alone.
“Pope Benedict makes his decisions in a solitary way. There is an attitude that no one can disturb the Holy Father as he works on his thoughts,” Politi said.
Raphaela Schmid, a professor at the Pontifical Faculty Auxilium in Rome, recalled that as a graduate student she attended mass celebrated by Cardinal Ratzinger. For Schmid, John Paul II was a man of gestures while Benedict is a man of words.
Schmid said Benedict’s Wednesday audiences “are really mini lectures.”
“And people really listen. The crowds are very quiet when he talks. … The text is important,” she said.
Politi added: “Benedict himself has a following. There are a lot of Catholics who are scared by a loss of identity and support Benedict very much.”
Last Sunday in Rome, the pontiff was away, but the faithful still packed St. Peter’s Square for a taped message shown on large screens.
“Since John Paul II, the papacy has become more popular and the position of pope is a big thing,” said Dan Ragan, 20, of New Jersey, who attended with his brother Mike. “John Paul II made this the place for pilgrimage. … Benedict is part of that new way of looking at the papacy.”
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(Ramirez reported from Chicago and Spolar from Rome. Chicago Tribune reporter Manya A. Brachear contributed to this report.)
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(c) 2008, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.