Pope quite early on. In fact, I wrote him a letter in 1995, asking for the rights to his future works, thinking those rights might come in handy. And they did.


His close friends


tout the Pope as an extraordinary person; a holy man of great wisdom, who hasn’t changed because of his title.


“But to me the great joy, having known him and knowing what kind of person he really is — his depth, his wisdom, his serenity, his goodness — I knew that, with the Church in a very troubled time, we would have a leader who is an extraordinary person and a very holy man, a man of great wisdom. There was real joy in that.” He fi rst met Ratzinger when Fessio arrived at Regensburg to begin his doc- toral studies. They have remained close ever since, and still speak regularly. Benedict is what Fessio calls a “real European,” which is to say he main- tains even his closest relationships with a kind of restraint unfamiliar to most Americans.


“Von Balthasar and de Lubac always used the formal form of address [with Ratzinger], and they were very, very close friends,” said Fessio. “What amazed me about it as an American from the West Coast . . . is how these people could have such really deep, deep bonds with each other and also have this sort of formality.” Fessio says there is no change in Joseph Ratzinger now that he is Benedict XVI. “He’s the same person he has always been. In a certain sense he is more him- self; he just seems to fi t the role so natu- rally. He even looks healthier and calmer than he used to.”


Another Jesuit priest, James V. Schall of Georgetown University, says the Pope is one of the most intellectually accom- plished men anywhere in the world. But the enthusiasm of some Catholics in the rise of Ratzinger has to be bal- anced by the skepticism and even rage of others.


Author David Gibson, whose


BEST FRIENDS American Jesuit priest Joseph Fessio (right) is a decades-long pal of the German-born Pope.


60 NEWSMAX / APRIL 2008


book The Rule of Benedict is criti- cal of the Pope, said at the time of Benedict’s election that Cardinal Ratzinger had alternated between “God’s Rottweiler . . . [and] papal pussycat,” a reference to the cardinal’s closeness with John Paul II. Mr. Gibson doubted that as Pope, Ratzinger would make any signifi cant pronouncements about controversial issues. “He’ll just say: ‘Pray harder.’”


Less temperate were the


comments of Andrew Sullivan, former New Republic editor, and Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist — both Catholics. Sullivan referred to the new Pope as the “grand inquisi- tor” and said it was “hard to overestimate the radicalism of this decision,” by which he meant the papal conclave’s choice of Ratzinger as Pope. “It’s a full-scale attack on the reformist wing of the Church,” Sullivan, who is openly gay, wrote on his blog. “The swift- ness of the decision and the polarizing nature of this selec- tion foretell a coming civil war within Catholicism. The space for dissidence, previously tiny, is now extinct. And the attack on individual politi- cal freedom is just beginning.” According to Dowd, the Pope is a “hidebound archconservative who ran the offi ce that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth.”


Dowd Candle of Hope


His supporters say Benedict is the right man at the right time, that he believes the Church ought to be a candle of hope for each individual man, woman, and child, not a torch leading the mob, and that he believes less in the magnetism of his offi ce and his own personality than in the fundamentals of the faith.


John Paul II may have had the soul of a poet and the charisma of a rock star, and Benedict XVI the soul of an academic and the charisma of an accountant, but the new Pope’s friends say the Roman Catholic Church is now in need of stern teaching and clear-eyed reckoning. The difference between the approaches of the two friends towards papal authority can be seen in two images: John Paul on a tarmac in Nicaragua in 1983 cajoling poet- priest Ernesto Cardenal into tempering his political activism, urging him to quit the Sandinista government, and Benedict on an airplane to Brazil last year bluntly pronouncing excommunication on politi- cians who advocate abortion rights. For the one it was the art of persuasion; for the other it is my-way-or-the-highway. Does this mean Benedict XVI is willing to see the Church, especially in Europe,


Sullivan


SULLIVAN/ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES / DOWD/ROBIN PLATZER/FILM MAGIC/GETTY IMAGES / FESSIO/IGNATIUS.COM


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