A dear friend recently confided that she was writing an article on our Holy Father and why youth from around the globe flock to him. I was flattered to receive a call from Anita Crane, a woman whose writing career and overall résumé outshine some of the most devout pro-lifers south of the Arctic Circle!
As it is, I don’t think that I gave much help to Anita, but her final article is fabulous. It is featured in several places. Here is the Special Edition from Catholic Online:
SPECIAL: Why are the Young Flocking to Pope Benedict XVI?
By Anita Crane
7/12/2008CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - Young people have been flocking to Pope Benedict XVI since he began teaching in his twenties.
As I write this, hundreds of thousands - from declared agnostics to metal heads to believing Catholics - are descending upon Sydney, Australia for World Youth Day 2008 ready to embrace Pope Benedict’s theme of Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.”
However, there is more to inspiration than some might think.
For example, while an Olympic athlete probably wouldn’t be able to spring from his seat after a transatlantic flight; that is precisely what the 80-year-old Vicar of Christ did when his plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base in April.
As my friend George Morton, editor of the Parish Visitor, witnessed, “All of the photographers and reporters around me were stunned when Pope Benedict XVI ran down the steps from the plane.”
Brennan Pursell, author of Benedict of Bavaria: An Intimate Portrait of the Pope and His Homeland, shared other delightful details about why this papa of ours has appealed to open-souled youths for generations.
When I asked what most surprised him about Pope Benedict, he said, “Two things: his genius and his humor.”
Pursell shook his head, saying, “It’s so funny, especially in the United States, the caricatures of ‘the Panzer Cardinal’ and ‘God’s Rottweiler,’ as if he is a dower German character. But in 1989, he received a Bavarian award for his humor.”
Who would have guessed it?
In his marvelous book, Pursell explained that then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger received the Karl Valentin Orden Award at Munich’s Narrhalla carnival ball.
There Cardinal Ratzinger recalled that during much of Europe’s history, court fools and jesters enjoyed the rare privilege of telling society the truth.
Then he said, “And since because of my career I am supposed to tell the truth, I am really glad that I have now been officially taken into the ranks of those that have the same privilege.”
Apparently, this Holy Father will not be outdone. For, as Pursell revealed, “Joseph Ratzinger, himself a lifelong admirer of Valentin, made a self-declared ‘pilgrimage’ to visit the grave of the great comic, walking nine miles to and from the theological faculty in Fürstenried to the cemetery in Planegg.”
Relishing the Holy Father’s “delicious irony” and mastery of understatement, Pursell described a spontaneous incident that took place in Europe in 1997. He said, “After the publication of his autobiography, a journalist asked why there was no mention of women or romance. The cardinal replied, ‘I had to keep the manuscript to 100 pages.’”
Still other delicious ironies about this pope’s style come from my media colleagues.
While the Holy Father was in America, Brennan Pursell did numerous interviews and told me, “One [mainstream reporter] asked me if Pope Benedict likes shopping - because he wears red shoes.”
Highlighting the assent of a non-Catholic radio host, he said, “One Protestant from the Bible Belt was very gracious. This gentleman told his fellow Protestants not be sulky or annoyed with the attention that the pope gets. He said they should just accept that Catholics have enough scriptural bases for this institution and it’s been around for 2,000 years - they should have the same charity that you would show to any Christian brethren and listen to what the pope says.”
Again and again, Pursell found that Pope Benedict’s genius attracted young people everywhere he taught. He said, “Overcrowded lecture halls, even at the first class hours of the morning, were the norm for Joseph Ratzinger in Bonn, Muenster, Tuebingen and Regensburg.
“At his first job in Freising, the student numbers were smaller, but some of his students still remember the brilliance of his teaching,” Pursell delighted. “There’s a testimony at an exhibit in Freising - I just saw it last week - by a man who recalls how Ratzinger lectured in his first years of teaching: elbows on the podium, cheeks resting on his knuckles, eyes directed down toward his notes.
But there weren’t any! The man said Ratzinger gave clear, compelling presentations, well-organized and easy to follow, yet still rich in analysis and formulation. He always offered much to ponder.
“Ratzinger was no dramatist in the classroom, but he spoke from the heart in ways that no one had ever heard before. This is what made him a riveting teacher and truly unforgettable,” Pursell concluded.
So, intellectual genius is not the end of the Holy Father’s wit. Rather, God made him our papa because he lives the genius of love and lets everyone know that they can be young at heart.
If you can’t go to Sydney, witness the power of the Holy Spirit by following Pope Benedict at the July 15-20 events of World Youth Day 2008 on EWTN.
Anita Crane is a freelance writer and editor based in Virginia. For more of Brennan Pursell’s insights on the genius of Pope Benedict, see her article “Papal Impact: Benedict in America” in the July-August 2008 issue of Celebrate Life.