In a homily pronounced on Saturday 30 April, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, archbishop of Brussels and primate of the Belgian Church, looked back at the “historic” moments of the election Pope Benedict XVI. “Fifteen days ago he said a man was there at the altar of the Sistine Chapel, behind him Michelangelo’s huge fresco of the Last Judgement. A simple question was put to this man: ‘Do you accept?’ We all saw, we all heard his reply”. It was not Danneels insisted a “mere procedural question”, “nor a reply of a juridical order”. “Hidden behind appearances continued the cardinal we saw Peter at that altar, Peter face to face with the Risen Jesus” who asked him before any investiture: “Peter, do you love me more than these ( Jn 21:15)?”. “What happened in the Sistine Chapel on 19 April said the cardinal -, in a moment in which the Church and the world, and angels and men held their breath, was a dialogue of love that infinitely exceeded all human expectations”. “It would be intellectually dishonest Danneels continued to extrapolate what the new Pope shall be, on the basis of what he has been. To do so would be to believe neither in the Holy Spirit nor in the coming of Pentecost. If someone in the Church passes from a particular responsibility to that of universal Pastor, it is not merely a challenge, but above all a grace. It is called the state of grace”.
