JOHN PAUL II " "
Benedict XVI speaks of his predecessor in an interview with Polish TV” “
On 16 October 1978 Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope and from that day, for 26 years, John Paul II led the Church. His closest aides included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whom John Paul II called from the diocese of Munich, of which he was archbishop, to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This is a post that Cardinal Ratzinger continued to hold for over 20 years, before being elected Pope. On Sunday, 16 October, exactly 27 years after the election of his predecessor to the throne of St. Peter, Polish state television broadcast the first ever interview of Pope Benedict XVI, given, in Italian, to Father Andrzej Majewski, head of Catholic programmes for Polish state television. We quote some passages from this interview (for the complete text see our website old.agensir.it). The interview ended with the announcement, “God willing”, of a possible journey of the Holy Father to Poland. THE START OF A FRIENDSHIP. “My first personal meeting [with Karol Wojtyla] took place during the conclave in 1978. Right from the start I felt a great liking for him and, thanks to God, undeservedly, the cardinal of that time immediately gave me his friendship. I am grateful for the trust he placed in me, through no merits of my own. Especially seeing him pray, I saw and not only understood, I saw that he was a man of God. That was the fundamental impression: of a man who lives with God, indeed in God. I was also struck by the open and unprejudiced cordiality with which he met me… Without big words, a friendship that sprang from the heart was thus born. Immediately after his election, the Pope called me to Rome on several occasions for talks and finally appointed me Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”. THE POPE AND THE WORLD. “It seems to me that the Holy Father, with his discourses, his person, his presence, his capacity to convince, created a new sensibility for moral values, and for the importance of religion in the world. This resulted in a new opening being created, a new sensibility for the problems of religion, for the need of the religious dimension in man. Above all, the importance of the bishop of Rome grew as a result, in an unimaginable way… No one else in the world, at the world level, could have spoken like this in the name of Christianity and given voice and strength to the Christian reality in the contemporary world. But also for non-Christianity and for the other religions he was the mouthpiece of the great values of humanity”. THE POPE AND THE YOUNG. “John Paul II knew how to fill youth with enthusiasm for Christ. This was something new, if we think of the youth of 1968 and of the Seventies. It was thanks to him that young people were so enthusiastic about Christ and the Church and also about difficult values: only a personality with a charisma like his could have achieved it; only he could have succeeded in this way in mobilising the youth of the world for the cause of God and for the love of Christ”. THE LAST TWO MEETINGS. “The first of my last two meetings with him took place at the Policlinico “Gemelli”, round about 5-6 February, the second, on the day before his death, in his room. In the first meeting the Pope was visibly suffering, but he was fully lucid in mind and very much present… The second meeting was the day before he died: he was obviously in pain, more visibly suffering, surrounded by doctors and friends. He was still very lucid; he gave me his blessing. He was no longer able to speak much. For me this great patience of his in suffering was a great teaching, especially to be able to see and hear how he was in God’s hands and how he abandoned himself to God’s will. Despite his visible pain, he was serene, because he was in the hands of Divine Love”. HIS LEGACY. “He left us 14 Encyclicals, many Pastoral Letters and countless other documents and all this represents an inexhaustible patrimony that has not yet been sufficiently assimilated in the Church. Indeed I consider it’s my essential and personal mission not to issue many new documents, but to see to it that these documents of John Paul II be absorbed, because they are an extremely rich treasure; they are a genuine interpretation of Vatican Council II”. THE FUTURE. “The Pope is always close to me through his writings: I hear and see him speak, and can remain in constant dialogue with the Holy Father, because with these words he always speaks to me. I also know how many of these texts originated. I remember the conversations we had together on one or other of them. I can continue to dialogue with the Holy Father. Of course this closeness to him through words is closeness not only to his texts, but also to his person: for behind the texts I hear the Pope himself. A man who is called to the Lord is not taken away from us…. So there’s a permanent dialogue and also a feeling of being close to each other, in a new way, but in a very profound way”.
