Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present by Peter Seewald

Author:Peter Seewald [Seewald, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Religious, Religion, General, Christianity, Catholic
ISBN: 9781472979230
Google: vf1AEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-11-11T23:53:29.768747+00:00

25

In the Shoes of the Fisherman

From his work room it was only a couple of steps to the private chapel to read the breviary or simply say a prayer. Perhaps in the evenings he would take a short walk in the roof garden. Then his two private secretaries would retire to their rooms on the floor above him, to answer emails until late into the night or to listen to rock music. They were the young German Georg Gänswein and the young Pole whom everyone called just Mietek, because his full name, Mieczysław Mokrzycki, was so difficult to pronounce. Possibly the valet Angelo Gugel and the nuns from the lay Catholic organization Memores Domini would still be working on the papal wardrobe in the back rooms, but he had to get used to that.

Had there really been no question that he should accept the vote? Indeed, there had been a ‘very serious’ one. But he had been struck that even in the pre-conclave so many cardinals had urged him to accept, even if he did not want to, or believed he was not up to the job. It was simply an inner duty. ‘That had been stressed so strongly and earnestly that I believed if the majority of the cardinals really do vote for it, it is a vote by the Lord and so I have to accept it.’1

The beginning had cost a lot of energy. His back had become a bit more hunched, his handshake weaker than before and his smile less broad. ‘Pray for me,’ he had asked, ‘that I do not flee in terror from the wolves.’ Why did he say that? Didn’t the glow of the office also give each pope an aura of holiness? Of invincibility?

He could still laugh at himself. For example, at the small misfortune when at the World Bishops’ Conference he forgot to turn off the microphone. ‘At 4 o’clock unfortunately I have an appointment with the dentist’, his high voice rang out round the room. Straight after his election he sent a surprise parcel to an Irish journalist who had been firmly convinced that Ratzinger would one day become pope. In the letter accompanying a bottle of Old Bushmills Irish whiskey, the recipient read: ‘His Holiness remembers his bet.’

‘Bishop of Rome, vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor to the Prince of Apostles, Summus Pontifex of the whole Church’ was his full title, and further: ‘Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman church province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State’. ‘By virtue of his office the pope possesses the highest, full, immediate and general ordinary power in the church, which he can always freely employ’ was how Canon Law described his authority. He was the leader of the largest religious community on Earth, with 1.2 billion members. Was he now the most powerful man in the world? No, he had never felt ‘power’, he said in retrospect. He had regarded the responsibility that went with the office

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