I dag fyller pave Benedikt 80 år og mange skriver om ham – her tar jeg fram en artikkel om hans personlige egenskaper, i en annen post vil jeg ta fram noen som skrives om hans evner som lærer – men først bør vi vel gratulere ham. Send ham gjerne en gratulasjon her.
John Allen skriver følgende om Ratzinger som person; tydelivis var han den mest vennlige og imøtekommende kardinalen i Vatikanet i mange år:
For a number of years, a few reporters had a standing bet that if one of us ever found a bishop who did not say that his best meeting was with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the legendary prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the rest of the group would buy that person dinner. In the end, no one ever claimed the prize.
Normally, bishops would tell us that many ad limina encounters with the heads of Vatican offices were unsatisfying. The cardinal-prefect would enter the room, read a lengthy statement, and leave little time for real conversation. Cardinal Ratzinger, they reported, was different. While he brought careful notes, he allowed the bishops to speak their minds. Almost universally, they found him thoughtful, gracious, and open.
Such impressions framed the great disjunction between the public image of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and private perceptions of the man. In public, Ratzinger was the Darth Vader of Roman Catholicism; he was seen as draconian, inquisitorial and imperious. Those stereotypes shaped the early line in the media on his election as Pope Benedict XVI. To take one typical example, an Italian editorial cartoon the day after Cardinal Ratzinger’s election, in a play on the famous scene of John XXIII telling a moonlit crowd in St Peter’s Square in 1962 to give their children a kiss from the Pope, showed the new Pope instructing a similar crowd to give their children not a kiss but a firm spanking.
In private, however, Cardinal Ratzinger had a different profile. Co-workers and brother bishops saw him as strikingly humble and collegial. The conviction of the 115 cardinals who elected him Pope was that they were elevating this «real» Ratzinger.
Eg hev òg ynskt Ratzinger til lukka med dagen, for deim som hev lyst til å lesa…
Det kan være greit med rettledninger og korreksjoner til paven fra Herr Storstrand. Paven behersker mange språk, dog er det et spørsmål om hvor sterk han er i diverse vestlandsdialekter,,