Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI remembers Bl. John Paul II
(Vatican Radio) Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI has granted a lengthy interview on the
topic of his years with Blessed John Paul II. The interview appears as the first in
an Italian-language collection titled: Accanto a Giovanni Paolo II. Gli amici &
I collaborator raccontano. Published by the Italian Edizioni Ares press, and in
stores now, the volume features recollections by more than a dozen of the soon-to-be
canonized Pope’s friends and closest collaborators, including: Bl. John Paul II’s
secretaries, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop Emery Kabongo and Archbishop
Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki; the former Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Joaquin
Navarro-Valls; the Blessed Pope’s life-long friend, Wanda Poltawska; the postulator
of his Cause for Sainthood, Fr. Slawomir Oder; and many others. Listen:
It was in
November of 2013 that Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI agreed to answer Polish journalist
Wlodzimierz Redzioch’s questions in writing, which he did by January of this year.
The Pope-emeritus also personally verified the Italian translation of the original
German text of his answers.
Among the topics covered in the interview are:
the work Bl. John Paul II and then-Cardinal Ratzinger did to respond to liberation
theology; their work on the Catechism of the Catholic Church; the most important aspects
of Bl, John Paul II’s spirituality; the decision of the Pope-emeritus to open his
predecessor’s Cause; the spirit of gratitude that pervades his memory of the man he
served and succeeded.
The Italian dailies, Avvenire and Corriere della sera,
ran lengthy excerpts from the interview in their Friday, March 7th editions,
which included the Pope-emeritus’s recollection of the great faithfulness and support
Bl. John Paul II showed him, even and especially in the most trying of circumstances.
“Often he would have [had] sufficient reasons to blame me or to put an end to my [tenure
as] Prefect [of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith],” said Benedict. “Nevertheless,”
he continued, “[Bl. John Paul II] supported me with fidelity and absolutely incomprehensible
goodness.”
The Pope-emeritus went on to recount how, in the face of the storm
that had developed around the declaration, Dominus Iesus [On the Unicity and
Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church], then-Pope John Paul II told
the then-Cardinal of his plans to use his remarks at the upcoming Sunday Angelus to
defend the document unequivocally. “[The Pope] invited me to write a text for the
Angelus that was, so to speak, watertight, [one that would] not allow for any other
interpretation.” Explaining that John Paul wanted his unconditional and unqualified
approval of the document to be unmistakably clear, the Pope-emeritus added, “I prepared
a little speech. I did not, however, desire to be overly brusque, and so I tried to
express myself with clarity but without harshness. After reading it, the Pope asked
me again, ‘But, is it really clear enough?. I said ‘yes’. Anyone who knows theologians
will not be shocked, though, [to learn that], nevertheless, there were those who argued
that the Pope had prudently distanced himself from that text.”