Awaiting Benedict XVI's first encyclical

As is the practice for a new Pope, Benedict XVI must be putting the finishing touches to his first encyclical letter, now that five months have passed since his election on April 19. No doubt, many Christians and others are awaiting with eagerness, anxiety and respect this very important document which will very clearly indicate the main accent of the Pope's mission in the guidance of the Church. In all probability, the Holy Father must have worked hard on his encyclical while on his summer break in Val d'Aosta in July.

One has to point out that in his first pronouncement on becoming Pope, Benedict XVI told the whole world that he considered himself "a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard". Since then many scholars refer to him as a "humble genius". Perhaps one of the most succinct and precise statements is that of Cardinal Meisner of Cologne: "Pope Benedict has the intelligence of 12 professors and is as pious as a child on the day of his First Communion."

One is pleased to note that while on the day of his election to the pontificate Pope Benedict was so unfairly misrepresented by many critics, particularly those in the media, after five months a good number of his critics have realised that they were all the time focusing, almost exclusively, on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, for over 23 years.

Way back in 1989, in an interview, Cardinal Ratzinger tried to dispel that air of inflexibility which has surrounded him ever since he assumed command of the former Holy Office, the department that descends directly from the infamous Inquisition.

With his natural gentle smile he told his interviewer: "I am not a Grand Inquisitor, nor do I feel that there is something of Cassandra in me.

"Whenever I consider the negative forces, which are currently plaguing the Church, I reassure myself with the following thought: it is the Lord who is really at helm of the Church."

It is in this very spirit that Benedict XVI accepted the extraordinarily heavy burden of guiding over one billion Catholics. He knows he's not alone. This he stressed clearly on April 24, in the homily at his inaugural Mass:

"My real programme of governance is not to do my will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of history."

No doubt Pope Benedict's first encyclical will bring out to the whole world the outstanding height of his theology, in which Jesus Christ occupies the centre of his reflection and the Catholic Church is the locus of faith.

The Jesuit Anthony Symondson, who has reviewed a selection of Ratzinger's books that have been published, or republished in these five months since the election of Benedict XVI, says: "For the general readers much, but not all, of his work will be difficult; but it has a freshness, lucidity, subtlety and depth that objectively applied Christian truth to the needs of the Church, of the world and the life of the soul" (The Catholic Herald, August 26).