Kritikken pave Bendikt fikk før han kom til Storbritannia var mye kraftigere enn de fleste av oss i Norge husker eller la merke til. Derfor var også besøkets suksess viktigere enn vi vanligvis tenker over. I First Things leste jeg i dag en artikkelen om hva som skjedde under besøket, om hvordan også BBC’s journalister nokså raskt snudde da de virkelig møtte paven:
Three weeks have passed since the Pope’s visit to Great Britain, and memories of it still fill my mind, because it was a triumph few had expected. Of all the remarkable things I saw, while blogging about it for First Things, nothing more surprised me than this: on September 18th, as his Popemobile rolled toward Hyde Park—with Benedict waiving to his supporters packed along the streets—a BBC reporter, watching in amazement, suddenly burst out: “The 83-year-old pontiff has confounded his critics!”
To appreciate the significance of that comment, one has to understand the BBC. For years, it has been among Benedict’s most cynical media foes, questioning every aspect of his pontificate. The coverage has been so bad that Scotland’s Cardinal Keith O’Brien felt it necessary to speak out (Catholic bishops in the U.K. tend to keep their heads down), denouncing the network’s “consistent anti-Christian institutional bias,” particularly against the Catholic Church.
Yet there was that BBC reporter, undergoing an awakening, if only for an instant.
Even more astonishing was the reaction of another commentator, Joe Wilson, of BBC Radio Lancashire: “Somehow as the four days progressed, bit by bit, the Pope’s visit transformed from the worry of embarrassment that reaction would be tepid, to the glow of the eventual warmth given off by the obvious love so many felt for him.” …
…. If there is one man in Britain who deserves credit for bringing all this to fruition, it is Chris Patten, the official appointed by the government to help oversee the papal visit. Lord Patten is a rather unlikely hero. A “progressive” Catholic, his faith has often been described as tepid and fashionable, very much like that of Tony Blair’s. In the days leading up to the papal visit, Patten was widely mocked, by both Left and Right, as a hapless figurehead, who was obviously overseeing an impending disaster.
But it was Patten, for all his imperfections, who never lost faith in Benedict, and in his ability to inspire a secular audience. In a combative interview with the BBC, Patten described Benedict as “the greatest intellectual to be pope since Innocent III,” a “world class theologian,” who had a “really important message about the Christian roots of civilization in this country, and in Europe, and the way in which we can become more self-confident in asserting those Christian traditions.”
Nobody can argue, said Patten, “that Pope Benedict doesn’t have very thoughtful and intelligent ideas to offer.” Most of those who know Benedict, “regard him as a very sympathetic figure.” He noted that his previous visits “have all confounded the critics who existed before, because of the way he’s dealt with the public, not just the Catholics, but others as well.”
Asked if he was worried about protests, he said, “No, not at all,” and predicted the visit would be a “huge success.” He had every right to celebrate, therefore, when his prediction proved true. …