During the course of a joint radio and television interview early in his reign, Benedict
XVI made a remark to the effect that he would not likely do much travelling as Pope.
Nevertheless, his Apostolic voyages were among the most important highlights of the
year, 2010.
A visit to the island of Cyprus – part of the Franciscan Custody
of the Holy Land, to present the instrumentum laboris for the Extraordinary Assembly
of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, which took place in Rome in October,
where he spoke of the changeless mission of the Church:
We are called to overcome
our differences, to bring peace and reconciliation where there is conflict, to offer
the world a message of hope. We are called to reach out to those in need, generously
sharing our earthly goods with those less fortunate than ourselves. And we are called
to proclaim unceasingly the death and resurrection of the Lord, until he comes. Through
him, with him and in him, in the unity that is the Holy Spirit’s gift to the Church,
let us give honour and glory to God our heavenly Father in the company of all the
angels and saints who sing his praises for ever.
The Pope made another to Malta,
in the footsteps of St Paul, during which he returned to the fundamental truth of
Christian living:
More than any of the cargo we might carry with us – in terms
of our human accomplishments, our possessions, our technology – it is our relationship
with the Lord that provides the key to our happiness and our human fulfilment. And
he calls us to a relationship of love.
The Holy Father also made pilgrimage
to Portugal to mark the 10th anniversary of the beatification of 2 of the
visionary children of Fatima; the pilgrimage to Spain, with stops in Santiago de Compostela,
to mark the Year of St. James, and to Barcelona to rededicate the basilica of la
sagrada familia; each of these was a powerful moment of Apostolic witness and an important
element in the Pope’s pastoral plan for the renewal and revitalization of the Church’s
basic mission – to make the Gospel known to all the nations and peoples of the world.
It
was, however, the historic state visit to the United Kingdom, that was the highlight
of the Pope’s travels in 2010, and the high point of that Apostolic journey was the
beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman:
Cardinal Newman’s motto, Cor ad
cor loquitur, or “Heart speaks unto heart”, gives us an insight into his understanding
of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of
the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds
us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness.
Cardinal
Newman was a model Christian, and also a model citizen – and the profound historical
connection between Christian faith and responsible citizenship was a major theme of
Pope Benedict’s historic address at Westminster Hall:
The central question
at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to
be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right
action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According
to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to
supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to
propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence
of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason
to the discovery of objective moral principles.
The Holy Father went on frankly
to discuss the damage that a distorted notion of religion, and mangled reason can
and have done to society – citing the slave trade and 20th century totalitarianism
as just two of the many disastrous effects of degenerate reason and warped religion.
This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith
– the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another
and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good
of our civilization.
The good of our civilization: the civilization that has
longest and most basically been shaped by the Gospel; the Pope’s plan for renewal
and revitalization includes those areas of culture and civilization, which first received
the Good News long ago – a plan, the implementation of which took a major step forward
with the creation this year of a new Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.
The
Holy Father also released his Post-synodal Exhortation on the Word of God in the life
and mission of the Church. Titled Dei verbum, the three hundred-page document is the
longest and most sustained Papal treatment of sacred scripture as a vessel of divine
revelation in the post-Conciliar period.
Then, there was the impact of the
Pope’s personal encounters with the faithful. During 2010, Pope Benedict met with
2,272,650 people through audiences, liturgies, Angelus and regina coeli prayers.
In
scores of meetings with Catholic bishops come from around the world to make their
ad limina visits, and with leaders of Churches and communities not yet in full communion
with the Church, the Holy Father carried out his mission of strengthening the brethren
and presiding in love.