Editorial

Sixteen days after the death of Pope John Paul the cardinals of the Church met in conclave to name his successor. On the first evening, last Monday, there was a heart-stopping moment when the smoke coming from the Vatican chimney seemed to be white. This would have been the first time in the history of the papacy, at least since this method of communicating the election of a Pope to the outside world, that a successor to the See of Peter was elected on the first ballot.

Within 24 hours, however, the smoke was white, the bells tolled and the figure in white who appeared on the balcony was the 78 year-old Cardinal from Germany, Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The Cardinals had clearly decided that there was no time to lose and swiftly to choose. Their choice was no outsider, a man indeed who had spent 26 years by the side of Pope John Paul II, a centralising force but, it needs to be remembered, previously a priest not known for being overly conservative. He served his master well but he is now his own master.

His is an awesome task, his the tremendous responsibility to set the Church's agenda after the dynamic papacy of his predecessor. That agenda includes the evangelisation of a world that has grown increasingly secular in Europe and the United States, more open to the process in Africa and Latin America, and the knowledge that evangelisation is challenged by the communist government of the most populous nation in the world, China.

If his mission turns out to be an evangelising one it will be in the context of his Christocentricity. The exhortation to preach Christ and baptise in His name remains the same. Nobody understood it more than Paul of Tarsus who saw his mission in the aftermath of the Resurrection with a terrible clarity and followed it with what was never less than a driven indefatigability. So it was with Pope John Paul. So it is with Pope Benedict, who does not need telling, still less reminding. An intellectual and a theologian of considerable standing, he has taken up the Cross.

There is a clear difference between Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul, whom the new Pope made a point of referring to as "great". His predecessor started his papacy at a young and vigorous age, at an uncertain time. The times remain uncertain, the new Pope's age is irrevocably advanced. It will be a moot point whether he will follow as comfortably in the flight-steps of Pope John Paul, whether he has the stamina for that intensity of travel. Or whether, and this may be a departure, he will establish one-to-one relationships with his cardinals and bishops from all over the world, hammering out problems that the Pope does not experience at first hand even as he insists with each on the integrity of the Gospel message. Will he, in short, be a collegial Pope?

Knowing the man who is now Pope Benedict, his choice of name will not have been plucked out of a hat. There was nothing capricious about the selection of the name of the man who succeeded Pope Pius X. Giacomo della Chiesa had been created a cardinal a mere four months before he was called to the papacy; and the world was at war. But Pope Benedict XV moved swiftly to put a stop to the persecution of the modernists, who had so inflamed Pius X, and encouraged Christian unity. His was a short papacy, perhaps another indication of the new Pope's intimations of mortality.

There is no possibility of the new Pope reneging on continuity and doctrinal integrity. His commitment to both has been self-evident. But we may see Pope Benedict XVI moving forward confidently on the path towards Christian unity and, surprisingly for those who found him so disturbingly centralising, creating his own brand of collegiality.