A “pontificate of extraordinary dimension”: that’s the comment of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna. In a press conference held at Vienna on 2 October, Schönborn pointed out the “strong prophetic signs” that have characterised the Pope’s activity. As examples he cited the Pope’s first visit to Poland in 1979, his address to 80,000 young Muslims in Morocco in 1985, his visit to the Weeping Wall in Jerusalem in 2000 and his reaction to the attempt on his life in 1981. Also “prophetic” are his social doctrine and ethical teaching on the value of life. Current world economic problems, said Schönborn, would need to be discussed in the light of the Pope’s social doctrine”. With regard to the Pope’s “appeals” for “a full protection of life”, often “criticised as too ‘conservative’ or ‘limited'”, Schönborn pointed out that “the culture of life” supported by the Pope “is indissolubly linked to social ethics”, as “shown by the current debate on pensions and the relation between the generations”. As far the Pope’s state of health is concerned, the archbishop of Vienna declared: “Even a life as full and as intense” as his “is destined to conclude its earthly phase”; what’s new is “that a Pope should be approaching death under the spotlight of world public opinion; the contemporary world is no longer used to such things”. “The Pope he added is suffering his illness, his fragility and his physical limitations in public, in a very conscious way, as a sign for a society sick of a mania for health”; in this regard Schönborn cited the Pope’s spontaneous greeting to the faithful in wheelchairs as “one of the most moving moments” of his recent journey to Slovakia.
